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Managing creativity
Jul. 21st, 2005 12:36 pmThis is a thought engendered by some recent discussions over on 20x20. I probably should have posted it there but I’m not sure I wanted to share it with a potentially wider audience and because my ideas are ill formed. What I really need is some better idea about that toolbox of craft I like to talk about, an endeavor that I’m just not in a position to explore.
Creativity is generally viewed as an individual pursuit, and of course, it can be, but groups can produce things which one person can hardly imagine. Cathedrals, good schools, parks, medicines and computers all result from group or “collective” creativity. Plays, exhibitions and concerts are enabled by individual creativity, but they are made manifest by the creativity of a group. A well-conducted orchestra produces music more thrilling than the sum of the individual skills of its musicians.
Collective creativity is what roleplaying is all about. And the rules and systems and social contracts we develop is all about managing that creativity. All of these seek to make this creativity process more productive, more congenial, and especially more fun. Of course what we mean by those three terms is set by the individuals, and the group, involved.
A lot of what we do is designed to maintain balance between competing ideas and forces that erupt from this collaboration that is forged in our gaming.
So for me, to answer questions that have been asked about narrative control and gamemastering style the search is for the right tools to do the job. To tell the particular story in a way that works best in a group. This is one of the reasons I dislike attempts to shoehorn gamemastering styles into a duality (a problem I have with the Forge is their love of dualities) or on some 2d continuum. Gamemastering style is truly about what tools you reach for and how you use them and I think any good gamemaster is going to be using different tools and trying them out in new ways.
The trap here, and its one I feel folks fall into a lot, is that we confuse cleverness of our craft with true creativity. Not that gaming is alone there, I think most of literature, movies and comics are so obsessed with the clever that they don’t know what’s creative and what isn’t anymore.
Better tools for managing our creativity, that’s the challenge awaiting our hobby. And it’s a challenge I’ve been enjoying meeting for some time now, keeps everything fresh.
Creativity is generally viewed as an individual pursuit, and of course, it can be, but groups can produce things which one person can hardly imagine. Cathedrals, good schools, parks, medicines and computers all result from group or “collective” creativity. Plays, exhibitions and concerts are enabled by individual creativity, but they are made manifest by the creativity of a group. A well-conducted orchestra produces music more thrilling than the sum of the individual skills of its musicians.
Collective creativity is what roleplaying is all about. And the rules and systems and social contracts we develop is all about managing that creativity. All of these seek to make this creativity process more productive, more congenial, and especially more fun. Of course what we mean by those three terms is set by the individuals, and the group, involved.
A lot of what we do is designed to maintain balance between competing ideas and forces that erupt from this collaboration that is forged in our gaming.
So for me, to answer questions that have been asked about narrative control and gamemastering style the search is for the right tools to do the job. To tell the particular story in a way that works best in a group. This is one of the reasons I dislike attempts to shoehorn gamemastering styles into a duality (a problem I have with the Forge is their love of dualities) or on some 2d continuum. Gamemastering style is truly about what tools you reach for and how you use them and I think any good gamemaster is going to be using different tools and trying them out in new ways.
The trap here, and its one I feel folks fall into a lot, is that we confuse cleverness of our craft with true creativity. Not that gaming is alone there, I think most of literature, movies and comics are so obsessed with the clever that they don’t know what’s creative and what isn’t anymore.
Better tools for managing our creativity, that’s the challenge awaiting our hobby. And it’s a challenge I’ve been enjoying meeting for some time now, keeps everything fresh.
