How Can I Encourage Imagination?
I see a lot of DMs and gamers who try to get precision and reality into their games. "How exactly big is this hex", "How long to steep the potion before extracting it" etc. This got me to thinking...
I watch my grandaughters play. They don't care. If they think it, they do it. I've seen those Barbies and toy cars and Ponies and Petshop Pets do some pretty tripped out things. (interspersed with a lot of drama, naturally.)
I've wondered why some people focus on the ultra real, the simulationist approach versus the gamist approach. I've always wanted to, as DMs and player, encourage one other to "imagine, then play" versus "measure, measure, cut... "?
I had a guy try really hard to fight with me on reddit about my three hexes campaign starters thing. He was all worked up because I didn't have a precise 6 mile scale on my maps, because I *gasp* didn't center things on the hexes or had them on the borders, and just on and on. He got really insulting about it all, and even more so when I told him my response was basically ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It made me feel bad for this guy, because he was so stuck on "the roolz" as he sees it, he couldn't allow for someone else to do something in a non-structured way. But that's not the only example I see of this.
I get the rules and I support rules as frameworks for figuring out resolutions to actions. But I wonder what it is that prevents some people from just letting themselves be childlike and just imagine it first, then make it so. I see people get really tied up in knots before taking that first step of just imagining what you want. I saw a post somewhere - "how long do non-lethal poisons take and how do they work?" Now, I get wanting to mimic something from real life, but my first thought was "What do you want it to do? Go make it happen! We can pretend! We can make this stuff up!"
I do that a lot with my games I run. It would probably drive some people nuts - that my NPCs do crazy stuff that doesn't read perfectly as-is from the rules. I make shit up, grounded in the game, but also imagined and jacked up. I use the rules as a platform to start from. A player or two has grokked into that, and they come up with some crazy stuff too, but for the most part, even though we're old school gamers who are supposed to think versus read a character sheet, I still see patterns of play and approaches that borders on what I see encouraged by many rules systems today... do all the things on the char sheet, versus a give and take with a rules platform and open-minded referee/players.
So how do I encourage that childlike imagination at my tabletop?
I think I'm going to start asking my granddaughters for DM'ing help. "Hey, I want this wizard to be able to do XYZ... how do you think that works?"
What do YOU think? If you feel like you're good at getting that sort of imagination going, how do you do that?
I've wondered why some people focus on the ultra real, the simulationist approach versus the gamist approach. I've always wanted to, as DMs and player, encourage one other to "imagine, then play" versus "measure, measure, cut... "?
I had a guy try really hard to fight with me on reddit about my three hexes campaign starters thing. He was all worked up because I didn't have a precise 6 mile scale on my maps, because I *gasp* didn't center things on the hexes or had them on the borders, and just on and on. He got really insulting about it all, and even more so when I told him my response was basically ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It made me feel bad for this guy, because he was so stuck on "the roolz" as he sees it, he couldn't allow for someone else to do something in a non-structured way. But that's not the only example I see of this.
I get the rules and I support rules as frameworks for figuring out resolutions to actions. But I wonder what it is that prevents some people from just letting themselves be childlike and just imagine it first, then make it so. I see people get really tied up in knots before taking that first step of just imagining what you want. I saw a post somewhere - "how long do non-lethal poisons take and how do they work?" Now, I get wanting to mimic something from real life, but my first thought was "What do you want it to do? Go make it happen! We can pretend! We can make this stuff up!"
So how do I encourage that childlike imagination at my tabletop?
I think I'm going to start asking my granddaughters for DM'ing help. "Hey, I want this wizard to be able to do XYZ... how do you think that works?"
What do YOU think? If you feel like you're good at getting that sort of imagination going, how do you do that?
There was a time when I loved a crunchy game because I saw the boundaries as encouraging creativity. How do I pull something off within the limits presented? Not so much munchkining numbers, but looking for ways to do Cool Stuff (tm) and make it count.
ReplyDeleteI still do a good deal of that, both as a GM and player, but I go for lighter rules now. I try to encourage imagination by taking a page from cinematic games like Feng Shui, I describe what I'm doing. Even if I'm playing D&D I rarely just say, "I swing at the orc." I try for, "I pivot and drop under the orc's guard."
And sometimes if my players do something I particularly like I may give them a little bonus for a cool description. It seems to help get them in the right mindset.
What kind of bonus? To what happens or to XP?
DeleteI've been trying to do that, or to ask players "How does that look?" and "How did it fail/succeed?"
In D&D I'd give a +1 to hit or damage for a creative attack, but not both. And I don't do it every time, just as the mood hits me. My players have been with me a long time and they don't expect the bonuses, which also helps. Then it becomes something they do because they like doing it, not because they expect the bennie.
DeleteOne thing I have made standard is that I give bonuses for searching for secret doors if a player gets specific. For example, "I search the room" is standard chances. "I focus on that alcove" would be a +1. "I got to the bookshelf near the shifted carpet and pull every book," would be +2. I want to encourage the players to interact with the environment more.
That's a pretty good approach. Did you communicate the possibility of bonuses to the players, to encourage that behavior?
DeleteFor the secret door searches, that's something I told them up front. Including why I was doing it. As a side note, now when I design dungeons I rarely put secret doors in hallways. I find that they are more likely to interact with rooms. Sometimes I'll still put one in a hallway in such a way that if they're looking at their map they'll see a spot where a room could be. But anything smaller will be hidden in a room and not a hall.
DeleteFor the other bonuses? That actually just started on the fly. I liked what one of my players described and just decided to give them a bonus. I don't really hang a lantern on that one.
I feel like a lot of storytelling games try to encourage this, and how well it works depends on both the Storyteller and the players. But trying to do free-form play in most versions of D&D, or trying to do rule-centric hack-and-slash in something like Halberd, is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Part of the former is due to the brand recognition of D&D, but I think it's best to play a game the way it's best suited to be played. (Original D&D and its clones are loose enough to support free-form, but most other versions I'm familiar with aren't.)
ReplyDeleteI play my AD&D a lot like OD&D, which is probably why I call it "AD&D-lite".
DeleteI don't know that I'm in the same vein as the more story-centric games, but I know that I definitely like spinning stories out of what the dice and player actions are telling me. You've played in a couple of my games, what do you think?
I'd tend to agree, especially since the one I played in was based on S&W WhiteBox. ;)
DeleteWell, there's the old saw from improv theater about saying "Yes, and?" instead of "No" when a player comes up with some kind of cockamamie scheme. You get more of what you reward. I think some other old school luminary said you never say flat out now, you either say yes or ask for a dice roll. That's super basic, I guess, but I think part of the trick for loosening players up is to demonstrate that the rules aren't gonna snap back that hard if they want to try bending them. Of course it's a problem if you go too far the other way. Gotta be loose enough to be fluid without being so loose the game collapses into mush.
ReplyDeleteThey've definitely come up with some crazy ideas and have found themselves in really fun situations. I love that kind of thing.
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