(TFT) You would never have thought of that

[Stan <srydzews@ix.netcom.com>]

[regarding Thorn's message]

To an extent, it hinges on when do you say, "you would never have thought of that" to some scheme of the players'.  Surely just because the player can rattle off the formula for some compound doesn't mean his character can suddenly 'make' it.  But is any innovation, even a purely abstract one such as interest, beyond the capability of a character?  These are things that someone, somewhere, thought of.  But the characters can't?

Well yes largely I feel they can't, or more accurately, they *shouldn't*.  Whenever the player is acting on an idea, the significance of which would likely not be apparent to the character, something is probably askew.  

But regardless, to the players it's simply annoying to have ideas thwarted either by fiat ("you can't think of that") or caprice.  And if the plan makes sense, sometimes there's little other way to thwart it--particularly when the game's background has not followed through on the implications of what its rules state.  Either things are not as the rules say, or yeah, maybe there really should be people with a chain of blacksnake ranches.  So why aren't there?  

I think the real issue here is that the GM and the players have to come to some, likely unspoken, agreement on these matters, on what level of 'innovation' is reasonable.  If the players are constantly proposing plans and the GM is constantly saying, "you may not think of that", then most likely the players are not happy.  And yeah, the GM runs the show and all that, but at some level the GM has to accomodate his players or they will leave.  
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