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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8276580" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Okay. What might have caused that? Was it essential to the rules themselves, or was it fear about using the rules badly? Because my experience has shown that very creative, dynamic players almost always become very cautious, by-the-book ones when faced with a distinctly new system they don't fully understand yet. Especially if that system has enough transparency to let you know just how much you don't know yet.And that's, like I said, part of why this topic is controversial. I do not deny that some players in newer-school games don't display a lot of creativity. I even said it was a notable concern before. But correlation is not causation, and "well I saw it more with X than with Y" is not even correlation. Because if I had to speak of my own experience with OSR play, which I admit is limited? The correlation would run exactly the opposite way. People were much more creative and willing to try things in the 3.5e games I was in than the OSR sessions I've played, and the most successful characters in the latter were the ones who applied pretty basic, listed-on-the-sheet abilities (mostly spells) while the one really dynamic and proactive player lost his character very early on purely because he kept trying creative solutions rather than safe ones. (And this was with a DM I like and respect!)Crunchy rules don't cause players to stop thinking. Fear, training, and bad incentives do. Light rules don't, strictly, cause players to start thinking either. IME, the things that get players to be creative and spontaneous are comfort with a ruleset (the more comfortable you are with it, the better-equipped you feel to push boundaries), being taught to see the game world as full of tools and opportunities (rather than proverbial hurdles and ladders), and DMs making a constant and concerted effort to reward and support the behaviors they want players to engage in.To use a completely different example, the oft-discussed problem of "murderhobo" characters. I specifically wanted to avoid such a party in the DW game I run. I told my players as much in the lead-up to Session 0. I also told them that, as part of wanting to avoid that, I would support them when they take actions that are potentially imprudent but clearly merciful or selfless. Now, if they do something really really boneheaded, that might have consequences. But showing mercy to a defeated enemy is NOT going to automatically mean that enemy betrays them, nor that the enemy's forces will be consistently bolstered by opponents they allow to flee. I do these and other things because I don't want players who have been taught that the only intelligent solution is scorched-earth tactics, that the only safe enemy has been double-tapped just to be sure it's dead, and that mercy is a weakness and restraint an error that can and will be ruthlessly exploited. This doesn't mean the party lacks for dangerous, even ruthless enemies. It just means that this is a world where heroism is permitted to actually work some of the time. (There are exceptions, mostly for ultra-fanatic cultists who would not reasonably abandon their twisted faith solely because they got bested in a fight. But I keep those exceptions, well, exceptional, and warn my players about it whenever it comes up.) The greater threat, as my players have seen fairly recently, is from being manipulated by others into doing what they want you to do. Second-guessing the motives of "friendly allies" is rarely a bad plan unless they've let you in on their deep secrets, the kind that could actually hurt them if revealed.</blockquote>

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