How can I encourage a good role-player to be more creative?

Question

I'm currently GMing for a new group of people, and I have introduced them to a new rule that I've had success with before. The rule basically states that if you give a cool or interesting description of what you wish to do, and then succeed on an ability check, you can gain some sort of bonus to your subsequent dice roll.

Usually this gives very satisfying and fun results:

Me: How do you wish to attack your opponent?

P1: I jump off the balcony and swing in the chandelier, then try to land on the head of my foe blade-first!

Me: Sure! Roll Acrobatics.

P1: (Rolls 18)

Me: Success! Add +2 to your attack roll against this enemy.

However, with this new group there is one player that, in both my and other player's opinions, give very uncreative and bland descriptions:

Me: How do you wish to attack your opponent?

P2: I stab him with my shortsword!

Me: Okay, do you wish to do this in a special way? I'll give you [bonus] for doing it creatively!

P2: Okay, I... stab him between his plates!

Me: That's good but how do you stab him between his plates? Go crazy!

P2: I stab him between his plates in a weak spot in his stomach!

Me: ...

We have just ended our 4th session with this group so there has definitely been enough time for the player to "pick up" on what other players usually do. Me and other players have also tried our best to railroad them into doing creative things by saying things like

P1: Hey, the enemy is standing on top of an ancient shaky (hint hint) pillar, maybe if you can push it over they would take extra damage (expectantly looks at 'Force Push').

P2: Yeah! I use the pillar to do extra damage! (No extra description).

I usually end up giving them the bonus anyways because I don't want to silence their attempt (I've had some people not even try), but every time I can see the disgruntled faces of other players that try really hard to analyse surroundings to create that "epic moment" in every fight.

The problem here isn't that the player is shy or doesn't like role-playing; in fact they are excellent and really do their best when it comes to immersion (always speak in 1st person, remembers everyone's names and titles, takes notes of places, tries to talk it through instead of fight etc.) they are just not very creative, at all (not just combat, but things like conversations too).

In summary:

• Players are encouraged to be creative to obtain bonuses.
• This player is not very creative and gets sad when they don't get bonuses because they are not creative enough.
• Other players get annoyed when this player gets bonuses even though he is not very creative.

How can I encourage this player to be more creative? What resources can I use?

OR

How can I change my approach to this "rule of cool" to be more inclusive of everyone?

Answer 1

"How can I change my approach to this "rule of cool" to be more inclusive of everyone?"

I may not necessarily be speaking for your player, but I can speak from experience as a very good roleplayer who is very into immersive play, and also into creative play, that this is a style of creative play that I would not enjoy, and your whole question reads to me like you have a very presumptive attitude about what creativity means and what is "cool".

It feels not very "inclusive", as you say, of people who are direct, or who don't feel excessive flashy combat tricks are cool or fun. (Personally, I find such things tend to break my ability to immerse in the situation or engage it in a serious way.) It sounds very contrived, like you want me to think of some fake flashy thing that probably doesn't make real sense, in order to get a bonus, and that if I don't do that, you think I'm not creative and I'm not playing right. I imagine you'd want me to pretend to mirror your opinion that this is cool and fun.

Personally, I think it may be hopeless in my case - this looks like a diametrically opposed play style preference. (Edit: To be clear, I mean maybe hopeless for me to want to play in such a game, not necessarily for your player, whom you should talk to more about the issue.) However, I do know a couple of strategies that could possibly save things:

First, you could find out what style and rules the player would enjoy, and then adapt your play style and mechanics to be compatible with what the player says they would like.

So to use myself as an example, I love engaging tactical combat systems, but I want them to make sense to me. Some clever (or just good) tactics would actually be effective, for good logical reasons - I want a good combat game about tactical situations, where you get bonuses for doing things that you could practically do in the situation, and that would tend to work well.

Not just a player thinking of something creative to say about how stylish their attack method is, based on just their imagination. Approaches such as trying acrobatic chandelier swings, would probably only work in just the right circumstances, and require a lot of talent, and be risky. I'd want the characters who can pull off such flashy moves and actually have them be effective, to have those abilities listed on their sheets, and pay whatever game currency it takes to get them.

If I want my character to instead be a sensible, direct, competent no-nonsense tactician, I'd like to be able to put game currency into those traits and use that style. My character won't be doing acrobatics, but will be cautiously checking for threats from all directions, taking cover, moving to avoid being ganged up on, maneuvering carefully, making expert attacks, dropping off the foes' radar while my comrades distract them with flashy nonsense so I can show up behind them and take them out with no-nonsense attacks to their weak points from behind, etc.

Or maybe your player's PC's style is totally not flashy but just very direct and no-nonsense, but very very good at that. That's a style all its own. It stands out in contrast to a crowd of attention-seeking acrobats trying to be flashy all the time. Give him a bonus UNLESS he tries something special or flashy.

That is, it can be possible to find out what your players' ideas are about what makes sense and would be enjoyable, and try to adjust your mechanics for that.

Another approach that can work for some players, is to let them just play mechanically.

Some players can enjoy playing games amongst people with very different play styles, by just showing up and playing their own way. I have had players who I was really worried were not having fun because they hardly participated much at all except in response to stimuli, and making mechanical moves. But when I talked to them after the game, I found out they were having an extremely good time, and would not want it any other way. Or at least, this was their place on their path, and perhaps after being allowed to enjoy this style of play, they would branch out creatively in their own ways later.

So, as always, talk to the player, but also let go of your pre-conceived notions and see if you can find a common ground where you all are happy with the way the game is played.

Answer 2

In my group, we call this "cinematic narration", and that's the term I will use here.

When we have an issue in my group where a player is having trouble describing their actions cinematically, the first thing we do is ask them to describe how it would look in a movie. If I am understanding the problem, that is what you want the players to do.

My first actionable piece of advice is to change how you are asking your characters to describe their actions. Instead of "But how?", ask them "What does that look like?"

When that fails, or the player is having difficulty, the GM will ask the same sorts of questions you did, and will then do the cinematic narration of the action before the roll (or after, system dependent). At first this is a best effort action. As it continues with future actions, the GM intentionally makes the narration bad, to encourage the player to correct the description to be more to their liking - training the player.

My second actionable piece of advice is to show, not tell. Show the player how it can be done, not tell the player to do it.

If that doesn't work... is it really ruining the game to let one of the players declare vanilla actions? It is very likely that the game is still very fun for everyone even if one player is more vanilla than the others.

Answer 3

Consider using the Stunt rules from Exalted

Exalted is a system that intends to, among other things, emulate the style of wuxia martial arts fiction. One of the ways they do this is by implementing Stunts: mechanical bonuses for adding extra description to a character's actions. They have three levels:

Level 1 stunts simply require a non-boring description of the action within the fiction beyond "I hit them with my sword" or "I try to convince them to let us through the gate", and grant a bonus to the roll.

Level 2 stunts require a description that integrates the some element of the scenery into the action, and provide a larger bonus or allow the PC to recharge a limited resource (in Exalted, it can give you a point back to your Willpower pool, which is a pool of points you can spend to activate powers or gain certain effects).

Level 3 stunts require the whole table to go "that was really awesome", and give both an even bigger dice bonus as well as the recharging effect.

One thing to note is that Stunts incentivize risky behavior by removing a risk of failure - if you want to swing on the chandelier to attack someone, you don't need to worry about failing to jump onto the chandelier, it just happens.