One of the best examples of "freedom is imagination" is in Dungeon Crawl Classics. Let's say your level 4 rogue goes to an alien world and finds a green energy flamethrower that does 3d6 in cone or 6d6 to a single target, with a low roll, meaning bouncing the flame back into your face, hitting allies, bringing down the roof, setting the whole room on fire, or it breaking down.
I made that weapon up. It is a silly one-shot fantastic piece of alien tech I made up in my head.
And it is not in the rules, which is the critical point.
DCC encourages you to use your imagination and makeup magic treasure, monsters, traps, settings, weapons, NPCs, and adventures - and just go wild making everything up! They give you a few sample monsters and magic items, and if you read the modules, you will get flooded by custom monsters, magic items, gear, environmental conditions, NPCs, spells, patrons, and all sorts of strange and wonderful stuff. No module honestly re-uses monsters.
My green flamethrower weapon? Same idea. It is something I made up and is probably the rogue's new favorite weapon and toy, and will probably serve the rogue well as long as he or she still is alive to use the weapon.
Does it unbalance the game?
Yes!
But think about this, in the next game, that weapon doesn't exist.
So I do not really care.
When you play a new module, everything in the other modules doesn't exist (unless a character survived one and carried something from it forward). Anything in those modules that breaks the campaign does not break the base game.
The base game is untouched by all the silly ideas you or module writers can come up with. The reset button gets pressed, and the next group of heroes goes into the world and finds all sorts of crazy loot while that may be "campaign-breaking" stuff, it won't last beyond that game, and the base rules will still be untouched for the next time.
But a lot of games have this assumption, "if it is in one module or adventure, it is canon!"
With DCC and MCC, really only the base books are canon - if you can call them that. They are starting points, and they both make a point of only including a few examples of monsters, magic items, technological devices, and other items - and while they give you a lot, the entire focus of the game is the DIY craziness of your own imagination. If what you create is unbalanced, it won't affect the next game, and you are free to use GM Fiat to break it, make it run out of charges, make low rolls hurt, or have it fall down an infinitely bottomless pit of doom. Most of the time, just leave it be and live with it.
So you broke your game, so what?
That is the amount the freedom the game gives you.
5E
Compare this to 5E.
Don't you dare break Wizard's game!
I exaggerate a little, but you get the point. There is this fear and feeling anything that goes into 5E must be balanced, and it must be put on some "equipment list" for use in the future and anyone else's game. If it is a 3rd party "thing," then some players won't even add it to their game - only official books, please! Please don't mess up my game!
This feels like the complete opposite tone and feeling of DCC and MCC. You are supposed to play "game designer" in these games and make most everything up. You should invent crazy skull-headed laser wands with death rays that can bounce around corners and back into the wielder's face. Mind control helmets. Rings of acid skin. Monsters that are giant tongues with legs. Floating eyeballs with freeze rays. Insta death traps. Is it balanced? Who cares?
The less exhaustive lists and giant bestiaries a game gives you, the more freedom you have. There is a sweet spot of including enough types of different things to give you rough parameters, but there is a point where a game stops being a game, and it becomes a "game of lists" that shackles your creativity.
In B/X or D&D, why do I need to imagine a custom "magic aegis of bird control" sword when that "sword, +2" on the magic item list will do just fine? Lists can also turn your game into a buffet of bland choices and remove any creative input you would have had into the game.
Huge lists? Less freedom.
Since I only play OGL versions of 5E, this feeling affects me a lot less since everything in my game is fantastic. There are players who do not play with anything 3rd party, so there is that feeling in the community.
Low Fantasy Gaming
Low Fantasy Gaming does a little of this DIY stuff with the "every 3 levels" class features where players can invent class powers, and also in the "exploit system" where a damaging hit can add a special effect the player gets to invent. It does all this in the 5E framework, which is frankly astonishing, and it also maintains numeric compatibility with the base game.
LFG also tosses out a bunch of 5E rules the game does not need and tells you to make it up if the rule doesn't exist. It puts trust and "game designer hats" on the referee and players. It is less crazy and gonzo than DCC or MCC, so it sticks closer to realism and believability.
Low Fantasy also does not feel brave enough in "dark and dangerous magic," with most magical corruption effects having a duration and permanent effects being terrible rolls. It feels like a "stater game" when it comes to permanently changing player characters, where DCC and MCC are thrilled to have a wizard grow horns and his skin turn green - permanently. There still is that 5E style of "player protection" in LFG, compared to the "it is okay to toss your character sheet in the shredder" DCC and MCC games.
Having a game go out of its way to protect players is also a loss of freedom.
That aside, I still feel LFG is the most interesting 5E clone out there, and I like it slightly better than Level Up 5E since this game makes an effort to bring OSR concepts into a 5E framework. One could argue that OSR concepts do not need all these "minigame frameworks," and that is a valid point, but the amount of 5E rules tossed in the bin by LFG gives me a new perspective on the 5E engine and how good it could be if stripped down and fine-tuned.
You are Not Your Character
This is also why "seeing yourself in the game" and "playing a version of yourself" is dangerous, and back in the day, we were always warned not to do this. These days, I feel companies are pushing games with identity marketing and making it impossible for a character to die - because I feel they are very irresponsibly pushing the idea that "the players are the characters." Back in the day, we were told this was damaging psychologically, and in a game where bad things could happen to characters, this was something you did not do.
Players should never be characters or self-insert into the game, ever.
And yes, a game that encourages you to "be in the game" also reduces your freedom since there will be "safety rails" built into the rules, and your character options and choices will be limited or more focused on either human or pop-culture-centered lineage choices. And I feel this is also a very irresponsible method of retention and marketing that (in my feeling) could damage players' mental health.
Games of Imagination
Going back to Dungeon Crawl Classics (and also MCC), I have a soft spot for this game. This isn't D&D fantasy, nor is it an "early 1980s D&D simulator." There was this specific subgenre for roleplaying in the late 1970s and 1980s that embraced the culture of black-light felt paintings, painted vans, disco sucks 1970s rock culture, the drug subculture, underground 1970s comix, the hippie culture, adult comedy records like Richard Pryor and George Carlin, CB culture, and a lot of the significant underground subcultures of the 1970s that found their way into roleplaying games.
The culture was a middle finger to big corporations, the military-industrial complex, government, organized religion, the sycophant media, and popular entertainment - TV, radio, mainstream comics, and movie studios (Disney too, who were notoriously litigant against underground comics). Pop culture and pop music was trash. Video games were not a huge cultural thing. If you don't know anything about this culture, take some time and learn about it - this was a fantastic period of culture that brought us so many of the classic songs, movies, and TV shows we love today.
People that made these comix and underground culture were arrested, sued, and jailed.
And the stories and tales - the actual Appendix N stuff - were freaky, out there, and wild, man! This wasn't even like today's anime which, for the most part, has high artistic merit and technical skill - but is still primarily either corporate or a higher form of art. I love anime, but it was nothing like Appendix N source material and the "Hippy and Freak Culture" of the 1970s. The underground was very anti-authoritarian, and yes, this would also be anti-big publisher games from billion-dollar companies.
And this culture emphasizes the individual and creativity.
A lot of the social conformity of this era would be frowned upon.
You are you.
And you - that cool, fun, unique person in the mirror, however you choose to be - are remarkable. And a massive part of this is "making stuff up." Because the stuff you dream up is just as cool too.
Unlike other games where you feel looked down upon for adding your creativity, DCC and MCC require your creativity, celebrate it, encourage it, and make it a part of the game. Players get to imagine, too, as creative and imaginative play is critical for success and pushing those dice up the chain.
Creativity is not storytelling in a tightly-controlled rules system, as 5E would have you believe. Creativity is opening the door to you - the players and referee - to create rules, monsters, magic items, spells, worlds, classes, weapons, and anything else you can imagine in your game.
You get to put on the game designer's hat, too.
And the game doesn't handcuff you by giving you giant lists of "stuff" to clog up your imagination and subconsciously tell you "the game's designers are better than you." Again, I exaggerate, but the feeling is there when a game gives you "too much." You will never use everything in the book, so why should you create anything of your own? The characters are simple, so players are not staring at their skill lists with tunnel vision.
Does the game you play discourage you from adding your creativity to the game? Are your contributions seen as "homebrew" or "house rules?" Do you feel to have fun, you need to follow the rules exactly as written?
Or do you want a game that opens that book of creativity in your mind and tells you to "think outside the book?"
