This is a continuation of a previous article on why we disagree about Role vs Roll and what we can learn from it https://c22system.com/design-insight/2ochsp6560a5obe87p7w0ndcgbvk1r. In the last post I talked about engagement and the flow state, then discussed two broad skills we as roleplayers use during tabletop roleplaying games; Roleplaying Skill and System Mastery, and their influence on that flow state. Today we will look at the other two aspects that should complete our understanding.
Creativity and What it Does
How do we enjoy a system that does not meet our system mastery needs and our roleplaying expression needs? As we get better at roleplaying games, does that doom us to enjoy less and less tabletop roleplaying games? No, because of creativity.
Creativity allows us to create our own challenges or introduce our own variety to a tabletop roleplaying game. The ability to create our own challenges allows us to move along the chart, reaching flow in games and situations that do not challenge us. We can use the excess brain power to creatively expand upon the situations, keeping us entertained and even entertaining others at the table.
These moments where our creativity entertains other players, we are often roleplaying. Since roleplaying moments more often involve other players, we more often see creativity shine alongside roleplaying skill. This creativity helps players of varying roleplaying skills interact while still being engaged. The biggest player in these interactions is the Game Master.
The Game Master
<Body> The Game Master’s creativity can have a large impact in being able to adjust the difficulty for the table’s enjoyment. Just as we discussed in the last post, the GM’s choice in unique factors can vary the difficulty without changing the difficulty of the challenge itself. Additionally, the GM’s creativity can allow a game to exist at different difficulties for different players. For example, a player with less system mastery can rely on their creativity to come up with unique solutions to solve problems. The GM then aids the player’s suggestion with their system mastery and creativity to keep the game flowing. This is not a super secret skill, all GMs do it. Yes that also includes you that one time you GM'd.
Another note, this also manifests itself in system hacks and homebrewing. The creativity you add with your unique homebrews can shift the difficulty of the challenge itself.
So we know that different challenges require different skills to maintain engagement and we have split this into two different skills: Roleplaying Skill, and System Mastery. We know that creativity allows us to stay engaged during games that have a lower difficulty than our skills. We know that the GM’s creativity plays a larger role in adjusting the difficulty to maintain engagement. So, with creativity in the mix, I think we can finally determine why we disagree and how we can find the best games for us.
There is a bit of a stigma that less creative people need complex systems to support them, while more creative people can then enjoy simpler systems because their creativity is less restricted. There is some truth to this stigma, but the correlation is not as strong as you would think. The major contributing factor is the experience a player has with tabletop roleplaying games. The more you play tabletop rpgs, the better you get at them, because you are training your creativity.
According to a paper published by Arne Dietrich in 2004, creativity moments can be aligned along two scales:
Spontaneous and Deliberate
Cognitive and Emotional
Most creative moments align somewhere along both scales, being more Spontaneous than Deliberate and more Cognitive than Emotional, for example. I want to use the extremes here to broaden our understanding of how these types of creativity play different roles in tabletop roleplaying games.
Creative moments that are Spontaneous are classified by being mainly handled by your unconscious. They work best when you are not thinking about something, letting your unconscious do the work, like when you get an epiphany in the shower. I believe this type of creativity is more based on the genetic lottery, so I won’t go into them in this post. The good news is that they are not used as often during tabletop roleplay game sessions. I do not know how many of you are relying on shower epiphanies during your gaming sessions, but they seem very unreliable.
Creative moments that are Deliberate come from the moments you collect a lot of knowledge in your brain and mix and match it to create something new. You could be weighing all the options of what is in a dungeon versus other expectations you would have from 1100th century architecture to create a new option for your team. You could be recalling a mix of emotions that occurred when you were elated to determine how best to react when another character comes back from the dead. I believe these moments make up a vast majority of the creativity seen in roleplaying games, specifically those seen in GM preparation.
I want to focus on the two extremes of Deliberate and Emotional creativity and Deliberate and Cognitive creativity. Deliberate and Emotional creativity comes from feelings and emotions on a subject. It is the feelings and emotions that ignite this creativity. Like when another player’s action resonates with your character and causes you to create something new. You latch onto the feelings you currently have, mix it with the situations you know, and create a new roleplaying moment with the other players. Deliberate and Cognitive creativity comes from understanding the rules and applying them in new or unusual ways. The important part here is that it requires you to understand the rules beforehand and have existing knowledge. It requires time, which is directly proportional to the complexity of the system. More complex systems take more time, but when you are searching for creativity, you have more pieces for your brain to play with.
From our understanding of roleplaying skill and the system mastery it appears that as you develop these skills, you would enjoy roleplaying games less and less, but then how is it we can play such vastly different encounters and systems and still have fun? This is where creativity comes in. As I mentioned before, I believe that our individual creativity can allow us to flex this preferred flow area of complexity.
While the encounter might just be talking to a guard to convince him to let you in a gate, an encounter you have played twenty times before, your creativity allows you to create new aspects to this encounter generating additional enjoyment. You do this by considering all of the rules, then what ways to create something unique to your character, within those rules. In this way, your Cognitive creativity allows you to shift your flow area to a less difficult area of the channel, thus keeping you engaged. Another example: in a highly tactical fight involving another goblin ambush, you decide this time, you are going to try to kill them with a boulder rolling down the hill, you use your knowledge and mastery of the system to add additional challenges to make this less engaging encounter be more engaging for you.
I believe Emotional creativity allows you to flex your flow area higher along the channel as you live in the moment and build off other players, you create based on what you are feeling from the game. You think passionately in the moment and create something new from your anxiety. For example, the guard’s lack of proper equipment is a reportable offense. The guard’s equipment was never mentioned, but now you brought it into the game with your knowledge from outside the game and your feeling in the moment. So, that is the power of creativity, our creative skills allow us to move along the flow channel of our system mastery and roleplaying skills.
Playing tabletop roleplaying games will train both of these types of creativity in different ways but it is their differences that will help us understand why we disagree on Role vs Roll. As we gain more emotional knowledge from interacting with other players, we can increase our Deliberate and Emotional creativity, as we learn the system and interact more with the mechanics, we train our Deliberate and Cognitive creativity.
What That Means for the Argument
<Body> I think that gives us enough to bring it all together and really break down where that disagreement comes from. Players who have only played a few roleplaying games, or have only played a few types of roleplaying games, will rely more on their innate roleplaying skill, System Mastery, and Emotional creative skill, and Cognitive creative skill. So, looking at these types of players individually, we can get a better idea of where they side.
I do not think initial System Mastery and Roleplaying Skill trend toward one game type or the other, I think initial creative skills are the main driving factor. Players with more Emotional creativity, be it Deliberate or Spontaneous, will gravitate more toward “Role” games. This emotional creativity allows these players to be able to roleplay out of situations that have a higher difficulty of system mastery through the interactions with the other players. This then leads to a perception that the “Roll” is not necessary since the “Role” can resolve the issue.
Players with more Cognitive creativity, be it Deliberate or Spontaneous, will gravitate more toward “Roll” games. This cognitive creativity allows these players to be able to explain their way out of more difficult roleplay encounters by using their game knowledge to move the difficulty closer to their roleplaying skill level. This then leads to a perception that the ”Roll” informs the “Role”, thus making it superior.
Do not get me wrong, both of these methods are equally creative and create equally excellent moments in roleplaying games that should only ever be celebrated. But here is where our disagreement lies. Those with differing levels of natural Cognitive or Emotional creativity.
No matter which side you tend to favor, you can learn something from the other side that will improve your preferred type of game. “Role” favored players, the goal of the game rules should be to get out of the way of roleplaying, sure, but try to use those rules to springboard your own creativity and trigger more roleplaying moments. You can continue to push your “Roll” knowledge by trying more and more complex rules or rules combinations. “Roll” favored players, sometimes too many rules can hinder roleplaying, instead embrace adding new things to the encounter without checking to see if a rule supports it. Run with what you decided and build new rules or consequences based on that change. You can continue to push your “Role” knowledge by trying to add more things without needing to confirm they fit the rules exactly.
Rather than fueling the debate, I hope to add methods of understanding because in the end, I just want us to have more fun playing roleplaying games.
Let me know if this aligns with your experiences. If you like what I am doing, or want me to write about something specific, let me know in a comment or by joining my discord. https://discord.gg/P6AnsmTxmK