Does D&D Stifle Player Creativity and Choice?

I love D&D. But does it stifle creative thinking from the players and put too much of the creative impetus on the DM?

Last night, I tried an experiment with my party. We’ve been playing together for a year and a half, and we know (and like!) one another really well. So I wanted to see what kind of dungeon experience they would create for themselves instead of me describing literally every last detail.

I had a set of random traps and obstacles and encounters for them, and I had no specific order for them or even what the dungeon looked like other than it was a cavern that held a mind flayer called The Unknowable One at the end, who liked to breed and experiment on Intellect Devourers.

This was also the second time they’d been in a section of these same caves.

As the party progressed, I asked them “what do you see?” when they went through the halls and into new rooms.

They simply did not understand how to handle this. They kept asking me back, "well, I dunno, what DO I see?" They even repeated some rooms for lack of a better response (though I was able to run with that, and it was fun).

I don’t think that’s the fault of my party. Or of mine. I think it’s a failing of D&D, and its style of RPG.

It is so very prescriptive of how the party progresses, and to be honest, I think it can limit creative thinking.

Edit: I should also say that this isn’t knocking the players at all. They were blindsided by a stark change in the way I asked them to perceive the world versus what D&D trained them for. They did eventually get their heads around it and created some really cool trap rooms for themselves.

I Love D&D

Let me be clear here: I love D&D. As much as I criticize WotC and how they work within the industry, I’ve played D&D for 20 years now, off and on.

We talked about TTRPG systems last night as a group, too, and we are still going to keep playing D&D as our main game, but occasionally try different things.

(Like in two weeks, we’re trying out Starfinder thanks to Paizo sending me some review copies of the Drift Crisis adventure path.)

With that in mind, though, I also want to try to introduce more player agency in the actual environments and world around them. I want to find ways to get them to invest in creating the world.

My first idea is to reward them in some way for interacting with the world in creative ways.

Then, encourage utilizing their surroundings in combat in ways that I don’t illuminate in the narration. I would love to see clever ways of solving puzzles by “seeing this particular thing I need” with a Perception or Investigation check, that sort of thing.

If You Do It, Do It

The main thing I have learned from writing a PbtA game and pushing myself to think about RPGs differently is that player actions should always happen.

In PbtA games like Dungeon World or MASKS is that the rolls aren’t to see if the player performs the action but how well they perform it.

I actually incorporated this last night to a player’s spellcasting. The character, Casmus the Dragonblood Sorcerer, had his hand and arm magicked to a very powerful object that was warded with 9th-level enchantments. He wanted to cast Misty Step and teleport away.

But honestly, that’s too easy to get out of a 9th-level spell’s effect. So I gave him a choice.

He could roll an Arcana skill check to see how well the spell worked. Because D&D is a game where the action happens based on the roll, I let him choose whether or not he cast Misty Step and outlined the following consequences:

• 16+: The spell would be a full success, and he would teleport away safely.

• 10-15: The spell would succeed, but the hand and arm would be severed and remain magicked in place.

• 9 or under: “something worse than that”

Casmus chose to continue. He rolled a 14. The next few minutes of in-game time were spent with him screaming from the trauma of having his arm simply not be there anymore.

Here’s the Twist: The Player is Excited About It

The player loves it. Love it, loves it.

It’s opened up a lot of roleplaying opportunities for him. Because he had the agency to choose the fate of his character instead of the prescriptive nature of the spell.

In my PbtA game that I’m apparently calling 2023b right now, I have a Basic Move that’s just called Use Magic. And because it’s Powered by the Apocalypse, it has this sort of choice built into every time a player casts a spell or taps into the arcane:

Use Magic

Whenever you tap into the arcane or eldritch energies flowing all around you, roll +MAGIC.

• 10+: You successfully harness the forces of magic, achieving your goal and not putting undue stress on yourself or the world around you.

• 7-9: The spell is cast, but choose one of the following:

  • You draw unwelcome attention to yourself or put yourself in danger.

  • You disrupt the fabric of reality with your attunement. Take -1 ongoing to Use Magic until the end of the next Downtime.

• 6-: You can't hold onto the magic and the energy dissipates before it can have any effect. Take -1 ongoing to Use Magic until the end of your next Downtime. 

  • The GM also has the option to use the Put Someone In a Spot if the situation calls for it.

The world is filled with magic. Ley lines run across the surface of the planet, carrying and directing the flow of the arcane. They intersect with one another at special junctions and make it possible for almost anyone to harness the power to some degree if they practice at it.

When you Use Magic, you're not necessarily casting a spell, though that might be the Move's primary use. You could be attuning to a magic item or simply activating its innate powers. 

This Move would also apply when you're investigating something to see if it's magic or what sort of magic is causign a certain effect. You can absolutely Use Magic to Gather Information if you are scrying through a crystal ball or peeking inside someone's mind to glean their thoughts.

Even Nanomages and Technomancers will Use Magic to accomplish some tasks. While technology was certainly created to make people's lives easier, magic can sometimes be the more powerful or efficient way to do something. Why spend the time hooking someone up to a scanner to tell if someone is lying when you can simply cast a spell that makes them only tell the truth?

Regardless of the situation or reason, if you're tapping into the ley energies of the world, Use Magic is the go-to Move.

I am absolutely going to continue incorporating this sort of choice and range of results into my D&D game, even though it’s not built into the system. Not because I like hurting my players, but because I like moving the story forward based on their choices, not the flowchart that’s included at the front of the chapter.

Have you encountered any instances where D&D limited player agency? What did you do to get them back into making the story themselves?

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