Troll Lord Games

What struck me when I was first exposed to AD&D back in the day was how it freed my mind and fed my imagination. Recent games have left me feeling the complete opposite.

I was not limited by a list of feats, skills, or powers. Rather I was free to use anything my imagination came up with and it resulted in a dice roll that brought the agony of defeat or the thrill of victory.

I was able to bring any book I read to life!
Conan, Tolkien, Elric, and Witchworld, were all at my disposal all with one game.

Now we have games named Conan, LOTR, and so on.

My question to you:
Do you think the trend in rpgs has opened up ways to explore the imagination or do you think the trend in games and licensing has done the opposite?

Please explain why.

I think the trend outside of gaming is to not think, to not use your imagination, to not question, to be a sheep/drone. So I think anything that makes people exercise their imagination is fantastic. Including games named Conan, Lord of the Rings, etc...

Treebore...
If one recognizes the trend outside of games would it not stand to reason to also be alive in games?

Do they allow you to stretch the imagination, or do they spell out each action, ability, feat and skill for you?
Do you really need to have Blacksmithing defined for us or are we smart enough to use our imagination to find unique ways to use Blacksmith in game in ways the designer never even imagined?

I'm not saying Conan or any other "theme" game defeats the imagination.

What I am asking is do you think certain elements within games defeats the free flowing of improvisation, ingenuity, and creative imagination?
Do you think a game named Elric is better for the imagination or a game that allows for Elric, Conan, LOTR, or Smurfs to be played out?

So, does spelling out each official background, theme, genre or official canon better for the imagination? Is a game like 3.x that spells out and defines everything for you better for the imagination or a game that suggests possible ways to resolve things?

Do some rules play to some themes better than others?

My two-cents worth:
I think it breaks down into two general rules-types - more free-form .vs less free-form.
When I was first introduced to OD&D (played one game) and very quickly picked up AD&D 1e, both to DM and (sometimes) play, I used to describe it to newbies and friends as: "What do you want to do?" Because, to me, pretty much other than the framework rules (Mage = no armor, Cleric = no edged-weapons, etc.), yes, other than the framework, characters could do ANYTHING they imagined. Well, they could try anything they imagined. That was what got me hooked...and still does. There's your imagination thing Joe.
Part of why I never moved on to D&D 2e or 3e or 4e was because, instead of seeing their rules-bloat / here's-all-kinds-of-supplements/books as "better" or necessary, I didn't see the need: 1e and my and my players' imaginations did just fine -- less (to me) really IS more. I liked having to figure out how to make the 1e spells work in different ways, why did I need Specialty Mages? Or a Book of Thieves? Of course, I also saw 2e as TSR turning into a money-whore, trying to nickel-and-dime folks out of as much cash as they could ("Look! Here! You absolutely MUST buy all these niche` books and supplements!").
I paged through a 3e Players Handbook when it first came out and that was enough to turn me off of it. Same with 4e.
Luckily I found C&C -- a game that (to me) goes back to that "What do you want to do?" which fires my imagination instead of channeling it. To me, it's the difference between "Attacks of Opportunity" and unlimited opportunities.

I do believe my imagination is "free" in C&C, unlike how it was under 3E and 4E, so I would have to say I do agree that such fully detailed games can inhibit the use of imagination. Do they fully squelch it? No. But they do seem to lessen the need for it. I certainly felt constrained, which is why I quit playing them.

I think this is a great and valid question. However, I think you're probably asking it on the wrong forums. One of the things that sets C&C apart is its rules light, let the DM/Player/Story decide what happens approach. I think your question, and the answers for the most is what drives many of us to choose C&C in a time when games have generally gone in the other direction. Because of this, I think most people on here will answer your question in that light.

Having said that, let me tell you why I agree with you.

Much like you, I started playing RPGs at a time when rules were not as elaborate or all-encompassing. The idea of "theres no rule for that" never occurred to us. In fact, our "rule" was that if there was no rule, we could do whatever we wanted and that it must have been intended rather than an oversight. Games today seem to take a different approach. It FEELS to me that game designers think something along the lines that the reason there weren't certain rules in older RPGs is that the designers had not thought of it, or didn't know how to design their games to allow things to transpire according to the rules. And that in newer RPGs they would boldly "allow" things with rulesets that didn't exist before. When in fact, by creating rules for things, there were actually DISallowing much more than they were allowing.

I'll go one further and say, unfortunately, I think this may be necessary for todays gamer. Back in the 70s and 80s, we didn't have a lot to work with visually. The number of modern (at the time) fantasy movies was small. Cartoons and video games had not reached the technological level where they cold realize the visions of fantasy novels of the era. Everything we were imagining was mostly based on what we had READ. So, they needed rulesets that allowed our imaginations to work in the same way they had, which is to say doing most of the heavy lifting.

Nowadays (just typing that makes me feel old), movies, cartoons, and video games are so advanced technologically, that they do a FANTASTIC job of realizing the visions presented in written media. The LotR movies are a great example. I'm thrilled that technology has made these leaps and i LOVE these new movies. However, now that the vision is realized BY A DIRECTOR, or whatever, its set. It leaves little for the consumer of those fictions to imagine. They KNOW what an orc looks like and how it moves. They know what spells look like and what they can be used for. They've actually seen it. So now, games are tasked with designing rulesets that approximate what gamers today "know".

In fact, I think many younger games will expect a ruleset that "allows" them to do what they've SEEN. And by "allow" I mean, codify in the rules, rather than "allow" it by having no rules to govern it.

This is just a difference in modern cultural understanding.

I'm currently transitioning a group from 4E to C&C. Its strange for them to not have their "powers". They're like, "well, all I can do is swing my sword". In fact, lots of modern gamers, 3E etc say the same things on the forums when they talk about 1E. They say fighters "drooled" in older editions and that modern rules have made them relevant again. Well, MY fighters never drooled. They were battle crazed veterans leaping first into the fray, or tactical geniuses weighing their moves accordingly, perhaps even a fearful but powerful good hearted defender of the weak. Now, those are not RP nuances, they're actually classes or the results of some multiclassed abomination.

I often hear modern games say they can't "make the character they want to" without elaborate feat lists or multiclassing 5 times. I can't imagine that they can't make the character they want to in a ruleset like C&C where pretty much anything goes.

I think the truth is simply that if they want a specific character concept, they want specific feats to give it rather than to just imagine it. For example, perhaps they want to make a rapier like swordsman like Indego Montoya from Princess bride. They'd want to have a feat that allows them to fight with either hand and a feat that allows them to disarm their apponents at will, rather than just imagining those things and allowing a siege check to determine it.

Whether its good for the GAME, I can't say, but I don't feel like it's good for the gamer, but thats probably just me getting old.

Some games encourage a different sort of imagination: Gamma World, for example, begs you to play a giant wasp that can magnetically lift objects and form a death field around itself while dog-mules with laser rifles blast at you...

d20, for a fantasy game, essentially throws out all the tropes and standards, adds a blender, and says "there. Play." The World of Synnibar is similar, and so is RIFTS.

If you're talking pure game components, such as how some facet of the game is played, perhaps there is an underlying reliance on dice. That does not take away imagination -- in fact, it could be argued that it encourages it. How did the guy with the 3 Charisma and no social skills just guile his way past the guard? "Rolled a 20?" seems a cheap cop-out but if the players, which is all that matters, actually understood what they were playing (this may be the fundamental argument, that dice-heavy games are not role-playing) then there's a whole bag of imagination to sniff. Dicing for actions is far simpler, and easier, and this argument has been around for ever -- numerous articles in various magazines debate whether the skill of the player vs. the skill of the character is more important. Therefore, it should not, and is not, considered a "new development." RPGs, as a matter of course, to reflect the randomness of reality, use dice for various things -- either throw them out such as Amber did or get used to rolling them.

If you're waxing off about other elements of recent modern games, such as complicated combat procedures with a need for use of a battle map or grid + miniatures, then this, too, by itself does not remove imagination. I personally do not like it as I find such things tend to become very mechanical -- I move here, I cheat there but that is a problem with the mindset of the players and DM, not the game.

If you're going into meltdown because of the things like feats and skills... well, that's simply a part of the "customization." I've argued before that d20 and games of that ilk are a false customization because, rather than tell you what you can do, it basically creates a list of what cannot be done -- C&C does not have this particular problem, to an extent. The rules of C&C still do not allow level to be added to certain cross-class checks (and that's assuming the CK even allows you to make the check; it is certainly within RAW to disallow it) which is intrinsic to an archetype-derived game. In this sense, C&C and d20 are actually quite similar... one picks a class, the other picks a class and then a few minor other things.

Anyway, imagination is in the head, not on paper. If you don't have the former, you probably can't use the latter.

I do think that current trends in fantasy RPGs do limit imagination. Putting so much meta-power in front of the player, or tailoring mechanics for dice rolls to do the story-telling is hurting the imagination portion of this hobby.

Then again, there are always creative and influential GMs who go outside of the rules and make the games their own.

Part of this is the culture we currently live in. People need to be told the exact details on what to do and when to do it, or it doesn't get done. As it seems from my small place in the world.

~O

I feel imagination and the limits and freedoms thereof are completely up to the individuals playing the game. The backgrounds, rules, character descriptions, etc. are there more or less as a tool or guide. The imagination and creativity comes completely from the individuals who are all playing the game. For instance, I have a friend who hosts games all the time and only uses the rule books as a loose guide line. The rest of the game is completely of his making and what we as the players throw at him. My brother also is infamous for creating these off the wall characters. Nowhere in the rule books does it say that he should play a Ranger modeled after Chuck Norris who makes Bowflex's out of his short bows, eats dirt to track creatures, sleeps in mud puddles, and cries tears into his antidotes, but these are the kind “out there” things he comes up with. I once played an assassin who had an affinity for knitting and whittling and a pirate who had an uncanny attachment to his eye patch. So I feel any new games out there are not limited in creativity unless you choose to allow them to limit your creativity. If the rules are stifling you, bend them a little. There is no rule that money should be thrown into the middle of the monopoly board whenever bank dues are paid and whoever lands on free parking gets it, but many a home has “thrown in” this rule to make the game just a little bit more fun.

My take on it is that more recent (say, d20 forward) fantasy games have only put a cap on imagination because the mechanics involved have pointed players that way. GMs in the more modern games tend to adjudicate based-- too often, IMHO-- on mathematical formula (Roll + Relevant Stat + Ranks in Relevant Skill + Relevant Bonuses > DC#?), where the GM was once required to storytell and make reasoned judgments based on what a character was doing or saying-- or more telling, how a character was doing so. The players don't seem to be encouraged to use their imaginations to ask that important how; instead, they've gotten used to being able to make do with simple dice rolls to determine pass or fail.

When that's the case-- and when dealing with a culture that embraces MMO's as virtually the same thing as Role Playing, -- you get the sort of situations I've seen at the Paizo and ENWorld boards, for instance, when people vehemently argue against a player having to describe how they bluff, or how they intimidate, or what they do, simply because they can make a dice roll and let the GM say how it happened. In their minds, the dice roll is all that should be required, because the rules say it works that way. I've had more than one person lambaste me because I dared to suggest I wanted players in my game to actually think and tell me how their characters would respond and not just give it over to a dice roll vs. insert skill/feat/to-hit/DC.

Maybe I run too demanding a game.

All of this is my own opinion. Let me get that out there, lest I twist anyone's spleen the wrong direction. I have played-- and still do play-- Pathfinder, 3.5E, and several D20-based games, and still like them for what they are. They're just nto the systems that I would choose to run games in, anymore, for largely that reason.

I think its obvious we can play "outside of the box" with any game.

You can roleplay battle ship but that does not make it a roleplaying game.
A "hero" will not act heroically if too many aoes stand against him.
So to expect a 3.x player to ignore the rules set before him is naive and unrealistic. To say the rules does not effect the action would not be intellectually honest.

We all know the rules of culture, civilization and religion does not make the core of a person...but it sure does influence how they think and react.

I shall post this here because this is one of the few forums where actual discussion happens rather than "one up" games and using word tactics like waxing off and meltdown to garner emotional responses rather than thought out replies. One simply needs to refer to actual meltdowns to know the difference. (Medal of Honor...I'm lookin at you!)

It is clear to me that Tetris encourages one to think geometrically and games with high crunchy mechanics encourages you to think mechanically. We all know the avid wargamer types that treats each D&D encounter with tactical precision so this should not be unfamiliar topic with folks.

I don't like mechanics messing with my fantasies...its that simple.

It just strikes me odd that so many interested in fantasy, magic and myth would be so easliy swayed into mechanical thinking to the point they flame about it by lambasting those that ask them to roleplay. if folks of high intellects are so easily swayed how do we know there is ONE free thinker amongst us?

Perhaps we are all part of the herd while we simply roleplay being lone stallions.

I'd say you need plenty of imagination to play a game in a setting where the boundaries are already well-known, at least for a group of adventurers other than your own. It can be challenging to game in a world where you could slip and break canon. I think in reality, no one takes it that far, in order to take a single step without causing some massive butterfly effect, people relax and play themed games like any other game. When they outgrow them or feel confined, it gives rise to setting-less versions of the game, like Cortex System or The D6 System, but that's probably just so they don't have to wade through lots of flavor text they aren't really using anymore.

I have to say in defense of well-defined settings, I don't like to play with people who wear their imagination like a badge and do everything they do for creativity's sake. I don't want my Red Dragon Inn to look like the Creature Cantina in Mos Eisley Spaceport because someone wants to play a bright orange half-elf/half-bugbear secret agent psionicist space alien exile with a lisp, a missing arm, and vestigial wings and an addiction to sassone root. Grizzled dwarf with battle axe fits better, thanks. I like how D&D sort of has an implied setting for guidance.

The depth of a game's constituents, such as rule X for action A does not, on its own, prevent or limit the dread "imagination." It simply allows boundaries in which said imagination "works" for that particular game. It is those who resist the urge to realize that the game allows more than the rules say that miss imagination. Unfortunately, it does appear that, in some circles on some message boards, this is the norm. Perhaps people like being fed a prescription. Or, at least, when it comes to gaming... they like to ensure they're "playing by the rules."

Again, nothing new in that. To say it is due to modern phenomena is to not know the roots.