Perhaps in hindsight that was not the best RP to choose for this experiment. I was hoping you would explore your freedom more, but it looks like you put a lot of effort into this. I shall not ask you to redo it. So long as you are happy with the character and also realize they would never work in the RP I should be able to do my work. It might take some time, as I'm GMing an RP at a critical time right now. But I'll have something up within a few days.
I put a fair amount of effort into it, I suppose. I'm happy to redo it if you believe I missed something, but I gave myself as much freedom as I could without defying the logical limitation.
@whizzball1 A magical school RP? I see no reason why that wouldn't work. The magic system interests me as well. Now you just have to create a character that you find interesting, creative limitations be damned. Filling out the character sheet would probably be the easiest way to do this.
This should do. Unfortunately, the main limitation is that the description of magic and aeons in the roleplay implies magic can only be descended from one Aeon. If that particular limitation is discarded then the only real limitations are setting and the logical limitation (as I describe in my examinations), which encourage me to make powers that fit with the theme and not just something totally random. Additionally, if the characters didn't need to be human Spectre would be made entirely out of crystal. (Right now he's human but looks crystalline when using his magic.)
Name: Spectre Merivale
Age: 16
Gender: Male
Spectre is eccentric in outfit as well as in person. Fair of skin and bright red of eyes, he doesn't care much about how he looks as long as he always follows the same motif: that of an unkempt, almost-formal businessman. His jacket or coat is never closed and certainly never proper in an office, and his white-collar shirt may as well not have a collar at all except to hold his loose tie. His dress pants tend to be close-fitting and too short, owing to his tall but thin build. His socks only ever match in colour, but his shoes are perfectly neat. You can tell he's around by the satisfying sound of his shoes striking the floor.
His hair is naturally white as snow, but he occasionally makes it look a dark ocean blue with a superficial illusion. One illusion of his, however, is by no means voluntary; when he uses his magic his body takes on a crystalline complexion, once-smooth skin overlaid with geometrically perfect facets that glitter in the light. And no matter what he's doing, if you look closely you can see a faint glow all about his person, shining through his clothes.
Year: 3
Rank: Journeyman
Room No. 314
Spectre Merivale is eccentric and slightly socially inept. His upbringing did not encourage meaningful interaction with others, friends, family, or otherwise. All he really knows is how to make witty, snarky jokes and how to enliven a conversation. But his personality is almost entirely superficial—practically everything he does and says stems from his eccentricity and sarcasm-disguised excitability.
If there's one thing about him that goes deeper than the expressions on his face, it's his abiding, unyielding pursuit of goodness. He absolutely hates the idea of unkindness and evil within himself, and his zeal against it in others is unmatched. He's not exceptionally confrontational about it if he can stop evil clandestinely or discreetly, no matter how small, even if it's his friends. In fact, he cares more about ending it in his friends than in anyone else.
He wishes he could be deeper than that, a better friend, a slightly more emotional man, but he knows it may take a while, if ever. Still, he perseveres.
Spectre's magic deals primarily with light and descends from three Aeons: Creation, Destruction, and Existence. At this point in Spectre's training, his skill lies in the first two portions, but it will not be long until he finds himself in the third.
Spectre came from a family of Destructionists but first unlocked his magic in Creation. With what power he could muster up at a young age he was able to form nigh-unbreakable constructs of light that moved freely according to his will. His magical reserves, unfortunately, were small and weak. With no real supply of power he could do little to nothing on a regular basis.
When his anger against evil awakened, so did a new aspect of his power, and he found himself able to utilise the absence of light in one way and one way only: absorbing the energy in others and transferring it to himself. If he could catch someone with his shadowy tendrils he could start to drain them. He showed restraint so as not to alienate his family further, and his magical reserves grew with practice so that he had to use his destructive power less and less. Nowadays, it certainly helps in a fight, but he prefers to go all on his own power rather than enlarge his wellspring artificially.
His real potential is in the Aeon of Existence, but only because of the nature of his potential for Creation. Spectre's constructs of light are more than just sturdy objects; they channel natural magic with incredible ease at almost no magical expenditure for their creator. At this point, Spectre is beginning to notice, and with formulae, maths, and a lot of research, he will unlock the power of the Crystal Matrix. Crystal Matrices are simply disks made of light, just like the rest of Spectre's constructs, but the disks are layered with perfect fractal patterns and etched with precise magical channels.
The Matrices pull in natural magic and use it to channel the environment itself. Each Crystal Matrix uses the environment to do purely natural things—but the flow of magic encourages rapidity, efficiency, and efficacy. One Matrix may reflect and even amplify the force of a physical attack; another may dispel the magical energy in an attack it or even encourage its absorption by Spectre. Yet another could speed up blood clotting or the knitting of bones or encourage the growth of a plant—and some Matrices take more energy from Spectre than do others. But their sheer efficiency is to be envied.
Equipment: Spectre wields a sword—a real sword—that looks like it might be made of light. He uses it to channel his magic into energetic beams of light and sometimes to "draw" his constructs in midair. It's all for show at this point, but it points to another aspect of his: precision. Spectre is incredibly graceful in every action. He will not do something if he can't do it as efficiently and precisely as possible, and the showier, the better. Every step he takes is timed, every flourish of his hands—and, in battle, every spell, every attack, and every construct. He has mastered the art of precision in all things, a quality that is important to his magic in all its forms, but he has done it at the painful cost of important social development at a young age.
Spectre came from a long line of mages that operated under the Aeon of Destruction and Destruction alone. They expected much from their firstborn, but when all their attempts to awaken their kind of magic within him failed, their disappointment was palpable. When the stress got to him and woke his magic of Creation instead, his extended family shunned him and those closest to him hid behind pity. His was a homeschooling family, so he had few real relationships outside of his home. So, isolated against his will, he spent all his time training when he wasn't teaching himself the subjects his family failed to instruct him in.
His magical reserves were incredibly tiny. With so little energy to go on at any given moment he had to be extremely efficient, and his talent for precision grew quickly. His creations fascinated his younger siblings, both of whom ended up with Destruction Magic, but his parents started keeping him away from them as if he were infecting them with his creativity. However, he discovered a chance for redemption when, extinguishing his light incorrectly, he ended up with tangible darkness in its place. Black magic—a stroke of luck! Upon experimentation, he found that he could extract the energy from plants and animals, but his parents were not as overjoyed as he had hoped. They half-heartedly encouraged further experimentation and, with unexpected kindness, let him test his abilities on them.
A whole new world opened up to him. Though his drain on the magic of others was temporary, the effect on him was both temporary and permanent. Little by little he expanded his wellspring with his parents' consent, showing great restraint even as he learned to do bigger and better things with the magic he truly loved. Disappointed with his growing love for Creation magic, Spectre's uncle pushed him to use his Destruction magic more and more. Things came to a head on the day he accidentally used it to kill his favourite pet—and, with it, he nearly killed his little sister, as well. That was the day he swore off evil entirely; his uncle was found gulity for much worse than influencing Spectre and he himself was shipped right off to a magical boarding school.
For a couple of young years he distinguished himself there with exemplary performance and marked improvement. With a few new friends acting as willing sources for his magic, he soon grew his magical reserves to an actually reasonable level and was noticed for his abilities, academic and magical, by the Breakfast University for Magic.
If Spectre was forced to sacrifice something important in order to move forward, he would choose his Destruction magic in a heartbeat. It has some use in fights, but he can improve his magical reserves on his own, now, if slower than he could at his full Aeonic potential.
If Spectre were given a single wish, he would have asked for the love of his parents a few years ago. He supposes he'll figure out himself, now, and he'd rather they actually love him rather than being forced to. Instead, he'd probably wish for the ability to create anything he wanted; he'd find that rather useful.
I feel that in the human brain, creativity is a mixture of reasoning and creativity.
I don't know if we can say that with a level of certainty. All this time I've been going off the dictionary definition, but if we all agree to redefine creativity as imagination and ingenuity in equal measure then the argument takes on a completely different colour (and also I'd rewrite all of my examinations).
Freedom means that the easy choice is always available, and by limiting these choices you are creating a challenge for people. People work naturally with a challenge and will try to find ways around it, both creative and lazy ways.
I don't wanna say too much more cause I feel others will be able to explain better than me, but creativity is a direct result of having a limitation and it brings about the skill of problem solving.
I think that it's more that problem-solving is a direct result of having a limitation. One may have endless ideas up their sleeves, and writing and roleplaying give people a chance to use those ideas. But, on account of any limitations involved in a story or a roleplay, some ideas are lost, unusable. I'll make careful note that I don't consider that a bad thing right out, because problem-solving is another skill that's important to writing. The ideas that remain feasible may only be that way because you worked to make them feasible.
Ultimately, limitations restrict imagination but encourage reasoning. Another way to say it might be that limitations restrict the right brain but encourage the left brain. Whether that's a bad thing or not depends entirely on the context.
I think there's some confusion among terms. To have ideas limited by setting, plot etc. doesn't necessarily mean that creativity is limited. Also, do you equate creativity with ingenuity? When faced with a creative framework, an artist has to work harder to accomplish her goals. Does the situation therefore limit or encourage creativity? Or are limitations and lack of limitations two different kinds of stimuli that both engender creativity in different ways?
Knowing that I could possibly be misunderstood I just consolidated dictionary definitions of creativity and came to the conclusion that creativity is the use of original ideas. Ingenuity and inventiveness I do not equate with creativity, but I do believe that they work together with creativity. I don't think they foster creativity but use it instead, but I also think ingenuity can be used despite the lack of a framework. @LegendBegins seems to somewhat make this point—the unspoken limitations of skill and experience are much more freeing than other limitations but still encourage the inventive use of creativity; I can vouch for that from my own experience.
Given what I've said, I think the answer to your question is that they engender ingenuity in different ways, but that that is different from creativity.
@whizzball1 It was not necessary, but she would have fallen in with every other "let's roll a bunch of random crap together and see what we get" magical girls. The point was that I actually got to keep my original idea, which was a character that could stun on sight and fight with their hair. The limitation only made those aspects more interesting and make sense. Well, as far as magical girls go.
Another character for something entirely different was only allowed to have 1 element. So even though I wanted to make a character that could control temperature {heat and freeze things} I decided to stick with fire. I couldn't freeze the ground and skate on it, but I could turn it molten and slide on the liquid magma. etc. That character was one of the only ones that was able to use fire as a utility, versus everyone else who used fire as a purely offensive power.
That's why I don't contend with limitations that are made for the sake of consistency. But both of those sets of ideas came at the cost of others. It seems to me from your examples and others that a limitation always comes at the cost of a net loss of potential ideas, but also that limitations encourage variation of ideas.
Out of curiosity, can you say with certainty that the ideas you used in place of your old ones were more interesting? If you never got to use your old ones, can you really say that you would have been less entertained with the ideas you didn't get to use? What combinations could you have made if you had access to both melting and freezing? I acknowledge that that's a lot of what ifs and hypotheticals.
At the very least, you were entertained by your idea in the context of that roleplay's setting, but you lost the chance of another. Considering that you would have been entertained either way, the limitations were basically positive—but I wouldn't say that the idea you were forced to use was definitely more interesting than the idea you wanted to use in the first place. EDIT: This is more of a rhetorical question: if you had been given a free choice between, say, your two magical girls, and you hadn't yet tried either, which would you have chosen? I'll go as far as to say you would have chosen the idea where you had all the backstory you wanted and the relationship between Medusa and the magical girl. You were entertained either way, but not necessarily more interested.
Speaking for myself, if you leave me with an empty slate in which I could create a complete world without any limitations or restrictions and with full resources to do whatever the hell I wanted...
...I would never finish.
Given a decent structure of limitations, I can have a theme to base off, and then adapt to an extent that the result is original. Yet what I created was based off something else. Perhaps it was a desire to improve upon the original image, or just a spike of creativity caused by looking at something else. But well chosen limitations do, in their own little ways, make me more inclined to follow through on creating things.
That's the point I made in the setting section. Logic, consistency, and a setting provide direction and, by preventing confusion, encourage creation. Like I said in my introduction, I don't paint restrictions in a negative light, because some of them are important and useful.
When people say "Limitations breed creativity," they are saying that people do more interesting things when they are presented with a barrier and aren't given excessive freedom. They will find a way around the barrier, or they will find a way to make their side of the barrier more palatable.
As an example, I once joined a magical girl roleplay. I didn't like it very much, but that's not really important. I wanted to make a medusa themed girl, with some pirate themes thrown in. Medusa traditionally dwelled on an island by the sea, so it wasn't a huge stretch. But the GM would have none of that, and said that the snake aspect of my character was too far outside the boundaries of what a pirate was. But I really liked her powers, particularly her paralyzing stare and how her hair could be used as a weapon. So instead I made her more of a pirate captain who drew influence from all the great pirates. She had burning wicks in her hair like black beard that could be used as weapons. She also had the intense gaze of a pirate captain, which often caused people to stop in their tracks. So while I didn't get to play as my medusa/pirate hybrid, I got to use all the powers I wanted to and made one of the most unique magical girls the RP saw. While it did ruin some of the backstory stuff between medusa and my character both having similer origins, she was definitely the most interesting pirate magical girl I'd ever seen. all because a GM told me I couldn't have a medusa pirate girl.
Limitations definitely make for more interesting stories.
Who's to say it wouldn't have been more interesting if you had the medusa/pirate hybrid?
But I can respect that limitation because it coheres with the setting. The GM was keeping his or her RP internally consistent (based on his or her vision of what the RP should involve). I think your original ideas--your creativity--were restricted on account of the need for logical consistency, but the limitation wasn't so strong as to restrict all of your ideas. Maybe it would have been more interesting to have a medusa/pirate magical girl, or maybe it wouldn't have been. But it wasn't necessarily all that it could have been (and you acknowledged that yourself).
Audacious