Rules vs. "Creativity"

[Arturick]

I recently found myself reading this thread.  http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=23110

Which seems to be a spin off of this thread.  http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=23138  (Be warned, that there is an intense amount of foul language, all optimizers being diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, and Frank Trollman)

The author of the top link seems to insist that utilizing rules in an RPG is a poor substitute for "creativity."  By creativity, he seems to mean applying, "What would MacGuyver do?" to all situations.  I was wondering what experiences people have had when trying, or dealing with a player who was trying, to go "outside the rules" to accomplish something in the game.  I've run into a few common situations:

MacGuyver vs. Mythbusters:  I often have players try to do things in my game that really don't work.  The first one that pops into mind is Mattuck Orcdestroyer, Dwarven Bee Molester.  My player wanted to come from a family of beekeepers (fully explaining his extensive combat mastery), and wanted a jar of bee venom.  He wanted to milk poison out of bees and coat his weapons with it to get extra damage against enemies without DR/allergens.  Now, I could simply state that there are no bee-milking rules in the game, and tell him to draw his character concept from the giant stack of books I spent a bajillion dollars on.  Alternately, we could get into an argument about the practicality and science behind bee milking.  Or, I could just say, "Sure... you milk bees...  I'm going to need to be drunk to run this campaign."

Trust Me, I'm An Expert:  I am not a chemist, nor am I a master of the martial arts.  Now, people who claim to be experts in these fields have entered my campaigns and said, "Yeah, this mixture will kill everyone in the room," or "I put him in an arm bar and I'll break his shoulder if he struggles."  I can either say, "Yeah, it's not in the rules," or I can argue.  The argument will consist of me not knowing much about chemistry and not having any logical reason to say you can't make nerve gas in Faerun, or me getting beat up by a testosterone monster with a black belt in Kempo.  Alternately, I can now decide that no-save kill effects are available in Faerun and we now have rules for broken shoulders in a hit point based system.

You're an Asshole if I Can't Do This:  Sometimes, there is no argument behind the "outside the box" thinking of certain players more convincing than, "It would've worked if you weren't an asshole."

I have, as a player, done a few things that were tricky from a rules perspective.  Mostly, I just needed access to clear rules for dropping stuff on people (which I think they put in Complete Warrior).  Once, while travelling through Limbo on a giant marble disk controlled by a Githzerai, I established that we were going to be fighting a huge Chaos Beast that was floating near a stable asteroid we needed to get onto.  I proposed ramming it with the giant marble disk.  I didn't ask for any particularly unusual effect from this besides hit point damage and an ultimately irrelevant Bull Rush effect.  I just wanted the existing rules for hitting something writ large.  "Some people think outside the box," I said, "I think with the box."

Usually, I feel like "going outside the rules" violates a large part of what makes an RPG an RPG.  Compare the AD&D Gold Box games to Mass Effect 3.  If I wanted a badass warrior in Curse of the Azure Bonds, I needed to use the rules to build a badass warrior.  If I want a Commander Shepard who rocks Reaper face off, I have to be a good shot and have good reflexes.  My character doesn't have reflexes.  My Commander Shepard has no innate skill with a gun beyond what I supply.  In an RPG, I want to be limited by my character.  I don't want my character limited by me any more than it has to be.

[Bauglir]

Why have a dichotomy? The rules should provide a baseline of equivalent effectiveness for everyone. If you find yourself in a niche situation the rules didn't account for, by all means be creative. Some of those examples are, however, not really good ones. Creativity shouldn't result in "auto-win". Ever. It should result in having a chance in an otherwise hopeless situation, it should result in an unforeseen tactical advantage, or it should result in really interesting consequences for success. But you shouldn't have people summoning Cesium elementals and calling it creativity when the resulting explosion levels a city block.

So, for the bees: it's a character concept, and it's not one that is inherently broken. Simply write up stats for bee poison (probably 1d6/1d6 Dex damage with a DC 2 or 3 Fortitude save to model its low toxicity with rare allergic responses) and allow him to spend wealth on it, and fit it into the existing rules. For the chemist and the martial artist, explain to them that the people they're encountering are extraordinary people - you need to roll to see if you can put him into that arm lock (if you pin him, you've succeeded), and because many people have extraordinary fortitude, they get to make saves against your nerve gas, just as they do against rattlesnake venom. Also, chemistry doesn't work like it does in reality - remember that there are only four elements, for instance, and they actually do make up the entire universe. It's not a case, as in reality, where it's a misguided theory.

Generally, I feel like the game is ultimately about having fun. You want the rules there to provide verisimilitude and a framework for doing awesome things - Magical Tea Party Time is not really very fun. Nevertheless, if you find yourself in a situation where a player comes up with something that is Awesome, you should try to look at existing rules to figure out how they should be allowed to do it. For instance, I let a player use some grappled troll skeletons (who were also immobilized due to a failure on their controllers' part to plan ahead) as stepping stones to get across a party member's Black Tentacles spell, provided she made the jump checks to leap from one to the other. The rules don't normally allow you to do that with creatures, but it just seemed like the right thing to do. She got her tactical advantage, but she still had to operate within a framework of rules to get there.

[Wrex]

If you could induce the bees to swarm and sting the hell out of one of those bottles they use to take snake venom, you could by all means get bee venom. The stats for monstrous bee venom would work. Charging him 1/6th dose as per the vermin training rules (For dsitillation and bottling), and he has his toxic brew.

As far as nerve gas goes, remind him that the purity of elements is suspect even under lab conditions. Do you seriously expect to have the correct concentration of chemicals to whip up a nerve gas? Poison making rules, taking the stats of Sarin from d20 modern would work just fine, particularly given the high cost of the materials.

Creativity supplies answers, but you need the rules to make em work. Breaking the dudes arm would require a pin. If his character is good enough to pull that off, his grapple modifer shou;d be high enough, no question.

[Jackinthegreen]

Some of it has to do with relatively minor houseruling versus major stuff like working in a whole new subsystem.  The swashbuckler who wants to jump onto a rope and swing with it for enough momentum to jump down and make a single attack charge is a relatively minor houserule that works by stretching the charging and skill rules a bit to make a totally badass maneuver that has regularly been done in the movies.

Adding in subsystems can take a lot of time and effort and that will stop certain things from happening for the campaign.  ToB and psionics are the poster children for this with honorable mention to Tome of Magic and Incarnum.

Perhaps a list or something?
Awesome and easy to work with: Fine.
Not awesome but easy to work with: Might be okay if Not Awesome Thing still has some value.
Awesome but hard to work with: Might be okay if Awesome Thing is worth the trouble.
Not awesome but is hard to work with: Not worth the time, thus a no.

[Unbeliever]

As Bauglir states, the rules provide a baseline, an internal logic if you will (and the better rulesets have more transparent and flexible internal lgoics, d20 is actually quite good on this). 

The weird thing is that for the examples stated in the OP there really are rules for most of them.  There are extensive rules for coating your weapons with various venoms.  I'd probably explain to the player that this is a heroic fantasy game -- frost giants are not notoriously concerned about the average bee sting given that they have skin tougher than iron.  It lacks in the awesomeness department.  And, allergies are both a level of granularity that the game isn't going to capture and also fail in the heroic fantasy department as well.  But, you're more than welcome to have your family raise GIANT bees and wasps and whatever, too -- I'm sure there are stats on that venom somewhere.  And, frankly, I don't care what poison stats you use, so long as they are balanced for the given level of the campaign and you commit some character resources (feats, skill ranks, gold) to doing it. 

The same is true about arm locks:  there's grapple rules, so maybe it's just a pin and a possible readied action to do damage if someone tries to break out.  There's not going to be the instant "you can't use your arm!" thing that the player seems to want b/c this is D&D -- it's a milieu where people take spears to the gut without slowing down.  And, so on ... it's a fantasy environment, chemistry doesn't really exist, and even if it did it'd be at best a stinking cloud or cloudkill style effect.

My overall assessment, though, is that what's behind all these shenanigans is that they want something for nothing.  There are perfectly good rules, or easily extrapolated good rules for all these things.  And, that's good b/c the rules structure reality.  Nerve gas is going to be something like cloudkill, bee poison is going to be a poison like any other, see the rules on poison.  Back in 1E and 2E with fewer rules, the DM or adventure writer would have to wing these things.  And, the whole reality of the game world felt thin by comparison.  You had some boulders doing 3d10 damage and you had other, seemingly smaller boulders, doing "instant death" damage.  That sort of thing. 

I'm fine with creativity, and would like to promote more of it (I happen to be a huge fan of dropping things on people, take that Iron Kingdoms!).  But, it needs to fit within the reality structured by the rules.  There's a lot of rules to D&D, and their internal logic is sufficiently clear that you can usually wing it if you're of a mind to. 

Anyone who thinks otherwise is either being disingenuous or incapable of a little of rules-based creativity.


P.S.: wow, I just glanced at that page the OP linked to, and the level of smug grognard-esque superiority is nauseating to me.  And, I say that as a non-MMO-playing semi-grognard myself ...

[Arturick]

That original link is definitely to a realm of psychosis.  I did find the notion of rules existing as opposition to creativity interesting, not true though, and figured I'd discuss the concept with mostly sane people on this board.

For many of my examples, I know that there are rules to simulate generally the effect that the players wanted.  All too often though, they wanted a specific effect that wasn't in the rules or "something for nothing."  One player wanted a chance to knock down an enemy with his blow since he was swinging high.  The PC did not have any feats to represent this.  The broken shoulder guy was not content with pinning and doing damage.  He wanted to specifically break the guy's shoulder and render his arm useless.

The nature of the hit point system really inclines me to remember that my character lives in a world that does NOT function like our own, or I try to avoid "this would work on Earth" arguments that stray outside the territory covered by the rules.

[Cannotthink]

At first, I felt my heart sinking in my chest reading those threads. They soon became quite mesmeric; making me wonder what, if any, point of any value they have to bring up.

These may be gross generalizations and assumptions of opinions on that forum. But their thought seems to boil down to a few things.
-"The wizard/fighter disparity is not a problem, I just bar the wizard from using spells and give the fighter magic items"
-"The wizard/fighter disparity is not a problem; I just roleplay my fighters as extremely smart, observant, charismatic fellows that are able to think and or talk their way out of any situation irregardless of their INT/WIS/CHA"
-"Higher level characters must be grounded in reality, unless magic because fantasy"
-"Creativity means pulling things out of your ass, not pulling items off of a list"
-"The fighter can be fixed by moar numberz"
-"I'm right about the rules because that's how I do it in my campaigns"

On the topic of 'using grease on a rogue to help him through a tight space' as being creative solution to a simple problem.

Right - because it wouldn't be possible for the character to have access to that kind of knowledge. On the other hand, rubbing goose grease on the rogue's jerkin would be viable within the context of the campaign setting, even though its not necessarily codified someplace.

Obviously a wizard has no access to the knowledge that his spell that makes things slippery would make a thing (rogue) slippery.

It's frustrating to see people attempt to disregard what a system explicitly allows for the sake of 'creativity'. Creativity is using a system to reach a solution using not so obvious steps. If the system allows you to do something, go for it. You've figured out how the world works. Attempting to use abilities you don't have is like trying to fix a flat tire with magic irl (hint: it doesn't exist).

As a game about stories, things allowed in D&D should be expanded in a way to include awesome things so long as it has a rule that can easily be manipulated to allow it or is easy to make up a new rule to implement and is fairly balanced to what the character should actually be able to do. If barbarian wants to bend a steel rod into a sculpture. Easy. Strength check, craft check. Dust of Blinding and Choking as secret ingredient in weaponized pie? Easy. Just apply the horribleness to whoever gets pied, cost you some dust. Rogue stabs a guard in the spine to paralyze. No, you don't have death attack. Roll to attack, roll for damage, guard is pissed, roll for initiative.

[Bozwevial]

Holy shit. I saw that thread the day after it had been started and it had 14 pages. Now it has over a hundred.

On the topic of 'using grease on a rogue to help him through a tight space' as being creative solution to a simple problem.

Right - because it wouldn't be possible for the character to have access to that kind of knowledge. On the other hand, rubbing goose grease on the rogue's jerkin would be viable within the context of the campaign setting, even though its not necessarily codified someplace.

Obviously a wizard has no access to the knowledge that his spell that makes things slippery would make a thing (rogue) slippery.

I had to go look for this because it sounded too preposterous for words, and it turns out I was right. He's actually talking about MacGuyvering an explosive.

[Unbeliever]

^ +1, that sort of blew my mind.  I mean, your rogue, who exists in a universe where magic is common, has been walking around 3 feet from a guy who spews magic on a daily basis, and presumably knows the definition of the word "grease" (which has existed on Earth since at least the ancient Greeks) can't put 2 and 2 together? 

And, this is sad b/c odds are said rogue is actually reasonably intelligent, unlike the kind of cheating fighter who has an Int of 8 but is played like Sun Tzu and Machiavelli's lovechild.

[Unbeliever]

...
For many of my examples, I know that there are rules to simulate generally the effect that the players wanted.  All too often though, they wanted a specific effect that wasn't in the rules or "something for nothing."  One player wanted a chance to knock down an enemy with his blow since he was swinging high.  The PC did not have any feats to represent this.  The broken shoulder guy was not content with pinning and doing damage.  He wanted to specifically break the guy's shoulder and render his arm useless.

The nature of the hit point system really inclines me to remember that my character lives in a world that does NOT function like our own, or I try to avoid "this would work on Earth" arguments that stray outside the territory covered by the rules.

Hit points are their own weird animal, which is a sacrifice to make the game playable at a heroic fantasy level.  I played a lot of GURPS way back in the day.  It's a much more "realistic" system, by which I mean more granular at this level.  And, one of the results is it's very difficult to play a character who gets into a lot of scrapes.  Combat will be much more infrequent and people will have incentive to play a sneakier kind of game than leaping into the fray. 

Anyone who wants that kind of "realism" is going to have to find another game.  This is well-known.  Or, they will have to [gasp] use the system.  Not every yokel who has picked up a sword can disarm someone with any skill (though I can readily see the argument that a heroic character should be able to, but that's my own bitching about the way combat maneuvers are handled in 3.5).  If someone wants to be good at "aiming high" or "going for critical shots" then they need to find mechanics to do that, e.g., Knockback, Trip, Improved Critical, Sneak Attack. 

[Arturick]

Originally Posted by Arturick 
. . . and your party was trapped in a room exitable only by a narrow chimney. If your Wizard casts Grease on the Rogue to boost his Escape Artist check and the party shoved him through the chimney, I would consider that a creative way to solve the problem that stayed inside the rules as written. If you wanted to try something that you saw on MacGuyver, utilizing an understanding of physics or chemistry that your character shouldn't even have (even if it wasn't BS like MacGuyver blowing open a door with one bullet worth of gun powder and activating the detonator in a way that wasn't physically possible), then I wouldn't give you much credit for creativity.

Then you'd be a totally crapsack referee.

Okay, yeah...  I'm done with that discussion.

"If your party wants to MacGuyver an explosive, or ram a chicken through adamantine, or purify uranium, you just assign them a chance to do it, even if it's miniscule."

Even if it isn't possible within the rules or any conception of reality...

But even assuming it's possible, how am I supposed to know what the damn chance is?  Do I just point to a d20 and state that there is a 5% chance of doing anything?

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Isn't MacGuyver-ing an explosive like -festing Minor Creation

 

[Halinn]

But even assuming it's possible, how am I supposed to know what the damn chance is?  Do I just point to a d20 and state that there is a 5% chance of doing anything?

"Sure, it's broken and stupid, but tell ya what, if you can roll a 12 on a d20, 10 times in a row, I'll let you do it."

[Arturick]

Apparently this http://agc.deskslave.org/comic_viewer.html?goNumber=43

Would be better than just having a rule that let's a rogue check for traps with a die roll.

[radionausea]

 

Oh my god, again?

[dipolartech]

what brings on that comment Radion?

[Arturick]

radionausea is upset that optimization-phobic grognardia keeps becoming a conversational topic.

[dipolartech]

Hehe, thats a great turn of phrase Arturick, "For GROGNARDIA!!!111!!11!"


also thanks for reminding me about AGC, I read the archives and then forgot about it awhile back. To be honest though, If i was that DM and i had players who insisted on pulling out those (admittedly ingenious) methods of trap detection I'd probably make them agree to combat fatigue rules, because spending countless rooms in "bomb squad" mode should have circumstantial repercussions in actually dealing with fighting. Just to balance out the mental anguish of having to listen to them repeat infinitely the same routine.

I also thought the illusion thing was idiotic, given that later story-lines has the DM laying down house rules and banning items.... so why didn't he just house rule the illusion rule?

Personally I fall on the "creativity" side, because as a DM I can find rules that produce a bounded norm of outcomes for physical activities and eventually spells just get to say "Pew Pew Reality! I R MAGIC". So why not let people be creative? Arbitrate the situation write it your house rules notebook as an example and move on.

[Prime32]

Trust Me, I'm An Expert:  I am not a chemist, nor am I a master of the martial arts.  Now, people who claim to be experts in these fields have entered my campaigns and said, "Yeah, this mixture will kill everyone in the room," or "I put him in an arm bar and I'll break his shoulder if he struggles."  I can either say, "Yeah, it's not in the rules," or I can argue.  The argument will consist of me not knowing much about chemistry and not having any logical reason to say you can't make nerve gas in Faerun, or me getting beat up by a testosterone monster with a black belt in Kempo.  Alternately, I can now decide that no-save kill effects are available in Faerun and we now have rules for broken shoulders in a hit point based system.

Erm... even without taking "the laws of physics are different" into account, how would the characters know these things? They're represented by Craft (alchemy) and BAB/Improved Grapple/etc. That makes about as much sense as a player bringing a gun to the gaming session and having his character shoot the monsters with it.

[veekie]

Yeah ultimately it just falls into one of the following:
OOC knowledge is IC knowledge - Your character does not know, nor has access to the means of knowing modern chemistry and physics(alchemy is similar, but not the same). He can even in character, be a super genius with Int of 30, but the basic thing with an Int 30 dude with no background of any technology at all, is that he'd be inventing the wheel, not a neurotoxin.

Abstraction override - You are overriding the abstraction of the rule system to achieve a result you couldn't have within the abstraction. The usual arguments for this is called shots(I hit him in the head with enough damage to break rock, he must be dead), poison(RL poisons being not really resistible save for specific antivenin and potency relative to target volume) or physics(achieving relativistic or supersonic velocities using in game mechanics and then switching to physics to spawn the effect).
The usual flaw is that the game is balanced on the abstractions, and these abstractions already cover the effect you are attempting.
Mr Bee Stings for example, should have been using Profession/Survival checks to obtain a cash quantity of bee poison raw material, followed by a Craft(Poison/Alchemy) check to refine, stabilize(note that natural organic poisons tend to degenerate rapidly in air) and concentrate it into poison of a quality with an appropriate cash value. Yes, it means you take ages to refine a dose for poison of any potency, and you probably really should hire an NPC to do the extracting for you to save time, thats the weakness of craft rules here.
Incidentally, some of these are baseless. like the assumption that headshots kill. The skull is one of the toughest part of the human body, and the body can keep going for a while without the head in a number of species. And if it did hit the head, you have a lot of directions where a headshot deals superficial damage(through the cheeks would blow out your teeth, but isn't going to kill you) to the brain, AND finally when you hit the brain...it turns out the brain can't feel pain, and a good chunk of it is expendable, as far as immediate combat goes.


Rules don't cover this (well) - Really happens more in 'strict' systems like D&D, which go to the extent of having highly specific rules simulating each circumstance. In 'loose' systems like FATE, Exalted, etc, you can almost always find a relevant attribute combination to resolve any roll with. In D&D, you'd have to make something up.
Social rules in D&D are one such example. In one extreme, using diplomacy skills as they can be used to compel results(diplomancers basically), this leads to absurd outcomes as additional factors are not considered in the argument. In the other, the player uses his real social skills to directly compel an outcome from the NPC based on what is reasonable(I'd admit to doing this sometimes myself) or is unable to muster a compelling argument however well he rolls.