Do Limitations Improve Creativity? (re: Character Creation)

[Boethius Junior]

Though rather new to this forum, as an active poster at least, I have been running games of various systems for the better part of my life. Something that I have always been curious about, especially regarding RPGs that include vast arrays of options at character creation, is whether such a voluminous quantity of content actually improves or rather stifles creativity. Certainly, offering a great deal of mechanical pieces allows for the production of varied character sheets - that is not exactly what I mean. What I wonder is whether or not the depth of development for said character is hampered by the weight of dice-related accoutrements.

I have a dim background in acting, and what my more experienced peers would tell me was that embodying who you are represents a more substantial challenge than merely memorizing a set of lines. Despite how obvious this advice was, bear with me. It was always followed by requests to "act beyond the script"; to be your character without the aide of the writer's dialogue. If you can accomplish that, and be true to what was written, you are that much closer to delivering a grand performance.

I feel the same is true to roleplaying games, which are themselves merely another form of acting. I have not played too great a deal of Pathfinder, but I believe games such as that are not doing their players any good service with their methodology. I.E. to not only facilitate, but also encourage, good roleplaying the system should employ some degree of scope: a lens by which the player can enter their character in meaningful ways. I personally do not believe that an excess of feats, spells, and special abilities accomplish this - worse still is the catalogue of races.

These are often donned and subsequently shed like coats: an outer covering that does little to inform the character's mindset. This is mostly critically a result of what I consider a lack of cultural grounding: why does the dwarf drink so much? Why do the elves live in trees? Why is the orc so hateful? etc. Internal consistency and causation are the lifeblood of any living world - it must abide its own rules in a manner that makes enough sense that one does not lose suspension of disbelief. The antics each race exhibits should not be a laundry-list of inexplicable idiosyncrasies, but rather the surface representation of an ingrained cultural practice. The same is clearly true for our own world, so why should the fantastical be any different?

At this point though, I am rambling. I would be very interested to hear anyone else's thoughts on the matter.

[Red Fel]

First, let me address your actual question: Do limitations improve creativity?

The answer is: They kind of have to. Let me explain.

Say you have to build a mousetrap. That's fine. Piece of wood, metal spring, bit more metal, cheese. Done. Now, say you have to do it again, but without metal. That's trickier, but you can do it. The more limitations I place on your mousetrap, the more creative you have to get to accomplish it.

Now, if I placed limitations on the outcome, instead of the means (e.g. build a mousetrap, but one which calculates 20 digits of pi rather than catching mice) that's not necessarily something you can solve with creativity. But if the limitations are on means, that just means that you have to be more creative about how you get to the goal.

Second, let me address the point you appear to be making in your post: Do more rules on character generation make the resultant roleplay worse?

The answer is: Mu. Let me explain.

I want to play Theodore McStabbington, a swordsman from an impoverished family with a tragic past and an optimistic attitude. One system, rules-light, allows me to play him based entirely upon the description I just gave you. Another system, crunch-heavy, requires me to jump through several hoops at character generation to establish his background, reputation, skillset, flaws, and abilities.

In both systems, I am still playing Theodore McStabbington, a swordsman from an impoverished family with a tragic past and an optimistic attitude.

The level of rules, or hurdles to jump through, or mechanics to comprehend in order to play the character - none of that is relevant to my ability to roleplay him. The mechanics of a system are not supposed to be "a lens by which the player can enter their character in meaningful ways," they are meant to be a structure by which the character's actions can be measured mechanically, as needed.

To put it another way: The fact that one system gives Dwarves a +2 to this and another gives them a -2 to that does not have any impact on how I play a Dwarf, or how I visualize and realize my character. Those differences only serve to facilitate challenged mechanical interactions. It's the setting - the non-mechanical, fluffy explanation of the world and its inhabitants - that influences the lens through which a character is viewed. Not the crunch, the fluff.

At least, that's my perspective.

[Willie the Duck]

It is going to depend on the person, but also on what you mean by limitations.

At this point though, I am rambling. I would be very interested to hear anyone else's thoughts on the matter.

And that's going to be the biggest problem, because I don't think you know quite what you want to ask, nor do we (such that we can answer it).

I will say, in general, if the GM were to say, 'I am creating a game called, "multiverse amalgamated" where you can be anyone (or anyones) from anywhen, doing anything, now who do you want to play?' -- they would get some blank stares and probably someone saying, 'um, could you at least give us some context, or at least perhaps some scale? So on some level, constraints in this regard are positive. Or at least can be used as a framework for building a character conception upon.

However, you seem to be talking at least a little about quantity of rules material. And terms like, "voluminous quantity of content," and, "the weight of dice-related accoutrements," means it sounds like you are wondering about level of crunchiness or rules lite vs. rules heavy. I will say that, despite my own best efforts, if a character can be defined by a list of dozens upon dozens of numbers (skill modifiers, stat points, resource management boxes, and the like), the less likely I am to focus on their innumerate qualities. However, I've also found nearly numberless systems like Dramasystem, or storygames in general, don't automatically make for more open and acting-like play experiences. There doesn't seem to be a natural best model for any of these, except to find the system and level of each kind of detail which resonates with you and your group.

[Erloas]

I think the two are mostly unrelated, roleplay and mechanics.
I think what the wide range of mechanics do is give a false sense of character. "I've picked these skills, that makes me unique." But so often people pick the best skills\races\spells\feats and build a character around that, rather than the other way around.
So I think you're right in so far as: if all fighters had the same skills\abilities then players would have to differentiate their characters through roleplay.
Here especially you're also not as likely to see characterful choices over mechanical ones. Or at very least when it does happen it gets no attention.

[Thrawn4]

Say you have to build a mousetrap. That's fine. Piece of wood, metal spring, bit more metal, cheese. Done. Now, say you have to do it again, but without metal. That's trickier, but you can do it. The more limitations I place on your mousetrap, the more creative you have to get to accomplish it.

That's an interesting example. However, wouldn't a more diverse pool of tools and materials also encourage creativity? Maybe a self-cleaning mousetrap, or one that gives me a signal once a mouse was caught.

But I really like your statement about the limitations of the outcome and McStabbington, and would just like to add a little something:
Limitations on the outcome can curb creativtiy if they don't leave room for creativity (e. g. if I want to play McStabbington but the fighting style I envision is not available during the lower levels/beginning of the campaign).
Which is not always bad if it helps with the consistency of the setting (no anime fighting in realistic settings).

[JoeJ]

I will say, in general, if the GM were to say, 'I am creating a game called, "multiverse amalgamated" where you can be anyone (or anyones) from anywhen, doing anything, now who do you want to play?' -- they would get some blank stares and probably someone saying, 'um, could you at least give us some context, or at least perhaps some scale? So on some level, constraints in this regard are positive. Or at least can be used as a framework for building a character conception upon.

Yeah, too many options can inhibit creativity through "analysis paralysis" but I think the threshold for this will be different for different people, and probably for the same person at different times.

[Max_Killjoy]

Do Limitations Improve Creativity?

No.

They simply redirect creativity to dealing with the limitation, taking it from elsewhere.

The notion that they do, is used as a cheap rhetorical excuse.

[Boethius Junior]

snip

Sure, I believe that to be an entirely valid perspective to have. One that I would not disagree with, even.

To continue my line of thought with your own examples: Theodore McStabbington, Esquire. The difference between rules-light and rules-heavy is not precisely the metric I was considering. I grant that in both cases the Sir was created true to form, though the latter does provide more structural foundation through which his person might be realized. Consider instead if the goal is not to create one particular character, but rather to create a character at all: you are now presented with an extensive array of mechanical components from which you might select. The jumble itself is what I feel to be unhelpful - the means, as you put it, when divorced from the world in-game.

In totality the jumble is nothing but potentially useful sprockets lacking any guide; as you say trying to assemble a mousetrap from random bits, but without knowing you are supposed to be building a mousetrap at all! Now as I continue to my first thought would be simply to ensure that a setting is always present - do not assemble without the instructions, as it were. However I cannot claim much fondness for the pre-constructed settings offered by many RPGs, becuase of the aforementioned lack of any cultural practices/causation that has been explored.

I still feel as though I am running in circles, desperately attempting to find the proper stance. I imagine the essential thrust of my argument would be thusly: for the betterment of his own game, a GM should not allow all materials to be available. They should decide what is appropriate, and provide a structured world for their players wherein their characters shall exist in a manner that is not facile.

Of course most GMs do this already and I would like to determine exactly why this seems so proper and whether or not the companies/creators of games should follow suite.

snip

I have always found that I can better realize my own thoughts by discussing them, so this will be beneficial to me no matter what the end result is. I do not require a solution per se; merely the chance to air my brain is sufficient.

Re: "multiverse amalgamated" - I think that is what games such as Pathfinder are effectively offering their players with their content. My intention was not to be hyperbolic, rather to stress just how much material is available for theoretically any game. I do not believe that the Pathfinder Society disallows much of anything from their library. I find your appraisal of rules-light vs rules-heavy to be accurate and agree wholeheartedly with the need for balance.

snip

I would be hesitant to agree that mechanics and roleplaying are distinct from one another, as the games themselves have rules by which interpersonal interactions are governed, e.g. the famous Diplomacy skill. Now - what I find you have said that agree with absolutely is the assumption of that mechanics are equated with character. Consider that some players are want to build "builds" rather than a person. I am of the opinion that a wealth of options inevitably incentivizes that sort of gameplay.

[Hackulator]

There are a few ways to look at this question

1 - It depends on the person.

Let's take a player who always wants to play the same build and character. You know, that guy who is always the rogue with the same attitude, or the TO wizard. By putting restrictions against those builds, you can force that player into more creativity. However, a player who is already super creative and makes all sort of weird characters and none are ever very similar will not necessarily have a more creative outcome than they would normally have. This example can be expanded for less ad nauseum examples and still retain its validity.

2 - It depends on what you mean by creativity.

If you are more concerned with the process of creation but the outcome is somewhat fixed, the answer is usually yes. For example, let's say you were running a game in a strange environment that the characters needed to be able to survive as part of their creation. There might be a simple spell or magical item that would bypass this issue, but you ban it, forcing the players to come up with more creative ways of doing what was needed. If the players then all went and made their characters separately you'd probably have various bunch of different methods for overcoming the obstacle you had placed in front of them, as opposed to everyone just having the same magic item. However the outcome, that being the obstacle is overcome, is generally similar in all situations.

3 - It depends on the limitation.

Excluding old ideas and forcing people to come up with new ideas always fosters creativity. However, simple restrictions may in fact reduce creativity, as it denies certain avenues that a person might have explored. For example, if you have a brand new player, and you ban wizards, that reduces their chance for creativity, as wizards are one of the most versatile classes and allow for many creative options. It is very important to note that creativity and originality are not the same thing, as a person can be super creative and come up with something on their own that someone else previously came up with independently.

[Boethius Junior]

No.

They simply redirect creativity to dealing with the limitation, taking it from elsewhere.

The notion that they do, is used as a cheap rhetorical excuse.

Your assertion seems rather vague to me - what do you mean when you say creativity is "redirected"? That does not necessarily mean that it is unimproved, as I assert, or reduced as you seem to hold. Chuck Jones offers a convincing argument for the necessity of limitation in the matter of imagination. The possibilities provided by cartoons are just as endless as those of the imagined RPG-world: where anything can happen (or could be made) the stakes are lifted as a consequence.

snip

This here is another very good take, and I agree with all three of your points. I would be curious to know how you feel about the matter of "analysis paralysis" as coined by JoeJ, and whether or not any game would benefit from mitigating this concern.

[DeTess]

I think it also depends on how someone develops their character. If they start with the mechanics, and then create the 'character' around the mechanics available for character creation, limitations would encourage creativity, as they'd encourage you to make this thief/fighter/wizard different than the other thiefs/fighters/wizards which would all mechanically be fairly similar.

On the other hand, if someone starts by envisioning a character and then try to make the mechanics fit, I think limited mechanics stifle creativity. If I decided on playing a street-urchin that had to steal to survive, but who grew up in a magical-university town, learning basic magic tricks to help them survive, and the system then tells me I have to choose between begin a wizard, a fighter or a thief and the first one has no thief-related skills, and the latter two have no magic, I'd feel like the system is limiting what I try to do.

Edit: The inverse of the first case is probably true too. Someone starting with the mechanics in a very diverse system like 3.5 would probably be inclined to simply have the fluff of their character match and combine the fluff of their chosen pieces, rather than coming up with something really unique to themselves.

[Darth Ultron]

Well, I'm on the side that mechanics and role playing are separate. The too huge box of mechanical things does hurt character creation in many cases. And finally role playing limitations do improve creativity.

So....

1.Mechanics and role playing...is a mess in any game. While some just role play freely, maybe players like to have mechanical effects for character things. So if a character is 'funny', they want a +1 to rolls telling jokes and some ability to make NPCs laugh. Assuming the game even has abilities like that; but even if they do you get the hard limit of abilities. A character can only have so many abilities, and the +1 to laughs is a poor choice next too ''double range with weapons'' if the game will have even some combat.

2.The box of stuff can be too big...even more so for new players. Players can get lost in the hundreds of choices.

3.Finally role playing limitations improve creativity by the simple fact that they narrow and focus it. With no limits a character can just be role played as anything anytime.

[Knaight]

I've generally found that more focused concepts are generally more interesting, though that's less a matter of limitations and more a matter of structure. In terms of system breadth that seems to show up at both ends. Really generic systems tend to be used selectively as toolkits, where some small part of them is taken for a focused concept. Focused systems remain focused because that's their nature. It's the ones in between, broad but not so broad that it's trivially obvious to use only a selection that tend to end up dull because of their openness.

[Spore]

It is yes and no for me.

It does limit when there is fluff married to the crunch, like in Pathfinder. Don't get me wrong, the fluff added by some classes is very welcome if you do not have a specific idea in mind. Playing a draconic sorcerer with claws and scales and whatnot is very cool. But what if you just want the Bloodline Arcana for your blaster build?

Suddenly your Orc//Dragon Wildblood feels VERY munchkin even though blasting is not even that OP a concept. (Yes my sorcerer can blast a hole in the castle wall. Compare that to a wizard of the same level that can easily fly over the walls invisibly, rescue the princess and vanish without even so much as triggering an encounter.)

But limitations does not hamper creativity when it comes to interacting with the world. There is a strong orc tribe serving a dragon out there in the setting. Suddenly your little blaster sorcerer feels much more integrated in the world instead of being a weird little snowflake (that yes, adventurers are, but they should still be somewhat connected to the world).

Thirdly, this one was mostly from a post apocalyptic RPG but my character's story was coming of age really so it would apply to many character concepts. Your character should not start out with the best gear, and ideal starting location and the perfect background. If your character wants to become a healer/doctor but the circumstances forced you to steal to survive, to collect scrap to feed your siblings (until the various adventuring background reasons come along and kick off your game) then that character has room for growth. If your character wants to be a healer and starts off the game as a cleric of first level, most of the journey is already done.

This is like starting off a romantic comedy with the small town hunk already dating the incredibly busy city manager woman. It takes out all the tension, the "how will that work out?" There is still story to be had, but it is not much anymore. And imho in that regard levelless RPG systems have a distinct advantage. If your crunch telegraphs a few sorcerer levels in due time, it is not so much "will my paladin be able to master the eldritch arts of arcane magic" but rather puts your DM on a clock to provide story reasons for that class. In a system like WoD or WH 40k, your character picks up the relevant skill when it makes sense in character. You dont suddenly learn how to cast chaos magic out of the blue, you are not suddenly extremely good at grappling for no apparent reason (other than taking a level in rogue).

[Satinavian]

These are often donned and subsequently shed like coats: an outer covering that does little to inform the character's mindset. This is mostly critically a result of what I consider a lack of cultural grounding: why does the dwarf drink so much? Why do the elves live in trees? Why is the orc so hateful? etc. Internal consistency and causation are the lifeblood of any living world - it must abide its own rules in a manner that makes enough sense that one does not lose suspension of disbelief. The antics each race exhibits should not be a laundry-list of inexplicable idiosyncrasies, but rather the surface representation of an ingrained cultural practice. The same is clearly true for our own world, so why should the fantastical be any different?

D&D in its various incarnation always treated this stuff as part of worldbuilding not as part of the rulesystem.

That is why it doesn't really provide that outside of setting supplements. And even those tend to be shallow kitchen sinks severely lacking in this regard (Yes, there are a few exceptions).
The DM is suppossed to do this work. Making a world, choosing which of the races to use, providing them with cultures and backgrounds.

There are many many other systems that go a different route and are often closely married to some special campaign world with detailed description, where you get all of the above.

The thing is, weather this background exists or not has little to do with how many moving pieces you have for character creation or with how complex the rule system is.

[Max_Killjoy]

It is yes and no for me.

It does limit when there is fluff married to the crunch, like in Pathfinder. Don't get me wrong, the fluff added by some classes is very welcome if you do not have a specific idea in mind. Playing a draconic sorcerer with claws and scales and whatnot is very cool. But what if you just want the Bloodline Arcana for your blaster build?

Suddenly your Orc//Dragon Wildblood feels VERY munchkin even though blasting is not even that OP a concept. (Yes my sorcerer can blast a hole in the castle wall. Compare that to a wizard of the same level that can easily fly over the walls invisibly, rescue the princess and vanish without even so much as triggering an encounter.)

But limitations does not hamper creativity when it comes to interacting with the world. There is a strong orc tribe serving a dragon out there in the setting. Suddenly your little blaster sorcerer feels much more integrated in the world instead of being a weird little snowflake (that yes, adventurers are, but they should still be somewhat connected to the world).

Thirdly, this one was mostly from a post apocalyptic RPG but my character's story was coming of age really so it would apply to many character concepts. Your character should not start out with the best gear, and ideal starting location and the perfect background. If your character wants to become a healer/doctor but the circumstances forced you to steal to survive, to collect scrap to feed your siblings (until the various adventuring background reasons come along and kick off your game) then that character has room for growth. If your character wants to be a healer and starts off the game as a cleric of first level, most of the journey is already done.

This is like starting off a romantic comedy with the small town hunk already dating the incredibly busy city manager woman. It takes out all the tension, the "how will that work out?" There is still story to be had, but it is not much anymore. And imho in that regard levelless RPG systems have a distinct advantage. If your crunch telegraphs a few sorcerer levels in due time, it is not so much "will my paladin be able to master the eldritch arts of arcane magic" but rather puts your DM on a clock to provide story reasons for that class. In a system like WoD or WH 40k, your character picks up the relevant skill when it makes sense in character. You dont suddenly learn how to cast chaos magic out of the blue, you are not suddenly extremely good at grappling for no apparent reason (other than taking a level in rogue).

Indeed, there are a lot of systems that don't fall into the D&D-like "zero to superhero" progression, that don't do steep fundamental change, and frankly it's a relief that not every system is set up this way. HERO for example has a very "gentle" slope on progression unless the GM is giving away XP like candy -- the characters start out as who they are, and most progression is building on that, rounding out, or expanding horizontally, rather than a ton of vertical "growth". (Say a superheroic character starts out at 300 points -- typical XP would be 3-6 XP per session. A more "mundane" character in a non-superheroic game would be maybe 100 at most, and XP maybe a touch less per session.)

Personally, the whole "hero's journey" or "coming of age" thing means very little to me, and it's not what I want out of an RPG. Characters and their "arcs" and relationships and so on matter, but that particular arc leaves me utterly uninspired, always has, in gaming and in fiction. I'm far more interested in playing the character who's done the training, grown up, has a family, or whatever, and is there to get the job done, not to "discover himself".

And that's one of the "limitations" that I don't think inspires creativity at all -- a system with progression (and the attached if unspoken assumptions) like D&D severely restricts the sorts of characters that can be created. One can pretend that one's first level fighter is a grizzled veteran, but the numbers on the page simply don't agree when they're largely the same as a callow youth fresh off the farm... who's a natural fighter with some training from his mysterious neighbor.


Even when I'm writing, the protagonists are almost never raw green youths, and their stories are almost never "coming of age" or "the hero's journey" or "self-discovery" stories.

[Max_Killjoy]

D&D in its various incarnation always treated this stuff as part of worldbuilding not as part of the rulesystem.

That is why it doesn't really provide that outside of setting supplements. And even those tend to be shallow kitchen sinks severely lacking in this regard (Yes, there are a few exceptions).

The DM is suppossed to do this work. Making a world, choosing which of the races to use, providing them with cultures and backgrounds.

There are many many other systems that go a different route and are often closely married to some special campaign world with detailed description, where you get all of the above.

The thing is, weather this background exists or not has little to do with how many moving pieces you have for character creation or with how complex the rule system is.

Problem is, D&D is built on a lot of unspoken presumptions before the DM "does any of that work", presumptions about the setting, and about characters and their "arcs" -- it does "D&D worlds" well, and "D&D arcs" well, and is otherwise more like trying to hammer a screw, or cram a square peg in a round hole.

That is, D&D is also closely married to a certain kind of setting without ever saying so... and more than a few gamers have unwittingly absorbed all those unspoken assumptions, if for no other reason than that they haven't been exposed to a broad selection of systems that either state the setting presumptions clearly or really don't have setting presumptions.

[zlefin]

My recollection is yes; iirc Mark Rosewater said that alot in the Magic design articles.

[Quertus]

So, I created Quertus, my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named, from several seeds, the primary (or primarily discussed) one is that I was baffled how humans could do something (like, say, play a boardgame or D&D) for years or decades and still be utterly clueless. So I reverse-engineered a set of conditions I considered most likely to produce that effect in a character, and, in the process, happened to create a Wizard that I enjoy playing, and who tops the charts for character others enjoy me playing / request that I play.

So, what's my takeaway? I suppose, like many others, I see them being mostly unrelated.

Now, if the rules were utterly complex and arcane, and because my sanflagism wasn't at lest half the square of my kjbay8asd, my spells used obscure side effects table WMNG17, invalidating my backstory, then the rules could get in the way of creating the character.

Similarly, if surviving reduced oxygen to be a "mountain climber" required 20 feats, so it was impossible for my character to have grown up "in the mountains", then the mechanics once again get in the way of the concept.

Otherwise, meh. They're generally independent.

Except... headspace is finite. Time from "let's make a game about X" and playing X is also finite. In that regard, "creating a character, not just a playing piece" may be better served by not having to learn more rules - which is why every game should be D&D, and creating other roleplaying games, forcing people to waste headspace learning new rules, is a hindrance to roleplaying. Bad RPG designers, hindering roleplaying that way! (color blue to taste)

[Pleh]

How about rephrasing the statement?

Limitations provide impetus to overcome the limits presented.

Removing limitations isn't actually inhibiting a person's creativity, but it does remove one source of motivation to put forward the effort to think creatively.

Necessity IS the mother of invention, but it's not the exclusive driving force.

People who are inspired to create without these limits will feel rules to be imposing and stifling. People who are having trouble generating their own inspiration can use limitations to break through the writer's block.

[Thrudd]

Creativity is only useful when directed toward an end. You need context for your creation. In an RPG, players are usually meant to be creating a group of characters that will be working together, or at least connected to each other, in a specific setting. So they need to be limited in the sense that they need to know the setting, they need to know what type of roles they're supposed to be playing in the setting. They need to know what sort of activity the characters are expected to participate in. These are all limitations.
Does it force you to be more creative in a literal sense? not particularly. But it gives you a productive place to go with your creativity.

Most games are better with a coherent setting and an explicit role for the characters. Whether you figure that out collaboratively with the players as they come up with ideas for their characters, and create the setting afterwards, or you design the setting in-full and give them the info for character building, it has to happen. It is rare, I think, that a GM comes without any idea of the setting and completely allows the players to dictate the style of game based on their individual, disparate character ideas. One comes with a telepathic android with ultra-tech from the 23rd century, another has a dinosaur riding elf in medieval armor that wields a magic lance, a third has a werewolf/vampire hybrid constantly struggling with self-loathing/rage issues, and the last is a cat girl with a katana who speaks in anime-isms and has cutesy magic powers. Actually, that sounds like too many games of "Rifts" from back in the day. Which isn't a good thing. The point is, unless it's a comedy game, and often even then, you need a more focused setting or nobody will really be happy.

[Hackulator]

This here is another very good take, and I agree with all three of your points. I would be curious to know how you feel about the matter of "analysis paralysis" as coined by JoeJ, and whether or not any game would benefit from mitigating this concern.

Well that's just another instance of "it depends on the person" and in order to know if your game would benefit from trying to mitigate this, you need to know your players quite well. Personally I often end up building multiple characters and then picking one, so for me this is generally not a problem but someone who suffers to the extent they can't even get started it could be.

[King of Nowhere]

The way I see it, the number crunching and the roleplaying experience are two different games. two games that go together, true, but separate enough that one has little influence on the other.

So, more choices of races and classes and feats have no real impact on roleplaying. At least, no more than I want it to have. I can play a dwarf and play it like any other human, because there's no reason dwarves shouldn't have individual personalities. When I DM, I try to give consistent motivations to characters who are important enough to explore, and that's regardless of number crunch.

[Satinavian]

That is, D&D is also closely married to a certain kind of setting without ever saying so... and more than a few gamers have unwittingly absorbed all those unspoken assumptions, if for no other reason than that they haven't been exposed to a broad selection of systems that either state the setting presumptions clearly or really don't have setting presumptions.

Meh, in my country D&D was never actually big.

There are ideas floating around which can be traced to our most common fantasy system but as that one is closyly married to a specific setting, most gamers are more aware of the fact that those should not be assumed to be valid elsewhere.

[Yora]

Limitations are details. And once you have details, the easier it gets to come up with more.

[Frozen_Feet]

From a computational perspective, limitations are creativity. If you have a block of marble, all statues that can fit in its volume potentially exist in that space. It's only by virtue of being able to imagine one specific statue and chisel out what's unnecessary that you get anything done.

Similarly, all playable characters are expressible as strings of characters (that's "words" for the semantically challenged). Anyone could create any character if they could randomly smash at their keyboard for long enough.

In practice, this isn't usefull. In practice, we are instead concerned with two limited spaces of creative potential: the number of characters a player can think up in a limited time, versus the number of characters expressible in a game system.

When these two overlap poorly, the player is left unsatisfied. Either the player's ideas are not expressible in the system, or the ideas of the system are too opaque to the player.

Now, increasing expressive ability of a system is often fairly trivial, because steps of character creation are multiplicative. For example, if a system has choice of two sexes and three classes, those multiply to give six possible characters. However, adding new categories requires defining and adding new steps of character creation, while adding new options increases time to go through a step. So the more characters we want to express in a system, the higher requirements of memory and processing speed will be for the player. In practice, character creation will end up taking more time.

So, we end with a couple of antagonistic effects. On one hand, we want the system to cover characters thinkable to the player, on another we don't want character creation getting too complex and bloated. There's a likely sweetspot here based on limits of human work memory.

For highly expressive systems, you want to do away with player creative agency alltogether and both randomize and automate the character creation process. This isn't a joke. With a fast computer and a decent algorithm, your players will get more characters they want to play faster by just repeatedly clicking "create random character" and they will be more varied than what the players would come up themselves.

[Satinavian]

For highly expressive systems, you want to do away with player creative agency alltogether and both randomize and automate the character creation process. This isn't a joke. With a fast computer and a decent algorithm, your players will get more characters they want to play faster by just repeatedly clicking "create random character" and they will be more varied than what the players would come up themselves.

Why would a Player want to have many charaters instead of one he really likes ? I don't think you have your priorities right. Character building is already a part of engaging with the character and the world. You don't want to optimize that a way.

Most people hate playing with premades. Because those are not their very own handcrafted character born from maybe hours of trying to put numbers to an inspiration.

[Max_Killjoy]

Why would a Player want to have many charaters instead of one he really likes ? I don't think you have your priorities right. Character building is already a part of engaging with the character and the world. You don't want to optimize that a way.

Most people hate playing with premades. Because those are not their very own handcrafted character born from maybe hours of trying to put numbers to an inspiration.

I'm thinking there must be some very blase and unpicky players out there if they're getting more characters they like out of a randomizer than out of a deliberate creation process.

Plus what does "varied" have to do with it?

[DaOldeWolf]

I really think context is important when these limitations come to place. Speaking from personal experience here, I think it depends on how these limitations are framed when they are set and what kind of implications they give. To add a bit of perspective to what I mean, let me put a few examples:

Spoiler: Example 1

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The DM sets the following rule:
-No psionics because they are OP.

It is not setting related. It doesnt really give me anything extra to think about except not to consider psionics.

Spoiler: Example 2

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The DM has set the following rules:
-Only core classes
-Only core races.
-Only core rulebook material

This is a case where something has been so much overdone and the material at our disposal has been experimented so much that it just doesnt feel fresh. Playing set after set after set of this is going to eventually get boring.

Spoiler: Example 3

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The DM has set the following rule:
- You can only play humans

Info related to the setting: the setting involves the extinction of all of the other races and the humans going into the past to prevent this event from happening.

Sure, I can only play humans but there is a reason behind this that should make me think about my character´s motives. Why is he helping? How does he plan to bring something to the table on this expedition? What makes him an asset?

Spoiler: Example 4

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The DM has set the following rules:
-Your character has to gain a level in bard in the following levels (1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19).
-No full spell casting clases.

Info of the setting: You are a band of musicians travelling the world. Magic is pretty rare in the setting since its pretty recent development.

I can work with this. It gives an impression on how magic is being treated in this world. What kind of stuff I should expect. Even if we are all playing bards, we could play different types of bards, take different feats, make different builds. The builds could even be related to the kind of instrument we play.

I am not saying that DMs should have explicit setting reasons for each little thing that is banned but just banning stuff isnt going to make my mind fly wild.

[Koo Rehtorb]

I don't think they improve creativity. But they also don't hinder it.

But, I do think some people are lazy/incompetent and substitute mechanical creativity for character creativity.