Imagination is an Endless River

Our most memorable TTRPG sessions are driven by two factors: creative flow and table sync.

Creative flow is the exchange of imaginative contributions from the table. It describes the willingness and ability of an individual and table to contribute to the shared fiction. Table sync describes how aligned players are to the fiction and each other's imaginative contributions.

When creative flow and table sync are strong, they create magical sessions with play that feels effortless and impactful stories. What happens in the absence of these factors?

Those games...aren't that fun. The less said about them, the better.

Most sessions we play are in between the extreme highs and lows. We encounter blockage and misalignment in some aspects of play, and flow and alignment in other aspects. System influences creative flow and table sync, but there are human factors that can influence this as well.

Today I'm tackling creative flow and how to deal with creative blockages. What do you do when a player has a hard time responding to prompts in play or contributing imaginatively?

Imagination is a muscle, and folks who play a lot of TTRPGs are used to flexing and stretching those muscles. But muscles can be fatigued no matter how big they are. And some players don't feel confident with these muscles in the first place!

Let's talk about each of these situations and how to unblock players in each situation.

Lack of Creative Confidence

This hits newer players hard—they’re not sure if their ideas fit, or they worry they’ll derail things.

"What if I imagine wrong?" is a very real fear and one that is not restricted to newer players. I can't tell you the number of times I've been told by an experienced player that their old GM would never let them establish details about the world that weren't directly tied to their character. When I offer it, such players have welcomed the opportunity but found themselves at a loss in this strange new world where their contribution was being encouraged and expected to drive the game.

Unblocking these players first requires establishing a table culture where contribution is encouraged (to the limits of player comfort, always). "We want your ideas at the table" is something that should be modeled and repeated as often as necessary.

The next step is to break down the creative asks with leading questions. Instead of "tell me about your character's past", presuppose some detail and re-focus your question. "Why is your character having some difficulty with the law?" makes an assumption, but provides a foothold for the player to begin their creative climb. In my experience it takes between 1-5 of these questions to get a player flowing.

Creative Fatigue

Imagination takes energy.

It's easy to forget until you have a really long workday, or find yourself dealing with intense personal matters or even if you just had an intense scene 5 minutes ago in the game. Then someone asks you "how are you responding to this?" and your mind goes blank.

Creative fatigue is the most common thief of creative flow.

What I do to circumnavigate creative fatigue is to pitch an idea with full editorial control: "I have a thought -can I share it and you decide if it works or what changes to make?"

This works because when you're fatigued it's easier to revise and work with material in front of you rather than create your own material from whole cloth. Offering an idea and explicitly offering a player the ability to do anything with it--including nothing--helps people cross their creative chasms when they come up. Even if they reject your idea completely in favor of something else, the process of saying "nope" to your idea helped them move towards an idea when a few minutes ago they had nothing!

This is really important: only offer when people are blocked and at a loss for what to do. Don't try to play in their imaginative space when they are flowing and cooking with ideas! That makes the pitch assistance and not an interruption, which keeps it welcome an pleasant.

The Ideas Must Flow

Any TTRPG session I am facilitating includes a high level of imaginative contribution. I'm in love with the strange and beautiful ideas that come out of player's minds. These are my go-to techniques for ensuring those ideas keep flowing. I hope you find them helpful, and I'm always eager to hear what techniques you use!