The Art of Illusionism or what your players don't know won't hurt them [Archive]

RazorChain

2018-03-07, 12:07 AM

Illusionism is the art of impacting character decisions or just outright negating them for the benefit of telling the story the GM wants to tell. It's widely regarded as a dysfunctional style as it is done without the player knowledge or consent and the same thing can mostly be achieved by getting the players to participate on their own volition or throught a social contract.

So essentially illusionism is railroading without the players having knowledge of it. I'm pretty sure that many a heavy handed GM is trying this but fails so abysmally that the players know they are being railroaded and complain about it. So what can you do as a heavy handed railroading GM? Either you can secure your players participation or cooperation through a social contract or you can use subtlety and manipulation

Now don't let some detractors steer you away from the glorious movie experience you are going to give your players. They are going to tell you that manipulation is wrong or that you are lying to your players. We all know that agency must be sacrificed for the good of the story and if the players believe that all the good decisions were made by them anyway then who's to tell there was no agency?

We all know that GM's use a lot of tricks during their games just like illusionists. We don't go mad at illusionist for tricking us do we? Nooo sireee! We like it and want more, just like your players will feel when you have subtly manipulated them through your carefully crafted story and they are feeling awesome because of all the cool decisions "they made" and the things they experienced.

But be warned just like in Plato's theory of forms, there can be no true illusionism. That is you cannot control everything, the tighter the control the harder it gets. Which means that illusionism works best when you use it on the important parts and allow the players freedom in others because it reinforces the illusion.

So how do you go about it? How do we tell that awesome story or follow that script when the protagonists have a mind of their own?

The Illusion of Choice

The first is the art of negating player choices or the illusion of choice. You present choices and allow your players to choose but they all lead to the same result. This one we know very well from computer games, the game presents you with choice that ultimately doesn't matter, but you don't know that unless you save and take the other choice or play the game again. In RPG's there is no such thing as replaying or saving so your player will never know that their choice amounted to nothing. In practical measures it means that choosing A or B both lead to C.

The second variation is making choices a window dressing. The PC's have the choice of going through the mines of Moria or through the pass of Caradhras but you don't care so long as they go to Mordor. Choice A or B both lead to C where you want it to lead then it's just a window dressing. This is good psychology because you present limited choice that virtually amounts to nothing.

The third variation is prediction through manipulation. If you as a GM have the advantage of knowing your players, if not then you at least know their characters, then you can manipulate the players in game. You have this PC in the group, a dwarf called Gimli and when the group has the choice of going through the pass of Caradhras or the mines of Moria, you drop the background fluff about his kinsman Balin who reopened the mines and rules them. Players generally like being in the spotlight and Gimli's player should in most cases try to influence the group to go through Moria.

But what happens if your attempts fail? You are the illusionist so you can't just use heavy handed measures. So that means you have to negate your player's choices or guide them back on track.

If you have that cool encounter in the mines of Moria because one of the PC's is going to die fighting the Balrog you will block their choice of the pass of Caradhras. Illusionism is about guiding your players in gentle, non hamfisted manner. So when you block their choice of Caradhras you do so in a logical, entertaining manner and make it feel like their failure rather than just you blocking them because they weren't supposed to go there. So how can you make it look like their failure? It leads to the next technique.

Do you think these are dice you are rolling?

Every good illusionists know the game is rigged and the rolls amount to almost nothing because ultimately game of chance isn't going to stop you telling a good tale. You have decided that Gandalf will fall in the mines of Moria or your PC's can't go though the pass of Caradhras and no dice roll is going to stop you. Understanding of probability helps but isn't required.

First technique is very well known. It's misrepresenting the die roll or just fudging in layman terms. You have that handy looking GM screen that was made just so you can fudge your rolls, now put it to good use. You'll get those critical hits and fumbles at dramatic appropriate moments. The foes will hit and miss as needed. Your players will make or fail those opposed rolls when it suits the story. Ultimately your die rolls don't matter at all but it's only for the benefit of the illusion. But you can control your rolls, how do you control your player rolls?

Second Techinque is interpreting die rolls for the benefit of the story. This one is much much harder than fudging and requires both that you have good grasp of the system and improvisation. The PC's are making good headway into the pass of Caradhras because of their die luck. This is where you break things up into series of rolls because in the end they will roll badly and fail and when they fail you will spring all the bad things at them at the same time that will end in their failure. Or when Gandalf has just used his great rolls to repell the Balrog and break the bridge then you give tha Balrog that last dramatic chance to pull Gandalf down, with your fudging and an opposing strenght roll that you know Gandalf's player is never going to make. See it doesn't matter how great Gandalf rolls because you just break the action up and it seems that he's doing great until he gets pulled down.

For the benefit of the plot

The much beloved Quantum Ogre is a useful tool of an illusionist. No matter where the players go the Ogre appears. This is because you know there is no need to place the Ogre beforehand because the PC's need to run into him to advance the plot.

This is also where you put things that will happen regardless of your players effort that will move the story forward. If you need that the Assassins find the PC's then they will find them, no die roll needed. You as a GM often don't even have to explain how, but a good illusionist will have a reasonable explanation handy or hint at one. If you have that clue that the PC's need to move the story forward then you will make sure the PC's get the clue no matter what. If an event needs to happen to move the plot forward, then you will wave your magic wand and make it happen. This is regardless of the players effort to help or hinder those events.

For Dramatic Purposes

As an illusionist you will come to understand that statblocks are just guidelines, useful but not really needed. You'll have fight scenes where you want the PC's to steamroll your enemies just to make them look good and then you have fight scenes where you want them to win by the skin of their teeth. This means you can just adjust those statblocks on the fly, add to the stats to beef up the opposition or just make reinforcements pop up when dramatically appropriate. Nobody knows or cares if there were no reinforcements written down on your GM paper or in the module or that you are fine tuning your encounters on the fly. Now some stickler for rules is screaming "YOU CAN'T DO THAT, IT'S BREAKING THE RULES, IT'S CHEATING!". Now stop listening to them because there is nothing in the rules that says you can't do this.

When Bob's barbarian jumps of the cliff to chop that dragon in the head for massive damage then you'll make sure that dragon dies even though he has 20 HP left because it is dramatic. The dragon sure ain't going to die when Johnny the rogue stabs it in the toe for 1 point of damage because it only had 1 HP left, that's anticlimatic. You are trying to tell an awesome tale here, make sure that your cool encounter ends in a memorable, climatic manner.

These techniques are widely used not only in illusionism but in gaming in general, but when all added together they will make your game awesome like never before, a real cinematic experience. No Greenwoodian hamfisted railroading again!

If you have some nefarious techniques that will aid upcoming illusionist be so kind to share them.

OldTrees1

2018-03-07, 03:09 AM

Seto

2018-03-07, 03:34 AM

Your tone sometimes makes me unsure whether it's second or third-degree irony.

Anyhow, here's what I like to do: taking a page from some video games, I make player choices have an impact on my ending, rather than prompt a completely different ending. So you could choose A or B and both will lead to the same general result (you will always get a variation of C and never D), but depending on your choices you might get C or C'. If you've played Chrono Trigger, you know that there are... 17 endings, I believe? They're all obtained by defeating the same final boss, but depend on what you've done in the game before.
So, using your example, whether you take the path of Moria or Caradhras, you will get to Mordor in the end (unless you die first), you will stare down the magma of Mount Doom... Will you be with your party or split up? Will you have been corrupted by the Ring or remained pure? Is Sauron aware that you're there? Is Gollum alive and ready to jump on your back? That depends on your previous choices and adventures.

...Well, I actually don't do that. Not at the campaign level anyway: I'd rather react to the players shaping the adventure and prep session after session. But I very much do that at the individual session level. It helps me use my prep, my encounters, not have to improvise too much regardless of what the players decide, while taking their choices into account. Most players don't mind that method (as long as the strings are not too apparent), because much like part of Chrono Trigger's appeal is to get all endings, they're excited to imagine what could have gone differently if they'd taken another route (and I sometimes tell them).

RFLS

2018-03-07, 03:44 AM

JellyPooga

2018-03-07, 04:36 AM

I mean...the way you've described it, why not just write a chapter of a book once a week and forward it to the "players" ? You've removed player agency for any significant decision. Players are there to make a story with you. Barring a very specific group that just wants to be told a story for 4 hours a week, this is not what they've signed up for. This is -actually- some of the worst GMing advice I've ever seen.

I...disagree. Barely. I get where you're coming from and to a degree, I understand why you've reacted the way you have. However...the OP isn't talking about being about a GM of the awful railroading sort; he's talking about a tool that every good GM uses at least once in a while. Yes, we all want Players to have as much agency as possible, because it's a social game and everyone wants their input. On the other hand, because the GM is the only one with access to the bigger picture and because the GM is the one dictating the structure and style of the world the PC's inhabit, he must be willing to pull the wool over the players eyes in order to advance the game. At least sometimes.

Consider the example the OP gives; Caradras vs. Moria. As GM of this game, you have a big ol' dungeon you want the players to explore (Moria) but you want to give the players the illusion of choice. So you present some options; take the pass over the gnarly mountain (go over), head for the gap of Rohan (go around) or go through the mines (go under). Options A and B present the players with an additional challenge to overcome; time, danger, maybe even death, but ultimately their purpose is solely to turn the players back and leave them with the only other choice; the mines.

You, as GM, want the players to explore the mines; there's some critical plot points down there (Gandalf the NPC vs. The Balrog, Gimli resolves a personal side-quest). So you can either give them some false choices and present a challenge and expand the setting with them, or you can chuck them on the railroad and tell them straight that the mines are the only way to go. The alternative of allowing the players to avoid the mines is an option, but is not always condusive to a good game or your own mental health.

Consider this scenario instead; you want there to be a big reveal of a monster and you plan to do this by having it devour an NPC in front of the players. You're not rolling dice for this one, it's just going to happen. What you didn't predict was one of the players becoming really rather attached to that NPC. When it comes to crunch time (pun intended), a player could legitimately complain that they didn't get a chance to save that NPC; they've lost agency...but you had no further purpose for that character; it's entire reason to exist was to die horribly as part of this reveal. If the player saves the NPC, that's a whole heap of additonal work you, the GM, have to do to keep that incidental character in the game. On top of that, the drama of the moment; losing a friend, being helpless to prevent tragedy happening, sorrow...is lost if you allow the scenario to become "just another combat".

Every true choice the PCs are allowed to make is a heap of extra work for a GM to do. The artistry of designing a campaign is not in allowing the players to do whatever they want; it's in giving them the impression that they're the ones calling all the shots when there's really only a few options available. You can't run the entire world, only parts of it and limiting choice is the only way to achieve this. Limiting choice looks bad (railroads are no fun), so to make up for this a good GM gives the illusion of choice.

RFLS

2018-03-07, 04:43 AM

Every true choice the PCs are allowed to make is a heap of extra work for a GM to do. The artistry of designing a campaign is not in allowing the players to do whatever they want; it's in giving them the impression that they're the ones calling all the shots when there's really only a few options available. You can't run the entire world, only parts of it and limiting choice is the only way to achieve this. Limiting choice looks bad (railroads are no fun), so to make up for this a good GM gives the illusion of choice.

This is my most fundamental disagreement, I think. You're the GM. You signed up for heaps of work. If you can't respond to players doing something almost every game explicitly tells them they can do in the text, you should get out of the seat. It is your job to be able to respond to the players; not to dictate their actions, whether they know it or not.

Cespenar

2018-03-07, 05:06 AM

Florian

2018-03-07, 05:28 AM

This is my most fundamental disagreement, I think.

No. The player never have any real form of freedom, that is the most basic illusion of them all.
Either they interact with what has been prepared beforehand (NPC, locations, plots), or they have to rely on the GM making things up along the way with them hopefully not noticing that. And yes, people who prefer improv-style rarely notice that this even has less agency, because the choices didn't have meaning in the first place).

PersonMan

2018-03-07, 05:58 AM

No. The player never have any real form of freedom, that is the most basic illusion of them all.
Either they interact with what has been prepared beforehand (NPC, locations, plots), or they have to rely on the GM making things up along the way with them hopefully not noticing that. And yes, people who prefer improv-style rarely notice that this even has less agency, because the choices didn't have meaning in the first place).

So you would say that something like "In Session 13, the PCs reach the edge of the mountains and see three potential routes to cross. They choose one and make preparations. The session ends, and the GM prepares for the route they chose" doesn't involve a real choice, because the GM made all of the options? What if the PCs think of a different way across the mountains? Is it still a choice without meaning since the GM is still preparing things for them? What if each route has a vague outline, with vastly different encounters along the way?

Bringing it further, what if you have a play-by-post game? The major difference there is that the GM can present the same level of 'fully prepared' no matter where the PCs go (assuming they have the time to prep during the game, and aren't just running a module or similar without time to change things) - so the players aren't hindered by any sense of 'well if we go around the swamp, the GM's prep work is wasted and instead we have to deal with made-up-on-the-spot village encounters' or the limitations of improvised play.

Combining the two, let's say you have a PbP game where the GM has outlines for all three potential paths over the mountains, but then the players think of one the GM did not expect and go with that one. Now the GM prepares the route as it's played, with the players having potential sub-choices along their route that all branch into different encounters (of which the GM has at most a vague idea, but will fully prepare if the PCs go that way). Is this still an utter lack of freedom, because the GM is doing something no matter which way they go?

---

Consider the example the OP gives; Caradras vs. Moria. As GM of this game, you have a big ol' dungeon you want the players to explore (Moria) but you want to give the players the illusion of choice. So you present some options; take the pass over the gnarly mountain (go over), head for the gap of Rohan (go around) or go through the mines (go under). Options A and B present the players with an additional challenge to overcome; time, danger, maybe even death, but ultimately their purpose is solely to turn the players back and leave them with the only other choice; the mines.

I think that this example is flawed from the outset, because it's assuming you've already planned things ahead in detail and in an inflexible manner. In my opinion, this is a bad position for a GM to be in, with the best case scenario being 'arrange things such that my mistake doesn't screw things up' or 'get lucky because the players happen to go the route I planned'. This isn't a method for running games in any normal sense, this is damage control.

You, as GM, want the players to explore the mines; there's some critical plot points down there (Gandalf the NPC vs. The Balrog, Gimli resolves a personal side-quest). So you can either give them some false choices and present a challenge and expand the setting with them, or you can chuck them on the railroad and tell them straight that the mines are the only way to go. The alternative of allowing the players to avoid the mines is an option, but is not always condusive to a good game or your own mental health.

Assuming the mistake is already made, I'd say the best way to do things is to try and give players a reason* to go into the mines. Potentially hint at the idea of the dwarves of the mines as being potential allies, or a source for rare resources the party needs. Maybe even just a chance to rest and resupply in an actual city, with all of the obscure things a party might want.

*Beyond "it's the only way".

Consider this scenario instead; you want there to be a big reveal of a monster and you plan to do this by having it devour an NPC in front of the players. You're not rolling dice for this one, it's just going to happen. What you didn't predict was one of the players becoming really rather attached to that NPC. When it comes to crunch time (pun intended), a player could legitimately complain that they didn't get a chance to save that NPC; they've lost agency...but you had no further purpose for that character; it's entire reason to exist was to die horribly as part of this reveal. If the player saves the NPC, that's a whole heap of additonal work you, the GM, have to do to keep that incidental character in the game. On top of that, the drama of the moment; losing a friend, being helpless to prevent tragedy happening, sorrow...is lost if you allow the scenario to become "just another combat".

Players are getting attached to NPCs whose death you want to make an emotional moment? This is a bad thing?

I'd say, give them a chance - they shouldn't have much of one, if you're showing a big powerful monster rather than overhyping just another on-CR baddie, but they'll have some potential way of doing it. If they somehow manage to save the NPC, then yes you have extra work, but that's as much opportunity as it is a problem. Maybe the monster bites off an arm as the PC hauls the would-be snack away, leaving the formerly proud knight without a way to lift a sword. Maybe it's the PC who is grievously wounded, and the moment becomes a "remember that guy and how he saved [NPC] from that monster? Almost killed him, but he did it! That was so cool" type story.

And, unless you have everything rigidly planned out in advance, the NPC's survival should be usable in some way. In my opinion, it's better to work someone the players like further into the plot, rather than throw them out entirely. It's not like you can't just change things in the future, to allow for their choice to have more impact. The NPC may be a nobody now, but it could be that their word for the true heroism of PC X comes up in a helpful way later.

I'll also add that, to me, people getting invested in what I'm running and feeling attached to things in the game is great. It's absolutely worth the extra work when it happens. If you're not as into that, or if your time is seriously constrained such that time spent developing NPC-X is time spent not planning out party-wide encounters, then it might not be for you, and what I'm saying here won't be that relevant.

Every true choice the PCs are allowed to make is a heap of extra work for a GM to do. The artistry of designing a campaign is not in allowing the players to do whatever they want; it's in giving them the impression that they're the ones calling all the shots when there's really only a few options available. You can't run the entire world, only parts of it and limiting choice is the only way to achieve this. Limiting choice looks bad (railroads are no fun), so to make up for this a good GM gives the illusion of choice.

I would say that, as a good GM, instead of using deceit to cover up an unwillingness or inability to create more than a certain amount of content, you give players actual choices, placed at the right time, and then prepare based on those. You don't need to prepare equally in-depth and dramatic events for all three ways to cross the mountains if you ask the players which way they want to go when they reach it, and then prepare for whichever route they pick. You can avoid doing excessive amounts of work and make your players' choices relevant.

But I think there's a fundamental difference on how we're thinking of these things. To me, preparing an entire campaign ahead of time is ridiculous for exactly this sort of reason - I either find myself having to railroad, railroad but lie about it, put in absurd amounts of prepwork for everything, or just leave half the campaign blank in order to account for player action. So I just...don't. Beyond things like the opening scenario, main antagonists, general plot points ("the Ancient Weapons of Destruction are awakening once more", "the Order of the Fist wants to retrieve the Ancient Weapons by any means necessary", "the party will need AWoD-tier power to kill the main enemy") and vague plans, I don't have a ton planned before we start playing. I prepare one to three sessions in advance for real-time games, or prepare more extensive frameworks for PbP games, which are far more flexible in terms of allowing changes due to unexpected player action, in my experience.

Darth Ultron

2018-03-07, 09:03 AM

-As a rule of thumb, if you are entering a session with a fixed outcome in your mind as the DM, that's not very good DMing.

This is a good example of the Illusion players think about the game. The Real Truth is: The DM can do, or ''fix'' anything and the players will never be able to tell and never know, unless the DM tells them.

Yet many players just think the ''game happens'' somehow.

No. The player never have any real form of freedom, that is the most basic illusion of them all.
Either they interact with what has been prepared beforehand (NPC, locations, plots), or they have to rely on the GM making things up along the way with them hopefully not noticing that. And yes, people who prefer improv-style rarely notice that this even has less agency, because the choices didn't have meaning in the first place).

Yes, this so much.

The biggest Illusion is that the players, somehow, think they have total freedom and control and anything else they want to think they have. Many players even seem to think the 'game' itself ''comes alive'' somehow or something even stranger.

RazorChain

2018-03-07, 09:19 AM

Where do you draw the line? How do you make sure the players will appreciate what you did rather than feel betrayed by the deception you planned? When is it a stage magician and when is it treachery?

If it depends on the Players, like so much does, then how do you find out from them without being able to ask them? Or do you draw the line before deception at that level?

I already mentioned that illusionism is considered a dysfunctional style and many people react strongly to it.

That being said there are a lot of people who use many techniques that "belong" in illusionism. Most railroading GM's are failed illusionists. They don't have mastery over the style.

They don't usually tell you upfront that they're going to railroad you so hard that you go "choo choo".

So when the illusion fails the GM becomes a railroading GM and players who don't like railroading become unhappy. These techniques help the GM to railroad his players without their knowledge and keep them happy. Ignorance is bliss and everybody wins

RazorChain

2018-03-07, 09:28 AM

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-07, 09:30 AM

So when the illusion fails the GM becomes a railroading GM and players who don't like railroading become unhappy. These techniques help the GM to railroad his players without their knowledge and keep them happy. Ignorance is bliss and everybody wins

Illusionism (as you've described it) is railroading. And it's a sneaky form of railroading that has huge negative consequences if discovered. If a DM says "I'm not railroading" but then uses illusionism to railroad and I catch them, they've lost my trust and I would have to leave the table. If they're honest about it ("There's an event I have planned, you'll really like it. But to get there you have to ..."), I can handle that and even enjoy it. Lying to players (as DM, not as NPC) is not OK.

The only place I see for these techniques is in softening/hiding already agreed-upon rails. This is (for example) what should happen when you're running an adventure path. Everyone knows there are rails and a plot in place, and everyone's accepted those. But they can be softened so that there's in-universe, rational reasons why those characters should follow the rails of their own free will.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-07, 09:56 AM

So how do you go about it? How do we tell that awesome story or follow that script when the protagonists have a mind of their own?

You don't.

If the GM is there to tell a predetermined story or force adherence to a script, then they should go write a novel or screenplay.

Because writing a book is different, your "players" will pat you on the shoulder and tell you that you're doing great but you know they don't read your crummy novel. Books brought us kenders so we all wish that Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weiss should just have stuck to roleplaying. Let's not even discuss Elminster or Drizzt novels either.

An illusionist GM is an entertainer not an author

Unrelated axes (as in plural of axis).

If the GM is an incompetent or frustrated novelist, the solution is not for them to impose their stories on a group of players who are there for an RPG campaign, not for story time with GM.

The illusionist GM is neither entertainer nor author, they're just a liar, a con-artist playing a shell-game.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-07, 10:09 AM

Cluedrew

2018-03-07, 10:15 AM

Illusionism is the art of impacting character decisions or just outright negating them for the benefit of telling the story the GM wants to tell.What of the story the other players want to tell?

This is not single author fiction, no one is here to tell a story. We are here to tell a story. And if any person could be removed and the story remain unchanged you are doing it wrong. OK, sit back and watch the GM is a valid play style, but to me it will always be a lesser one compared to the collaborative experience. The best stories in any role-playing game I have seen were shaped by everyone around the table and went beyond what everyone, even the GM, expected.

Koo Rehtorb

2018-03-07, 11:02 AM

I honestly can't tell if this is satire or not.

Just in case it's not, stop right there, criminal scum. This is bad. You're bad. And you should feel bad.

ImNotTrevor

2018-03-07, 11:22 AM

Dear lord go write a novel or make a videogame.

They'll do this better than you will. And do. Often.

TRPGs have exactly one advantage over novels and games:
The player has a much broader ability to choose, because the game is run by another human brain with full creative ability who can create new content on the fly.

Otherwise you're playing Skyrim or Final Fantasy but slower and with more math. Or you're doing a bookreading with extra steps.

Heck, this is why I stopped using D&D. The lighter systems actually manage to flex the strongest portions of the medium.

D&D is great for hexcrawls. Heck, that's how it used to work. Fixed map, varying party, no story. The only reason we got this story crap involved was to sell adventure modules. Which, ironically, cripples the system compared to where it shines. D&D as a hexcrawl is fun to GM. As a story you have to fret and stress.

Scripten

2018-03-07, 11:26 AM

I honestly can't tell if this is satire or not.

Just in case it's not, stop right there, criminal scum. This is bad. You're bad. And you should feel bad.

It's not satire. It's dragging that dumpster fire from the Sandbox thread out into a new thread, because obviously we can't have just one.

If you are lying to and manipulating your players, then you are not doing a good job as a DM. There's a reason why lying and manipulation are considered poor form in interpersonal relations, and attempting to argue that they are necessary in TTRPGs is ridiculous. I've been DMing for years and I don't ever feel the need to lie to my players. I don't rig the dice nor do I give monsters extra HP after the battle begins, and the game is all the better for it. We have plenty of stories and the players not only feel like they've changed the world, but have.

OldTrees1

2018-03-07, 11:37 AM

I already mentioned that illusionism is considered a dysfunctional style and many people react strongly to it.

That being said there are a lot of people who use many techniques that "belong" in illusionism. Most railroading GM's are failed illusionists. They don't have mastery over the style.

They don't usually tell you upfront that they're going to railroad you so hard that you go "choo choo".

So when the illusion fails the GM becomes a railroading GM and players who don't like railroading become unhappy. These techniques help the GM to railroad his players without their knowledge and keep them happy. Ignorance is bliss and everybody wins

Just to make sure:
So you mentioned that others will draw the line way before you will and you draw the line at "Illusionism isn't wrong unless you get caught". Is this a fair summary of your position?

Does that extend to lying to your players (actively or by omission) if they ask or otherwise care about if you use Illusionism?

At what point are you honest so that people can figure out if they want to play with you or not?

I ask because I hate this technique you describe* and you can tell, due to this honest communication, that I would hate your game. Thus you know that some players would hate your game. How do you avoid subjecting those players to your game? Or are the concerns of the players not relevant to your evaluation?

*Hence why my constructive criticism is focusing on whether you can have this be self selecting so that it coordinates DMs that use it with Players that are okay with it.

Segev

2018-03-07, 12:01 PM

The Real Truth is: The DM can do, or ''fix'' anything and the players will never be able to tell and never know, unless the DM tells them.

The fact that you actually think players will never know says a lot about the kinds of players you choose to play with. Or your own inability to read your players.

Pleh

2018-03-07, 12:03 PM

Because writing a book is different, your "players" will pat you on the shoulder and tell you that you're doing great but you know they don't read your crummy novel. Books brought us kenders so we all wish that Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weiss should just have stuck to roleplaying. Let's not even discuss Elminster or Drizzt novels either.

An illusionist GM is an entertainer not an author

False dichotomy. Authors ARE Entertainers. The only exception is for books that were never meant to be read by others (at which point the writer isn't so much an Author in the same sense as much as they are a biographer or record keeper just taking personal notes).

If they didn't want to read your crummy novel, you shouldn't try to spoon feed it to them through a false game experience. Games are inherently all about the player, their skill and their choices. When you falsify such things in the game, it is no longer a game (not from their end, at least) but a semi-interactive "cut scene".

Now, Tell Tale games does a fantastic job making deeply engaging, semi-interactive novels. They can be very entertaining. But to call them Video Games is almost a misnomer, because besides a few Quick Time Events, they only really qualify as "video games" because of the platform through which they are conveyed. "Interactive novel" would probably be a better description for them.

Now, because of the narrative elements common to RPGs, Interactive, Semi-Interactive, and Non-Interactive Cut Scenes are occasionally acceptable to tie segments of Gameplay together in a Narrative thread (or, with your example of leaping onto a dragon to slay the beast, sometimes a way to end a battle more climatically).

But it is still ethically deplorable to falsely advertise even if the deception is never discovered. If the game you want to run has particular events you intend to assert into the story regardless the player choices, they should have some kind of awareness of your intent.

Going back to the idea that we do not despise Magicians for tricking us with Illusions, that's because we accept the premise from the start. At no point do we expect the Magician to be compelled to explain how they managed to perform their illusions or to allow us to derail their show by demanding they step aside and allow the stage to begin playing a different act. We accept the premise that the illusionism IS the entertainment we are seeking.

Because RPGs lie on a spectrum of Player Agency, it is vitally important that the players (including the GM) have a mutual (and accurate) understanding of what degree of player agency is expected in the game.

In the Civilization Games, the players have no choice but to play the part of a growing civilization expanding and seeking dominance through an evolving global history arc, BUT they do have nearly limitless degree of choices in how they pursue this objective.

In Minecraft, there is no instruction as to how to play, you are just dropped into the world and are expected to explore. The only limitations are on what does or doesn't exist and what powers Steve? does or doesn't have.

In Dark Souls, you never HAVE to face the final boss. You can grind through the respawning mooks endlessly as you like. There's just not much else to do on the predefined map other than grind for power or progress towards the end.

As long as the players are given the opportunity to agree to invest in the amount of agency they will receive, there is no problem with illusionism (and, in fact, it can be quite an entertaining experience).

But in any game where the players are allowed to create their own protagonists, GMs should be wary of making that character moot. The very idea that the player has been given Self-Determination implies a fairly high degree of retaining that degree of Self Determination in the future.

"I chose my character to have this powerful, special sword, so I should be able to use it."

It becomes compulsive for the GM to plan their story and its progressive encounters with the expectation that in any scenario, the player might want to play their "Special Sword" card to adjust the flow of the narrative. If you just gloss over it and either negate the sword's potential influence or trivialize its influence, then why were they given the sword to begin with? If it's just to give them the sense that they have agency without actually giving it, that is false advertising and you should simply not have allowed them to have it to begin with. "But then they might not have played my game!" Then make a better game that they might actually prefer to play. Maybe one where they can have and use special swords that can have meaningful impact on the progression of the game.

FireJustice

2018-03-07, 01:26 PM

I will try to summarize it:

a) Draft the story before hand and force its course through the players. As long they dont suspect it, it will be co.
my comment: This style of play can work it, as a "theme park" approach, the ride is fixed, and everybody is confortable with it, and the DM / narrator is competent enough, okay.
Its the text book way to do it in conventions, or one-shots, etc.
I think its boring as hell. Best chats are when things go off the rails, when the narrator has to discard much work to accomodate a new direction.

b) Agency is nothing, things that need to happen will happen.
my comment: this is my biggest peeve one. I hate failing forward, i hate the illusion of risk - as theres no risk at all. why bother at all?
I mean, its ok to recycle encounters, really ok. You don't need totally diferent battlestats planed for two entire diferent chains, its efficient to do it.
But the rest, sorry, i disagree

c) Give pity benefits.
My comment: Oh boy. Yeah, We all love when the reality bend for dramatic purposes. It's called consolation prize.
Its okay timmy, you didnt score a point, but you still get a gold star.
After all, failure isnt an option (except when the plot say so... right, #b?)

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-07, 01:41 PM

RFLS

2018-03-07, 02:08 PM

kyoryu

2018-03-07, 02:51 PM

RazorChain

2018-03-07, 02:57 PM

Here's how this thread is going to go:

1) Some subset of the people, who are illusionist GMs, will say "wow, that's amazing, you're so right."

2) The other people, who believe that illusionism is just a bad idea, will say so.

3) Nobody's mind will change.

Sounds like the usual debating thread to me. Some thread go pages after pages just convincing one forum members of the error of his/her ways.

flond

2018-03-07, 03:02 PM

kyoryu

2018-03-07, 03:29 PM

Seriously though why not just be upfront about this. You don't need to call out every statement, just tell the players in the pitch that this game is about a specific story you have in mind and you'll bend the rules to make it happen.

That doesn't even sound that bad. Whereas "I've been lying to you so I can feel clever." Is a pretty bad look.

Exactly. As someone strongly against illusionism, I might even agree to a game - if you tell me that's what you're doing. That's fine. It gives me the option to join the game or not.

The problem with, well, let's call it "hard illusionism", where you're not divulging that you're using illusionism and claim that you are maintaining the integrity of player choice, is that it removes my ability to decide if that's a game I want to be involved in. That's the issue.

RazorChain

2018-03-07, 03:30 PM

Illusionism (as you've described it) is railroading. And it's a sneaky form of railroading that has huge negative consequences if discovered. If a DM says "I'm not railroading" but then uses illusionism to railroad and I catch them, they've lost my trust and I would have to leave the table. If they're honest about it ("There's an event I have planned, you'll really like it. But to get there you have to ..."), I can handle that and even enjoy it. Lying to players (as DM, not as NPC) is not OK.

The only place I see for these techniques is in softening/hiding already agreed-upon rails. This is (for example) what should happen when you're running an adventure path. Everyone knows there are rails and a plot in place, and everyone's accepted those. But they can be softened so that there's in-universe, rational reasons why those characters should follow the rails of their own free will.

Yes, I know. The style is all about hiding your railroading in a deceptive manner. You see when you sit at the table with a GM the social contract is usually never written and often never brought up. Players don't usually query the GM about his style or his GMing techniques. Often things go like this "I'm running a Pahtfinder game, who's with me?" and then a group gets form or it's a friend and you join a game. Like I've said earlier your average GM isn't going to tell you upfront that "he's going to railroad you so hard that you go choo choo". Most players find out that the GM railroads them after they have started playing with them and many GM's that railroad try to hide it. So the negative consequences of finding out that the GM railroads is that the players are aware of it and will brand him as a railroading GM. Very rarely will anyone confront a GM and ask him "Are you railroading us?" During play it is also also unheard of IME that a GM asks for an permission run an event they have planned, if it happens it's usually like this"I'm going to run the ruins of Myth Drannor next sessions" but usually the GM will just try to net or hook the PC's so they go to Myth Drannor.

Just to make sure:
So you mentioned that others will draw the line way before you will and you draw the line at "Illusionism isn't wrong unless you get caught". Is this a fair summary of your position?

Does that extend to lying to your players (actively or by omission) if they ask or otherwise care about if you use Illusionism?

At what point are you honest so that people can figure out if they want to play with you or not?

I ask because I hate this technique you describe* and you can tell, due to this honest communication, that I would hate your game. Thus you know that some players would hate your game. How do you avoid subjecting those players to your game? Or are the concerns of the players not relevant to your evaluation?

*Hence why my constructive criticism is focusing on whether you can have this be self selecting so that it coordinates DMs that use it with Players that are okay with it.

I'm not taking any moral stand here, and if I do it will probably be for the sake of the argument. I merely presenting a GMing style that is well known, at least in certain circles.

When I've used illusionism I never got asked but the question that would have arisen might have been if I was railroading the players. I ran the same "Illusionst" adventure for 2 groups, one of veteran gamers and one group of new beginners and after talking to the groups as we usually discuss gaming, nobody seemed to be the wiser. But again my GMing style isn't often discussed and I don't let the players get behind the curtain. I'm pretty upfront about that I'm a dirty GM and I'll use every trick in the book if it helps with immersion and fun, my players know this but won't know what trick I'm using when and most don't have a clue as they only show up to have fun.

Cluedrew

2018-03-07, 03:36 PM

I hate failing forward, i hate the illusion of riskOK, are these to separate dislikes? You seem to be connecting the two but in my mind they are very different. Short explanation: fail forward just makes something (instead of nothing) happen when you don't succeed. This something can be as bad or worse as whatever is concocted* to fill that empty space created by "nothing happens". Actually I know Powered by the Apocalypse are sometimes accused of being to harsh on their fail forward outcomes.

That is all I will say for now, but I could go on.

* In some cases it flows quite naturally, in others they gave up and created "re-try until success" mechanics.

RazorChain

2018-03-07, 03:37 PM

I think every DM uses these techniques to an extent, but:

-As a rule of thumb, if you are entering a session with a fixed outcome in your mind as the DM, that's not very good DMing. In most cases.
-Video gaming abuse these techniques, because they can't be there when you make an interesting decision. Your advantage as a DM is being there as a human mind. Use that mind and improvise.
-To help improvising, build a solid outline of your setting/locations/characters. Then you can just "play" the NPCs as your players play their PCs. You can react to almost everything they do that way.

I know how to improvise, I've run improvised games for decades. Once I ran an improvised campaign that lasted for 2 years.

Improvisation helps a GM to be better at Illusionism as he is better equipped to deal with unforseen actions on the part of the PC's and negating or impacting their choices competently.

CharonsHelper

2018-03-07, 03:39 PM

Seriously though why not just be upfront about this. You don't need to call out every statement, just tell the players in the pitch that this game is about a specific story you have in mind and you'll bend the rules to make it happen.

That doesn't even sound that bad. Whereas "I've been lying to you so I can feel clever." Is a pretty bad look.

That's pretty much what happens when a table sits down to play through an Adventure Path. Which works fine - because everyone at the table buys into that going in and knows what's going on.

And APs can be fun to play & run, but I don't want the GM to try to pretend that they're not running an AP when they are.

RazorChain

2018-03-07, 03:49 PM

So, you're in this to tell a story and receive praise instead of trying to do what the books tell you and your players the game is about? That's...really self centered.

Not really this is just you trying to attack me instead of what I've put forth. That's called ad hominem. This discussion isn't about me as a GM as for all you know I'm just trolling everybody for the sake of debate.

But I ain't. I'm presenting a GMing style that wasn't invented yesterday and you might discuss the morality of using that style and it's techniques or if it's valid in your opinion.

Red Fel

2018-03-07, 04:01 PM

But I ain't. I'm presenting a GMing style that wasn't invented yesterday and you might discuss the morality of using that style and it's techniques or if it's valid in your opinion.

But you're not. Well, you are and you aren't.

You are describing a storytelling style, in which you present a story to the players and they metaphorically press B to continue. And that's a legitimate style, it wasn't invented yesterday, and if your players signed on for that, it's fine in my book.

But you're also describing your motivation, which is basically to have the players pat you on the back for being so clever and creative. You've said as much. And that's problematic.

Here's the thing. If you at least still view it as participatory storytelling, you're playing a game. That's what a game is. If you're sharing the story, and the players get to immerse themselves in your world, that's a good thing.

But from what you say - well, let me use your quote.

Because writing a book is different, your "players" will pat you on the shoulder and tell you that you're doing great but you know they don't read your crummy novel.

First off, if your novel is bad, then forcing your players to sit through a reading of that novel won't make it better. But more importantly, what you're describing isn't about a shared experience - it's about exposing the players to your work, and forcing them to endure it. As you've described it, if you just gave it to them in written form, they won't sit through it, so better to put them in chairs and make them sit through it.

And that's a problem, because that's not a game. It's more like theater, in that one is performing while the rest silently spectate, but it's theater that you've tricked them into attending. "I thought we were going to mini-golf," your players say, while you laugh and announce, "Nope, I'll be performing my rendition of Wagner's Niebelungenlied."

That's not a game. It's a trick. And it's a mean trick.

kyoryu

2018-03-07, 04:33 PM

OK, are these to separate dislikes? You seem to be connecting the two but in my mind they are very different. Short explanation: fail forward just makes something (instead of nothing) happen when you don't succeed. This something can be as bad or worse as whatever is concocted* to fill that empty space created by "nothing happens". Actually I know Powered by the Apocalypse are sometimes accused of being to harsh on their fail forward outcomes.

That is all I will say for now, but I could go on.

* In some cases it flows quite naturally, in others they gave up and created "re-try until success" mechanics.

Yup. While some people interpret "fail forward" as "success or success with a cost, always", it really only has to mean "the situation changes in some way afterwards." The situation getting worse is totally cromulent.

Success at a cost (fail forward): "Okay, you failed your roll, so you were able to pick the lock, but broke your picks in the process."
Worse situation (fail forward): "Okay, you failed your roll. This lock is tricky! While you're picking it, some guards wander by..."
Not Fail Forward: "You failed your roll. The lock is still locked. Try again?"

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-07, 05:26 PM

Yup. While some people interpret "fail forward" as "success or success with a cost, always", it really only has to mean "the situation changes in some way afterwards." The situation getting worse is totally cromulent.

Success at a cost (fail forward): "Okay, you failed your roll, so you were able to pick the lock, but broke your picks in the process."
Worse situation (fail forward): "Okay, you failed your roll. This lock is tricky! While you're picking it, some guards wander by..."
Not Fail Forward: "You failed your roll. The lock is still locked. Try again?"

So at least as presented here, it's that events continue to progress and things continue to happen... not that the PCs goals or a particular story "move forward" no matter what?

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-07, 05:30 PM

So at least as presented here, it's that events continue to progress and things continue to happen... not that the PCs goals or a particular story "move forward" no matter what?

Basically, yeah. It's trying to avoid that "you failed. I try again. You failed. I try again." loop that's so boring. Each check, either on a success or a failure, should change the situation in some way (big or small). If it doesn't, don't roll.

RazorChain

2018-03-07, 05:52 PM

But you're not. Well, you are and you aren't.

You are describing a storytelling style, in which you present a story to the players and they metaphorically press B to continue. And that's a legitimate style, it wasn't invented yesterday, and if your players signed on for that, it's fine in my book.

But you're also describing your motivation, which is basically to have the players pat you on the back for being so clever and creative. You've said as much. And that's problematic.

Here's the thing. If you at least still view it as participatory storytelling, you're playing a game. That's what a game is. If you're sharing the story, and the players get to immerse themselves in your world, that's a good thing.

Illusionism is still gaming or participatory storytelling. I'm not describing my motivation, I'm selling you why the style is awesome. It's a sales pitch. If you have better selling points then you can divulge them to the rest of us?

I describe that you can't pull off illusionism all the time, there is no perfect illusionism. There is room for choice because the GM isnt interested in the outcome of all choices unless he's a total control freak. Also giving some room for choices reinforces the illusion of that there is choice and that the players have agency.

First off, if your novel is bad, then forcing your players to sit through a reading of that novel won't make it better. But more importantly, what you're describing isn't about a shared experience - it's about exposing the players to your work, and forcing them to endure it. As you've described it, if you just gave it to them in written form, they won't sit through it, so better to put them in chairs and make them sit through it.

And that's a problem, because that's not a game. It's more like theater, in that one is performing while the rest silently spectate, but it's theater that you've tricked them into attending. "I thought we were going to mini-golf," your players say, while you laugh and announce, "Nope, I'll be performing my rendition of Wagner's Niebelungenlied."

That's not a game. It's a trick. And it's a mean trick.

It's just me being snarky about the same old argument about railroading = write a book. Most people know that gaming and writing a book are totally different things even when railroading is involved. Writing a book isnt a social activity and I don't go telling people who play diceless narrative games or Once upon a time to write a book instead.

Darth Ultron

2018-03-07, 05:55 PM

What of the story the other players want to tell?

Each player tells the small story of their character, with in the larger game story.

The fact that you actually think players will never know says a lot about the kinds of players you choose to play with. Or your own inability to read your players.

Most players are clueless. After all, they want to be players because they are clueless.

Stage Magic gives three great examples of Illusionism:

1.The Clueless. They think the stage magic is real. Of course, the clueless person also will think a great many things are real like karma or fate or destiny are also real.

2.The Willing. They know the stage magic is fake and a trick, but they don't care: they want to be entertained and amazed. So they don't think about it, and let the magic ''wow'' them.

3.The Aware. They know it's a fake trick, and can't see anything except the act. They might get a bit of wonder about how the trick is done, but the trick itself does not 'wow' them at all.

And you see it with players:

1.Somehow the amazing game just happens.
2.They accept and know the DM is making the amazing game happen, and let it happen as they want to be entertained and amazed.
3.They know everything in the game play is fake and made by the DM, and can't see anything except the act. They might get a bit of wonder about how the DM does things, but the gameplay itself is obvious..

I'd point out that it's impossible to have a TRPG without Illusionism unless your doing the Group Storytelling Activity where each person can just say ''and then'' and alter anything on a whim or your doing it ''board game style'', where the players know utterly everything about the game, and then just play out what they know.

And Illusionism is not overly about ''tricking'' or ''fooling'' the players as they will mostly do that themselves. Illusionism is just about making a fun and exciting game.

And it's not about ''hiding'' Railroading. I'm a hard core Railroading DM, and if you talk to me for more then a minute or so I will flat out tell you my game is a RAILROAD. So there is not hiding, no tricks...the 8000 pound railroad is right in front of you.

Cluedrew

2018-03-07, 05:57 PM

Now I want to start "Nothing Doesn't Happen" a thread on failing forward.

So at least as presented here, it's that events continue to progress and things continue to happen... not that the PCs goals or a particular story "move forward" no matter what?One subtlety I think PhoenixPhyre missed: cut out the particular. The best* fail forward system will push thing along a different path on a success or failure. However all outcomes should push things along. It might be towards or away from where the PCs want to go, but it will not be the where they were**. I once messed up a travel roll that resulted in an ex showing up and trying to kill me. It made sense in context, trust me. I am not given the context, or p/c divide, for humor.

* the ones I have most enjoyed, so best for me.
** physical location might stay the same of course.

kyoryu

2018-03-07, 06:11 PM

So at least as presented here, it's that events continue to progress and things continue to happen... not that the PCs goals or a particular story "move forward" no matter what?

Exactly.

It's a common misconception, to be honest. I think it comes from the conflation of "story"-based games (railroading, DragonLance/Adventure Path style) with "storygames" (which explicitly avoid railroading).

Forward just means "things change, the situation evolves". It doesn't mean "the preplanned story continues according to plan."

(Again, to be clear, there's probably some people that *do* mean that, but it's not the general usage).

Another way of thinking about it is: If there's a chance that the players can succeed, given infinite time and resources, they do succeed. So figure out why they don't have infinite time/resources, and then roll to see if that occurs before they succeed. If you're looking for evidence in a room, you *will* find it, eventually... so what's the other pressure that stops you from just doing that forever? And if there's none, just say "cool, you succeed" and get on with it.

Segev

2018-03-07, 06:34 PM

Most players are clueless. After all, they want to be players because they are clueless.

The sheer condescending, disdainful arrogance of this statement is astounding.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-07, 06:42 PM

The sheer condescending, disdainful arrogance of this statement is astounding.

It's dead wrong an objective claim -- but it's also a statement anyone reading anything else DU ever says about gaming should keep in mind. It's critical context for everything else he asserts.

RazorChain

2018-03-07, 06:49 PM

The sheer condescending, disdainful arrogance of this statement is astounding.

Arrogant but true. Majority of players never take to the GM's chair and or don't involve themselves heavily. Many can barely bother to read a couple of pages of campaign documents and many will just skim the rules, others will never read them.

They will complain when they feel that the GM is unfairly blocking their choices but else they won't care much or give GM's techniques much thought. If they have fun and get pizza they'll care even less

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-07, 06:56 PM

Arrogant but true. Majority of players never take to the GM's chair and or don't involve themselves heavily. Many can barely bother to read a couple of pages of campaign documents and many will just skim the rules, others will never read them.

They will complain when they feel that the GM is unfairly blocking their choices but else they won't care much or give GM's techniques much thought. If they have fun and get pizza they'll care even less

My typical gaming table has been about 50% players who also had and/or would go to have GMing experience. And a good fraction of those who did not, could have quite competently.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-07, 06:57 PM

Arrogant but true. Majority of players never take to the GM's chair and or don't involve themselves heavily. Many can barely bother to read a couple of pages of campaign documents and many will just skim the rules, others will never read them.

They will complain when they feel that the GM is unfairly blocking their choices but else they won't care much or give GM's techniques much thought. If they have fun and get pizza they'll care even less

And this explains why you feel justified in treating them like dirt. Or maybe the act like that (taking you at your word) because they know that nothing they know or do will matter because their every action is fated in advance.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-07, 07:32 PM

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-07, 07:34 PM

"Eat, drink, and be goofy, because nothing we do actually matters."

Yeah. It's a great way to ruin impressionable young (in play time) players.

RazorChain

2018-03-07, 07:58 PM

My typical gaming table has been about 50% players who also had and/or would go to have GMing experience. And a good fraction of those who did not, could have quite competently.

I guess this depends on personal experience. The best gaming groups I have played with are with people who heavily immerse themselves in the hobby.

I have also run games at conventions, schools, youth clubs and gaming stores both open and closed games. I have been involved with many groups through over three decades of playing in 2 countries and IME involvement varies just like in other hobbies. Some people like to play chess regularly but don't give it much thought outside of playing

kyoryu

2018-03-07, 08:00 PM

"Eat, drink, and be goofy, because nothing we do actually matters."

Had a player in a group who I had been warned (by another GM) was likely to go off the rails and do ever more crazy things.

The first time he started to do that, actual, game-altering consequences happened (not in a jerk GM way, just natural for what he did). He didn't push the boundaries after that.

I'm fairly convinced that his behavior, consciously or not, was a way of finding what it took to *actually* have an impact on things.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-07, 08:04 PM

I guess this depends on personal experience. The best gaming groups I have played with are with people who heavily immerse themselves in the hobby.

I have also run games at conventions, schools, youth clubs and gaming stores both open and closed games. I have been involved with many groups through over three decades of playing in 2 countries and IME involvement varies just like in other hobbies. Some people like to play chess regularly but don't give it much thought outside of playing

And in my experience the players most personally invested are the new ones who haven't gotten jaded, burnt by DMs who treat them poorly, or just bored with the whole thing yet. I have two groups of teenagers who take things seriously, including taking "throw-away" comments (designed to set the stage) and run with them, leading to entirely new things I had never considered. Just yesterday I had a pair of boys decide to try to negotiate with a particular undead, showing that they payed attention to what they had learned about the city they were in and the source of the undead. As a result, they won themselves some allies much easier than I had planned and avoided a nasty fight. I had another group take a plot hook that wasn't really there (at least not intentionally) and run with it, fleshing out the world much more than I could have ever planned. And none of them have really ever played before.

Old players often lose that sense of wonder, that ability to immerse yourself in a fantastic world. They've seen it all, and demand new and more outre delights to sate their jaded palates or run wild, taking perverse pleasure in destroying settings and ruining any plot that might happen to be percolating. But that's just my experience.

Had a player in a group who I had been warned (by another GM) was likely to go off the rails and do ever more crazy things.

The first time he started to do that, actual, game-altering consequences happened (not in a jerk GM way, just natural for what he did). He didn't push the boundaries after that.

I'm fairly convinced that his behavior, consciously or not, was a way of finding what it took to *actually* have an impact on things.

I see that exact behavior from teenagers all the time. They push and push, looking for hard boundaries. Once they get good, firm push back in a way that makes sense, they stop. Arbitrary punishments or scoldings do nothing.

RazorChain

2018-03-07, 08:12 PM

And this explains why you feel justified in treating them like dirt. Or maybe the act like that (taking you at your word) because they know that nothing they know or do will matter because their every action is fated in advance.

Who has ever said I treated anyone like dirt or that I feel justified doing so?

I'm merely pointing out that lot of players never GM and therefore never learn the skill set. Many think it requires some gift or ability that they lack.

When players don't involve themselves heavily in the hobby then they lack the knowledge to see through or understand the techniques a GM uses.

I like to play pool and will play couple of times per month with a friend. I consider myself a decent player but outside of those times I play I don' practice, read about or watch Pool.
A professional pool player is going to win against me probably every single time we play.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-07, 08:20 PM

Who has ever said I treated anyone like dirt or that I feel justified doing so?

You did, this entire thread and back into the Sandbox thread. Starting with the assertion that it's OK to lie to your players. And as pointed out below, your consistent use of adversarial / zeros-sum analogies and metaphors.

If that's not been what you meant, you've been doing a surprisingly good job of making it sound like it's exactly what you meant.

kyoryu

2018-03-07, 08:27 PM

I see that exact behavior from teenagers all the time. They push and push, looking for hard boundaries. Once they get good, firm push back in a way that makes sense, they stop. Arbitrary punishments or scoldings do nothing.

It felt less like "looking for boundaries" and more like "looking to have an impact that was clearly based on their actions."

As I said, once he saw the world actually *did* change based on his reactions, the behavior chilled out. It wasn't a "punishment". It was a natural consequence.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-07, 08:28 PM

Who has ever said I treated anyone like dirt or that I feel justified doing so?

I'm merely pointing out that lot of players never GM and therefore never learn the skill set. Many think it requires some gift or ability that they lack.

When players don't involve themselves heavily in the hobby then they lack the knowledge to see through or understand the techniques a GM uses.

I like to play pool and will play couple of times per month with a friend. I consider myself a decent player but outside of those times I play I don' practice, read about or watch Pool.
A professional pool player is going to win against me probably every single time we play.

The bold part illustrates, to me, the root problem. You're treating this as a competition between the DM (to tell his story) and the players (to...not sure). All your metaphors are adversarial. All your discourse treats this as opposed sides. And that's not how RPGs are supposed to be. It's supposed to be a collaboration. Between players playing different parts. Not a pool game, not a wargame, but a symphony. The DM is not the player's opponent, he's the player's dance partner (to change the analogy). While they move differently, neither one is anything without the other. Both react to the other's movement, blending together into a harmonious flow that is exponentially more than the sum of its parts.

I've described a good session of DMing as "conducting an jazz orchestra where everyone has different ideas of where it should go and so everyone's improvising, while riding a roller-coaster. Sounds crazy, but is totally awesome when it works. And exhausting."

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-07, 08:32 PM

It felt less like "looking for boundaries" and more like "looking to have an impact that was clearly based on their actions."

As I said, once he saw the world actually *did* change based on his reactions, the behavior chilled out. It wasn't a "punishment". It was a natural consequence.

Right. I was contrasting "seeing that things are really logical and actually work as expected" to "arbitrary punishments", not saying they were the same. I was amplifying, not contradicting. Sorry for any confusion.

I knew a guy who had a dog that he had badly mistreated. He randomly (based on whim) punished and rewarded it, almost unconnected to what it did. As a result, it was functionally insane. So it did...things. Whatever it felt like. Players can get that way--if no matter what they do, everything just proceeds (or worse, they get random bolts from the blue or rewards at the DM's whim), they keep pushing and pushing. Might as well, after all, be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. When, instead, they face actual, rational consequences, they settle down.

RazorChain

2018-03-07, 08:43 PM

You did, this entire thread and back into the Sandbox thread. Starting with the assertion that it's OK to lie to your players.

If that's not been what you meant, you've been doing a surprisingly good job of making it sound like it's exactly what you meant.

I am fully aware that Illusionism is a dysfunctional style, parternalistic at best and authoritarian at worst. Disregarding if I am morally bankrupt or not or merely afflicted by one of the dark triad of psychology I still maintain it is a valid style and it's techniques relevant to game mastering.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-07, 08:54 PM

I am fully aware that Illusionism is a dysfunctional style, parternalistic at best and authoritarian at worst. Disregarding if I am morally bankrupt or not or merely afflicted by one of the dark triad of psychology I still maintain it is a valid style and it's techniques relevant to game mastering.

Dysfunctional =/= valid. In fact, those two are incompatible. You still haven't given any reasons beyond the players are morons and my story is that important why these are relevant. At best, they're relevant as examples of what not to do, techniques to ruin good players for DMs who are actually playing healthy games.

ImNotTrevor

2018-03-07, 09:21 PM

So far the "sales pitch" has boiled down to:

"Illusionism: Because Players are Idiots!"

Which, since I play with grownups who have higher-level degrees in psychology (two of them) two salesmen who are really good at reading people, a mom, and a small handful of college students including a chemical engineer, strikes me as the worst possible way to sell me on a style ever.

Also, it's easier for me to just use a system that supports more open playstyles and then play like that because me and my players have more fun like that. I don't need to illusion anything at all, which is easier.

And when I want to tell a specific story?
I go write one and let people read it if they want.

Goodness. These threads as of late are reminding me why GitP has gone from one of my preferred forums to like... a tertiary visit at best. I'm rather done with explaining to people why being a toxic, deceptive A-hole to your players is bad. I spend my days explaining to children that punching someone in the face for telling you to shut up is bad. I don't want to go to a forum and explain similarly simple concepts.

RazorChain

2018-03-07, 09:23 PM

Dysfunctional =/= valid. In fact, those two are incompatible. You still haven't given any reasons beyond the players are morons and my story is that important why these are relevant. At best, they're relevant as examples of what not to do, techniques to ruin good players for DMs who are actually playing healthy games.

The reason for most GM's railroad is to push their story or they can't handle the game going off the rails. As pointed out Illusionism is railroading in disguise, GM hubris is completely optional because a GM running a "good, healthy" game might still think his players are morons.

The Dysfunctional is the ethical part of running such a game, securing player knowledge and participation in a railroading game is considered more acceptable.

Cluedrew

2018-03-07, 09:27 PM

To Max_Killjoy: I missed a very critical not in your statement I was replying to last time. I'm not sure that actually changed my post that much (my point would have been the same but the lead in would have been different) but I thought I would point it out for clarity.

But anyways, I think the fail forward topic has been addressed. And I don't think I have much else to say about illusionism as presented. Any strategy that involves lying to friends is no go in my book.

The Zoat

2018-03-07, 09:59 PM

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-07, 10:12 PM

I think something important about 'illusionist' GMing that hasn't yet been explored in this thread is how it relates to the allocation of the sometimes-scarce resource that is preparation. For any given length of playtime, some amount of effective preparation for scenarios that occur is beneficial. Accepting this, by ensuring that certain scenarios occur in the first place, allocating preparation time and headspace becomes much easier.

It's possible to structure such scenarios around the active efforts of the NPCs involved, rather than around forcing them to occur simply because they must, and leave enough flex that they don't have to play out like a setpiece.

RazorChain

2018-03-07, 11:25 PM

I think something important about 'illusionist' GMing that hasn't yet been explored in this thread is how it relates to the allocation of the sometimes-scarce resource that is preparation. For any given length of playtime, some amount of effective preparation for scenarios that occur is beneficial. Accepting this, by ensuring that certain scenarios occur in the first place, allocating preparation time and headspace becomes much easier.

Some of the techniques I list aren't bound to Illusionism, some of them are widely used. You don't have to resort to illusionism to save time.

Most of these techniques are perfectly valid in participationism.

CarpeGuitarrem

2018-03-07, 11:57 PM

The Zoat

2018-03-08, 12:45 AM

I think "illusionism" (which, honestly, is just a nice way of saying "lying about railroading") comes from a fear of losing control. The GM has this perfectly planned picture in mind, and they're scared of losing that. But there's something interesting about RPGs...

The GM isn't the only one who's creating story.

Every choice the players make is a contribution to the story. Every action they take is part of the unfolding story. The end result doesn't match anyone's vision, because it comes from everyone. And illusionism undercuts that. Theme parks can be fun, but part of the point of an RPG is that it's run by an intelligent human mind, which means that players' actions can get sensible responses, empowering them to poke at the world and leave their mark on it.

From my experience GMing, I think GMs have very good reason to be afraid of losing the 'perfect picture', because moving into unfamiliar territory and having to improvise generally has a negative effect on the entire game experience.

Given that "total illusionism" is impossible in practice because illusionism requires the players be unaware, I think most degrees of illusionism can be justified depending on the perceptiveness of the players for whom one is GMing.

CarpeGuitarrem

2018-03-08, 01:01 AM

From my experience GMing, those moments of not knowing what happens next are the only reason to GM.

Learning to improvise is the single best way to transform your GMing.

Koo Rehtorb

2018-03-08, 01:10 AM

From my experience GMing, I think GMs have very good reason to be afraid of losing the 'perfect picture', because moving into unfamiliar territory and having to improvise generally has a negative effect on the entire game experience.

If you're bad at improv then you're bad at GMing. The solution to this is to practise and get better at GMing, not use toxic practises to (vainly) try to cover for your shortcomings.

NichG

2018-03-08, 01:51 AM

The opening post reads to me as 'define a thing in order to attack it'. People don't like railroading, so if one associates a certain set of deceptive methods strongly with railroading by posting that the only reason that one would want to use them is in order to railroad, well, yeah. Followed later on by a 'well, if its just to save time, its not illusionism because it's compatible with participationism' response...

So in trying to explain where I believe that thinking in terms of illusion and even manipulation can be helpful, I'm inevitably going to run into places where definitions differ. I'm not interested in defending specific things from the first post, or the specific form of 'illusionism' which that first post set out.

However, I would like to defend the idea that thinking about the game as consisting only of those pieces of knowledge which are held in common and the way in which new information will be regarded is an incredibly useful perspective to be able to don in order to effectively increase the freedom of everyone at the table to play and do what they want while being compatible with eachothers' fun. Given that everyone at the table has things they want to get out of it, the 'true' art of illusionism is figuring out the optimal ways to make the fact that those motivations do actually underlie your play at some level (as player or GM) minimally disruptive. That can be used in all sorts of ways, some of which are objectionable. Generally this corresponds to when the motivations themselves are objectionable.

I think the key point is that there's two ways that people could explain what is going on at the game table to themselves - one, that there actually 'is' some shared world which everyone is imagining, and information revealed at the table is information which came from uncovering more of that shared world; the other, that there's a bunch of people sitting around a table trying to have fun and saying and doing whatever helps them with that goal. Generally there's some suspension of disbelief going into the exercise, so despite the latter being obviously the true explanation, people try to prefer to the former and only defer to the latter when something pushes them to do so.

Inconsistency is a big one. As long as the shared world remains self-consistent, even if its not real, you can still reason about it successfully. If information revealed about the shared world isn't self-consistent, then reasoning based on the idea of a shared world doesn't work so well. But assuming that inconsistency is the only thing that can go wrong is an oversimplification.

The other thing that can go wrong is bias. If for example, every time the players encounter a new type of monster it turns out to be immune to their (current) best source of damage, even though that could be totally self-consistent, it is much more easily explained by 'the GM wants to shut down our trick' than 'this is how the world is'. Similarly, when a player creates a character who requires a long series of coincidences (multiple timed alignment changes, becoming a member of the right sequence of secret societies and betraying them in the right order, etc) to be game-legal, even if they come up with a backstory that explains all of those coincidences in a way that is consistent with the setting and world, the much more obvious explanation is that 'the player wanted to justify this combination of mechanics'.

Those are examples of what is often problematic behavior with respect to the social dynamics of the table, e.g. where one can find fault with the GM or the player for putting something they wanted above the fun of the game for everyone there. But you can also just as well have examples in which there is no malice or offense, just problems introduced by the reality that no, the game world does not in fact exist.

From a GM perspective, the players may spontaneously decide to go to a certain location they've heard about but which has not been prepared in detail. In that case, the 'bias' which will be demonstrated without the use of illusionist techniques is the difference in quality between the GM's prepared material and improvised material. At that point, if the GM isn't very quick on their mental feet with respect to improv, the best explanation for e.g. this foreign city being pretty boring without much going on, or this new NPC being somewhat simplistic, may be 'oh, it's that way because we wandered out of the prepared area' - e.g. a metagame reality that the GM is not as good at improv as they are at prepared content.

From a player perspective, they may have introduced a character who at some point finds it hard to justify not doing something which would be very disruptive at a metagame level - perhaps the character stated their life goal early on and then it didn't really keep up with the course of the campaign ('I want to be rich', 'you now have a 50000gp magic item') and now the character would logically leave. Or perhaps the character as introduced has loyalties which would logically make them turn against the party and attack them, but the table policy is to avoid PVP. In those cases, if the player just quashes the character's disruptive action, it may be a clearly metagame-driven moment (e.g. demonstrating that the world is better explained by 'PCs have to stick together' than by the details of the characters).

If we take the GM case, since it's a common one, frequent responses are: 'just push ahead and do what I can' (works if you're good at improv), 'end the session and prep/prep mid-session' (will eventually result in players metagaming to stay on the path to avoid this), 'prevent the characters from leaving the path', 'make the path lead back to the prepared area', 'repurpose other prepared material', 'buy time to think', etc.

The point here with illusionist techniques is not 'I can get the players to not leave the path and make them not realize it!' as was sort of suggested in the opening post, but rather to evaluate and compare the damage done by each option to the overall suspension of disbelief and table feeling.

For example, one major point is that harmful surprises are going to be seen as originating from the GM, while opportunities and distractions will be more likely to be seen as originating from the players (and therefore, will be attributed to the characters). So if the GM wants to buy time to think, having monsters attack or something break or the weather turn bad is a higher risk of appearing to just be the GM trying to stop the players from getting to the destination. On the other hand, if the GM places something in the characters' path which will likely lead to a positive result when interacted with and a neutral result otherwise, then the players are much more likely to consider the delay to be a result of their own making if they choose to pursue the distraction.

This kind of thing is why you absolutely do not want to step on agency if you want to maintain a good illusion - when players do things, they accept responsibility for being the cause of those things, which protects the GM from the appearance of bias. If you no-sell that, it's going to very obviously be attributed to some intent on the part of the GM even in cases where such intent didn't exist. The more players see the structure of the world as being a reaction to things they've done, the easier it is to believe in explanations arising from that world.

Another example of this kind of thing when it comes to game design is the role of dice. Dice are often used to mediate situations where there is the risk that there will be a strong negative feeling about the outcome, which will favor explanations of partiality. E.g. if the GM says 'you miss, because of hidden information I possess', that admits an explanation that the GM just didn't want you to hit. But if the GM sets out the conditions for hitting or missing, and the dice tell you that you miss, it helps insulate the GM from being responsible for deciding the miss.

Anyhow, without getting too far into it, this kind of thinking can be used as a method of analysis to consider how certain things will appear with respect to either in-world or out-world explanations, and to make choices such that the appearances tend to have better in-world covers. There will always be out-of-character reasons for things, even with table negotiation and compromises and social contracts and such, and ultimately in-game needs take backseat to out-of-game needs. The art of illusion is to make those necessities compatible with the way the people at the table experience the in-game world.

JellyPooga

2018-03-08, 02:09 AM

If you're bad at improv then you're bad at GMing.

This here? This is flat wrong. I've played with a GM that's stuck literally to the letter of a campaign module and I thoroughly enjoyed it, in no small part due to his GMing style, which was almost entirely devoid of any improvisation (I looked up the adventure later and was actively impressed by how much that man managed to adhere to the script, given some of the shenanigans we players pulled).

Improv is just one tool in a GMs kit and by no means is it an essential one. Yes, many good GMs use it a lot, but it doesn't make you a bad GM if you don't or can't care or want to.

Illusionism, as much as some in this thread might hate it, is just another tool. No-one here is advocating using it in every scene. No-one is advocating a "gotcha", more fool the players for not being mind-readers, GM vs. Players adversarial style game. Illusionism is just a way of subtly guiding the players down certain paths to enhance the game. It's not about taking away choice, as much as it's about trying to include elements the players might enjoy.

A common example is "the second tavern in the village". You know the one; it's the one without rooms to stay in and has the seedier reputation than the upstanding wayfarers inn. Many GMs include this "locals tavern" and many players avail themselves of its facilities during their stay in town. Does it ultimately serve a purpose in the grand scheme of the campaign? No. Does it give players a choice? Yes. Is that choice meaningful? No. It's an illusion of the world being a bigger place than just what's happening to the players. It's a decision point for the players without creating too much work for the GM, giving them the agency to choose which pub to drink in but having little bearing on the adventure as a whole.

The advantage of introducing an illusory element like this is the potential to use it later; plot evolves from the game and the choices the players make and the more elements you introduce the more potential exists. Illusionism, in part, is the art of introducing such elements without the work of fully developing those elements; testing the water, as it were, of the players' goals, interests or intent. To go back to the example of taking the Pass, the Mines or the Gap, the GM might push the players to take the Mines this time, but by giving the players the false choice of taking the Gap or the Pass, he has an insight for the future of what they might be interested in doing next time, or even be able to play on their success or failure in a later adventure.

Florian

2018-03-08, 03:07 AM

If you're bad at improv then you're bad at GMing. The solution to this is to practise and get better at GMing, not use toxic practises to (vainly) try to cover for your shortcomings.

It´s a tool, nothing more, an often overused and bland one at best, a stop-gap issue at most. I've played with some good gms, very creative people that really put time and heart-blood into creating their stuff, so the attention to and the level of detail of things were impressive, to the point that it was immediately noticeable when improv came into it.

One guy I played VtM with back in the early 90s grabbed a Polaroid camera, visited the whole locations, went looking for suitable people to pose as our NPC. He even interviewed some people about their vita, to have more "natural" and varied backgrounds. In short, there was an amount of depth to the material that made this particular campaign so great and also hard to fake.

Koo Rehtorb

2018-03-08, 03:35 AM

It´s a tool, nothing more, an often overused and bland one at best, a stop-gap issue at most. I've played with some good gms, very creative people that really put time and heart-blood into creating their stuff, so the attention to and the level of detail of things were impressive, to the point that it was immediately noticeable when improv came into it.

One guy I played VtM with back in the early 90s grabbed a Polaroid camera, visited the whole locations, went looking for suitable people to pose as our NPC. He even interviewed some people about their vita, to have more "natural" and varied backgrounds. In short, there was an amount of depth to the material that made this particular campaign so great and also hard to fake.

I'm not saying improv is the only thing GMs should be doing. Preparation, of course, has its place too. You're under no requirement to improv literally everything on the spot at all times.

However, as the natural course of playing an RPG, players are going to do things that you didn't expect or plan for. And them doing that is, in fact, the most important part of an RPG, the thing that separates an RPG from a CRPG or a choose your own adventure book. And if you break down as a GM and can't cope when people do unexpected things then you are failing to accommodate the most important aspect of RPGs, player choice. And that makes you a bad GM.

It makes you a bad GM regardless of how you deal with it. You're a bad GM whether you railroad PCs back onto the plot or whether you just flail around ineptly and the game suddenly sucks. Inept flailing is a lot more understandable because it's a hard skillset and hopefully you'll get better at it over time. I have a great degree of patience for GMs who admit they're bad at it and ask for some time to think, there's no shame in not immediately being perfect at it. I have no sympathy for those who choose to deal with it through railroading the players. It's a bad toxic GM practise that's damaging to the hobby and it needs to stop.

Satinavian

2018-03-08, 04:39 AM

Some of the techniques I list aren't bound to Illusionism, some of them are widely used. You don't have to resort to illusionism to save time.

Most of these techniques are perfectly valid in participationism.

As you seem to want to sell us Illusionism, how about giving some good reasons why you should use it instead of Participationism. Which, at least here seems to be regarded as a style that has all the benefits of Illusionism (can tell a story, less improvisation needed, less preparation needed) and none of the drawbacks (namely your players being pissed off after finding your deception/players realising they are in the wrong kind of game after the story already started). Both techniques even rely on the very same GM skills. So why use Illusionism in the first place ?

Seto

2018-03-08, 04:54 AM

Right, I don't think the techniques described in the first post under the name of "illusionism" should be thought of as "how to trick your players into following your railroad", (although they certainly can be used that way), but as "how to use my prep work most efficiently". That's also why I said at the beginning of the thread that I use them at the individual session level, since it's what I prep, rather than the whole campaign.

I don't use them much in my current game of FATE Accelerated, because that system makes it easy to improvise and create new situations on a whim - athough I do use them for some NPCs I've put a lot of work in and want the players to meet, for example. But when I DM D&D 3.5 and put hours of time into creating dungeons, traps and combat encounters carefully tailored to be balanced to party level and offer just the right level of challenge? Oooh boy, you better believe the PCs will see them, even if I have to repurpose, refluff or Quantum Ogre the hell out of my prep.
That doesn't mean that the PCs can't make meaningful choices; I think that's a false dilemma. Going through Caradhras or going through Moria is a different session, even if the stone giants of Caradhras' statblock and tactics are suspiciously similar to the Trolls that they would have encountered in Moria, and even if both paths will lead them to the same destination. Similarly, they have agency in how they deal with all those encounters: they might fight, use Diplomacy, even cross over to the enemy's side. And if they do that, I will still use my prep work and prepared encounters, but they will react differently to the PC's presence. You were supposed to be attacked by Demons sent by Orcus? Now that you pledged yourself to Orcus, those Demons I had prepared are Graz'zt minions... and you still have to fight them. However, doing so will ingratiate you with your new patron. There may even be a few demons that are Orcus' spies and turn against the rest of the pack to help you. The next session will be significantly different that it would have been had you not pledged yourself to Orcus.

So yeah, I think those techniques are useful or outright necessary for DMs in prep-heavy games. That said, I can't condone Razor Chain's declarations about players being clueless and the GM having to force through their story.

The Zoat

2018-03-08, 07:24 AM

If you're bad at improv then you're bad at GMing. The solution to this is to practise and get better at GMing, not use toxic practises to (vainly) try to cover for your shortcomings.

I feel you have misrepresented me in this response. It is reasonable for someone running a game to want to prepare, because prepared material is ultimately better than purely improvised material as a matter of course for at the very least, some GMs. This holds trues for most aspects of the session, for example: social interaction with NPCs, individual 'character moments', combat encounters, dungeon design, and other such things.

As a result, even assuming effectively infinite preparation, constraining the number of these aspects that appear in a session, either by direct railroading (constraining the players' options) or illusionism (offering choices to the players that lead to the same result), will have generally positive effects on the quality of the players' experience as it relates purely to individual moments and their composition.

Nevertheless, I do not advocate for illusionism to the point that I would consider it 'railroading', but, for example, if I want to introduce a plot hook by having the paladin run into a sympathetic outlaw, it doesn't matter if the paladin chooses to visit the smith, the market, or even the nobles' district: the outlaw will always accost him, just because I haven't the inclination to think of a new plot hook.

Pleh

2018-03-08, 07:42 AM

This here? This is flat wrong. I've played with a GM that's stuck literally to the letter of a campaign module and I thoroughly enjoyed it, in no small part due to his GMing style, which was almost entirely devoid of any improvisation (I looked up the adventure later and was actively impressed by how much that man managed to adhere to the script, given some of the shenanigans we players pulled).

Actually, it sounds like this person was very good at improvising, if they managed to smoothly redirect a whole bunch of stuff back on course.

Improvising just means spontaneously creating new content, which includes, but is not limited to, spontaneous changing the narrative course of the game.

It´s a tool, nothing more, an often overused and bland one at best, a stop-gap issue at most. I've played with some good gms, very creative people that really put time and heart-blood into creating their stuff, so the attention to and the level of detail of things were impressive, to the point that it was immediately noticeable when improv came into it.

One guy I played VtM with back in the early 90s grabbed a Polaroid camera, visited the whole locations, went looking for suitable people to pose as our NPC. He even interviewed some people about their vita, to have more "natural" and varied backgrounds. In short, there was an amount of depth to the material that made this particular campaign so great and also hard to fake.

Anecdotal evidence only describes the limits of your knowledge, not the limits of reality.

Because absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

As a DM, some of my best creative elements were improvised. Commonly, it happens because players introduced new directions for the story I hadn't considered or planned for and it inspired me to elaborate on the path they were taking.

CharonsHelper

2018-03-08, 07:43 AM

However, as the natural course of playing an RPG, players are going to do things that you didn't expect or plan for. And them doing that is, in fact, the most important part of an RPG, the thing that separates an RPG from a CRPG or a choose your own adventure book.

I hear this a lot on these boards - and it's pretty much total BS.

By that logic - no one should play board games because a computer game doesn't take the prep time. Obviously many people disagree.

No one should travel to go sight-seeing because they could just look up the pictures online. It would save tons of money.

No one should go to the theatre because movies are cheaper and have better special effects.

Obviously - these are silly arguments - and I believe that your argument is equally silly. Different forms of media have a different feel & draws to them even if they are, in many ways, functionally similar at the surface level.

Now - I'm not a proponent of lying to your players. But frankly - total improv is kinda overrated in my opinion. I've never seen it stack up to decently prepared GMing, even by GMs who talk about how they improv all the time and are amazing at it.

Darth Ultron

2018-03-08, 08:03 AM

The reason for most GM's railroad is to push their story or they can't handle the game going off the rails. As pointed out Illusionism is railroading in disguise, GM hubris is completely optional because a GM running a "good, healthy" game might still think his players are morons.

The Dysfunctional is the ethical part of running such a game, securing player knowledge and participation in a railroading game is considered more acceptable.

I would add that some GMs railroad to tell a better story. Sure the false theory is ''everyone does nothing'' and somehow an amazing game energies out of nothing at all, but really things don't happen like that. In reality a good amazing game takes time, effort, planning, focus and work....kind of like anything in life in general.

The GM isn't the only one who's creating story.

Every choice the players make is a contribution to the story. Every action they take is part of the unfolding story. The end result doesn't match anyone's vision, because it comes from everyone. And illusionism undercuts that. Theme parks can be fun, but part of the point of an RPG is that it's run by an intelligent human mind, which means that players' actions can get sensible responses, empowering them to poke at the world and leave their mark on it.

Note your own Illusionism.

You are absolutely sure that badwrongfun DM is not creating the story.

Yet, oddly, you never say the players ARE creating the story. You just say they are contributing to the story...and that is true.

As you seem to want to sell us Illusionism, how about giving some good reasons why you should use it instead of Participationism. Which, at least here seems to be regarded as a style that has all the benefits of Illusionism (can tell a story, less improvisation needed, less preparation needed) and none of the drawbacks (namely your players being pissed off after finding your deception/players realising they are in the wrong kind of game after the story already started). Both techniques even rely on the very same GM skills. So why use Illusionism in the first place ?

Participation requires very good players, and more so it requires players that want to sit make and ''make a game world story'' and NOT play in the game world.

That is the thing everyone misses, the vast majority of players just want to play the game. They want to role play a single character, and that is it. They don't want to make a story or build some sort of happy social construction or whatever: they just want to play the game.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-08, 08:22 AM

I hear this a lot on these boards - and it's pretty much total BS.

By that logic - no one should play board games because a computer game doesn't take the prep time. Obviously many people disagree.

No one should travel to go sight-seeing because they could just look up the pictures online. It would save tons of money.

No one should go to the theatre because movies are cheaper and have better special effects.

Obviously - these are silly arguments - and I believe that your argument is equally silly. Different forms of media have a different feel & draws to them even if they are, in many ways, functionally similar at the surface level.

Now - I'm not a proponent of lying to your players. But frankly - total improv is kinda overrated in my opinion. I've never seen it stack up to decently prepared GMing, even by GMs who talk about how they improv all the time and are amazing at it.

I don't understand how your response relates to the passage quoted. He wasn't saying that you shouldn't prepare at all, but that you should prepare so that you can improvise properly. Both improvisation and preparation are needed.

There are ways to prepare that aid you in reacting to unexpected actions (which are very common) and ways that inhibit your reactions or make you more likely to turn to bad tactics like railroading (in any of its forms). One of the least useful things you can prepare (in my experience) is a plot (meaning a sequence of events that must happen). Vertical planning (planning a whole arc of the campaign) is less productive and more likely to induce railroading than is horizontal planning--knowing what's out there and how they will react.

As to illusionism, without honesty, trust is lost. And once trust is lost, so is the game. I've found that being totally honest with the players is the best strategy for maintaining fun. For example, I had a case where there were multiple destinations within a small area. I had (due to lack of time) only prepared material for 3 of the 9. So I told the players: "Here are the possible destinations--the rest of the city is bombed-out rubble. You can go anywhere, but right now I only have these three planned. For this session, please choose one of these three. You can go to the other places but just not right now." Contrast that with finding reasons that they can't go to the other 6--invisible walls, sudden increases in patrolling monsters, divine revelations, etc. One is much more respectful and likely to get buy in than the others.

Darth Ultron

2018-03-08, 08:35 AM

I hear this a lot on these boards - and it's pretty much total BS.

I agree. The people that say this are only talking about two types of DM:

The Bad DM-They are not good at being a DM, either they have little experience or little skill or both.....or they are just a jerk. Either way they are Surprised by everything and anything...always or they are just a jerk that wants to be a jerk to the players.

The Casual DM-They are at least an average DM, but they choose to not think about the game and willingly let themselves be surprised. They want the players to be awesome, so they play dumb.

Both of the above DMs are Surprised all the time, and fuel the myth that it happens to all DMs. But it does not.

CharonsHelper

2018-03-08, 08:53 AM

I agree. The people that say this are only talking about two types of DM:

The Bad DM-They are not good at being a DM, either they have little experience or little skill or both.....or they are just a jerk. Either way they are Surprised by everything and anything...always or they are just a jerk that wants to be a jerk to the players.

The Casual DM-They are at least an average DM, but they choose to not think about the game and willingly let themselves be surprised. They want the players to be awesome, so they play dumb.

Both of the above DMs are Surprised all the time, and fuel the myth that it happens to all DMs. But it does not.

I disagree with that assessment too. :smallannoyed:

Satinavian

2018-03-08, 10:04 AM

Participation requires very good players, and more so it requires players that want to sit make and ''make a game world story'' and NOT play in the game world.

That is the thing everyone misses, the vast majority of players just want to play the game. They want to role play a single character, and that is it. They don't want to make a story or build some sort of happy social construction or whatever: they just want to play the game.
So you are saying that the benefit of Illusionism over Participationism is that you can force it on players who don't like Participationism and wouldn't have agreed to such an experience, if asked ? That is not only dishonest but borderline abusive. It is also a friendship ender.

I hope RazorChain has something better to offer.

Segev

2018-03-08, 10:19 AM

It felt less like "looking for boundaries" and more like "looking to have an impact that was clearly based on their actions."

As I said, once he saw the world actually *did* change based on his reactions, the behavior chilled out. It wasn't a "punishment". It was a natural consequence.

I would argue that these are actually the same thing. Both "testing boundaries until they get pushback" and "trying things until they find out what it takes to make an impact" are the same behavior. They're rooted in the same cause: a desire to understand how you fit into the world.

I would be surprised if children and teens are testing boundaries just to find out what's "allowed." I suspect they're actually testing to see what's POSSIBLE. It's an old saw by this point, but if you let the kid burn his hand on the stove once, he's far more likely to refrain from touching it again than if you keep forcibly denying him the opportunity. That's not to say not to give warnings, but when you know the consequences are survivable, maybe it's best to give warnings and let them make their own mistakes anyway. They'll learn to heed your warnings based on the trust they gain that you were right with prior ones.

In short: people want to impact the world. People also fear failure, but having a chance to fail is crucial. Seeing their choices matter, even if it means they screwed up and have to deal with fallout, makes people secure in the notion that what they do is important.

Frozen_Feet

2018-03-08, 10:32 AM

Illusionism is a way to paper over flaws in scenario design. So is improvization, for that matter, or at least a lot of bad GMs use all their improvizational skill for illusionism.

However, there are vital differences.

Illusionism, whether planned or improvized, is reductive, even destructive, in nature: it only serves to limit the scope of the game.

The sort of improvization that GMs are encouraged to do is typically constructive: the purpose is to add material and functionality to a game. Of course, good preparation will lessen the need for improvization, but just as well I could say learning to improvize is part of the preparation. The only real, fundamental difference between preplanned content and improvized content is when the content is made; they serve the same purpose and neither is inherently better than the other.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-08, 10:33 AM

I would argue that these are actually the same thing. Both "testing boundaries until they get pushback" and "trying things until they find out what it takes to make an impact" are the same behavior. They're rooted in the same cause: a desire to understand how you fit into the world.

I would be surprised if children and teens are testing boundaries just to find out what's "allowed." I suspect they're actually testing to see what's POSSIBLE. It's an old saw by this point, but if you let the kid burn his hand on the stove once, he's far more likely to refrain from touching it again than if you keep forcibly denying him the opportunity. That's not to say not to give warnings, but when you know the consequences are survivable, maybe it's best to give warnings and let them make their own mistakes anyway. They'll learn to heed your warnings based on the trust they gain that you were right with prior ones.

In short: people want to impact the world. People also fear failure, but having a chance to fail is crucial. Seeing their choices matter, even if it means they screwed up and have to deal with fallout, makes people secure in the notion that what they do is important.

On the flip side, this is why "terror based" efforts to get kids to avoid certain activities are doomed to fail -- the instant the kid or one of their friends tries something and they don't immediately catch a horrible disease or turn into a freak or become a homeless outcast, they're quite likely to see the "lessons" as nothing but bullcrap and disregard them entirely.

The Zoat

2018-03-08, 10:58 AM

Illusionism, whether planned or improvized, is reductive, even destructive, in nature: it only serves to limit the scope of the game.

The scope of the construct of the game as produced by the GM is reduced, but the scope of the player's experience of the game can be in turn increased by the more efficiently allocated use of preparation.

Consider this example. The PCs are in a large city, and for the sake of verisimilitude cannot be said to have only one tavern in their near vicinity. Given only a limited amount of preparation, thinking of multiple sets of things to do and people to meet in three or four taverns can for a GM with limited faculties result in a play experience that is actually shallower than the one that would occur if the GM simply thought of a few scenarios and characters that could be inserted to any one of the taverns the PCs might visit.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-08, 11:17 AM

The scope of the construct of the game as produced by the GM is reduced, but the scope of the player's experience of the game can be in turn increased by the more efficiently allocated use of preparation.

Consider this example. The PCs are in a large city, and for the sake of verisimilitude cannot be said to have only one tavern in their near vicinity. Given only a limited amount of preparation, thinking of multiple sets of things to do and people to meet in three or four taverns can for a GM with limited faculties result in a play experience that is actually shallower than the one that would occur if the GM simply thought of a few scenarios and characters that could be inserted to any one of the taverns the PCs might visit.

Especially if the GM can set it up as 10 things, and consider that at any particular tavern 3 to 5 of them would make sense depending on the character of the place.

IME, if the GM puts more of their prep effort into worldbuilding and establishing a framework, the improvised content grows organically from that framework and retains more internal consistency and coherence.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-08, 11:44 AM

Especially if the GM can set it up as 10 things, and consider that at any particular tavern 3 to 5 of them would make sense depending on the character of the place.

IME, if the GM puts more of their prep effort into worldbuilding and establishing a framework, the improvised content grows organically from that framework and retains more internal consistency and coherence.

I actually built a tool to create random NPCs with names/races/personalities from lists I selected by fantasy culture so that I can do the hardest part (creating the people) without a problem. It'll generate as many as asked, and you can have different settings for different cultures.

That's the kind of prep that works best for me.

Segev

2018-03-08, 12:08 PM

On the flip side, this is why "terror based" efforts to get kids to avoid certain activities are doomed to fail -- the instant the kid or one of their friends tries something and they don't immediately catch a horrible disease or turn into a freak or become a homeless outcast, they're quite likely to see the "lessons" as nothing but bullcrap and disregard them entirely.

This is why realistic warnings are so important. You can't just show the end result; you have to show - believably - the path to it.

This is part of the "believable/understandable pushback." You can and should explain why drugs are bad. Explain the path they follow. Teens are not actually stupid. They're naïve and unwise and often ignorant, but they CAN understand consequences when they actually match something in their real-world experience. They may need help with long-term planning; that part of their brain isn't well-developed yet. But they're not incapable of it.

Heck, I wasn't incapable of it, but then, I was always the nerd who was "40 when I was 12" according to everybody, so maybe I'm an outlier, there. I am incapable of doing too terribly much in the throes of emotion because I can't start acting without thinking about "and then what?" This makes the emotions themselves more painful to deal with out of the impotence of their intensity, but it does mean I don't tend to suffer long-term consequences of bad emotional choices.

Segev

2018-03-08, 02:08 PM

You forgot to blue text your entire post. Or were you practicing your modest proposal writing technique?

You may want to quote to whom you're addressing this. I'm unsure if it's me (as I have the last post before yours) or the OP.

RazorChain

2018-03-08, 02:42 PM

As you seem to want to sell us Illusionism, how about giving some good reasons why you should use it instead of Participationism. Which, at least here seems to be regarded as a style that has all the benefits of Illusionism (can tell a story, less improvisation needed, less preparation needed) and none of the drawbacks (namely your players being pissed off after finding your deception/players realising they are in the wrong kind of game after the story already started). Both techniques even rely on the very same GM skills. So why use Illusionism in the first place ?

Honestly I don't care one way or another about Illusionism other than to explore the method to the madness and what benefits the techniques bring to the table. People have to discern between the aim of the style and the techniques used.

I can't speak universally about why GM's would or should use Illusionism because it it much harder than Participationism but the payoff is emotional one. I believe that many GM that railroad set out to do so the Illusionist way, they are trying to guide their players through their cool scenarios and they have it in their head how the scenes will play out. You see on roleplaying forums where new GM's plan their overarching plots and their cool badguys and how their going to escape from the group in scene 3 and then it goes from A to B to C to D to Climax. Most GM's don't want to railroad in a hamfisted manner but so to realize their vision they might use subterfuge instead and resort to Illusionism without thinking much about it. Just think about it if a GM is running his own module he won't discern much from a published module except he's not telling his player he's running the Rise and Fall of Salhazar the Lichlord, a 3 part adventure module written by the GM. The GM might see that the social contract is in place already because frankly what is the difference between his module and a published module.

The emotional payoff is paternalistic in the sense that the GM has created an fun immersive experience where the PC's felt that they are the heroes of the story. They might talk about the cool "choreographed" fight scenes and all the good ideas "they" had when the GM was nudging them to his solutions all along. In a sense it's when you let your child win a game and it's really happy that it "won". Or yo might just be like me and practice Illusionism to see if it can be done knowing fully that there are easier methods.

Very often, especially among newer groups and strangers there isn't established any social contract. Couple of years ago when I brought to together a bunch of strangers to play, GMing style or railroad was never mentioned when we were planning what to play and as I almost never run modules. I just had to find out if my style and my players styles meshed and 5 out of 6 players enjoy my style while the last one likes grindhouse dungeocrawls where at least one character should die every session. If I had said I'm going to run the Rise of Tiamat then everybody would have expected a railroad, of course AP and organized play just sets expectations from the start.

NichG had a very good post on this thread where he mentions perception both on the part of the player and the GM. This is important because the methods or techniques I list are just that techniques, they don't have any morality attached. How we perceive fudging both as players and GMs depends on the person. For some it's outright cheating for others it's acceptable even though there hasn't been made any social contract about it. As I have to go to work I'll come back to Perception later.

I fully know that Illusionism is a controversial style which I thought would warrant a lively debate once or if people would get over throwing **** at me for bringing up such a dirty subject.

Scripten

2018-03-08, 03:53 PM

I fully know that Illusionism is a controversial style which I thought would warrant a lively debate once or if people would get over throwing **** at me for bringing up such a dirty subject.

It's controversial because it advocates lying and manipulation as prime tactics for a DM to engage in. Many people game with their friends or attempt to make friends of those they game with. Whilst lying in general isn't great, it's particularly egregious when you do it to people with a measure of trust in you.

Note that this isn't discussing the what I consider more mundane version of illusionism, in which the DM and players have a social contract that the DM will attempt to keep them on rails (or otherwise move prepped materials around such that the players encounter them) or even cases where the DM has explicitly said that they will fudge rolls to make combat more "interesting". As long as everyone is aware that these things are happening and consent to them, then I see no problem with it. The issue comes out when the DM says "I run a normal game", before engaging in these underhanded tactics for some reason or another.

It's really the same argument I have against Railroading. If the players consent to a linear railroad adventure, then it's not a problem. But if the DM says that the adventure allows for the players to approach solutions however they want, but shuts down all but one single path, that's not the same thing and it's not good DMing.

RazorChain

2018-03-08, 04:44 PM

Oh. Right. It was directed at the OP. It's a post about how a GM should manipulate the players, negate their accomplishments, manipulate the system math, straight out cheat with the dice, secretly railroad without appearing to railroad, and rob players of their agency.

Definitely struck me as very swift-onian. At least, I'd hope so. Edit: the tone of the intro was especially swift-ish.

Though I wasn't aiming to emulate Jonathan Swift in an attempt of social satire it is written in a satirical prose although I feel the subject merits a serious discussion.

Frozen_Feet

2018-03-08, 05:00 PM

[Illusionism] is controversial because it advocates lying and manipulation as prime tactics for a DM to engage in. Many people game with their friends or attempt to make friends of those they game with. Whilst lying in general isn't great, it's particularly egregious when you do it to people with a measure of trust in you.

Lying and subterfuge aren't the real problem. In plenty of games, those are the point - not just RPGs, but games in general. (Unless you want to argue that Poker, Diplomacy or, say, Monopoly are horrible, frienship-breaking experiences. :smalltongue:)

The real problem is that at its worst, the illusionist game is only those - to the point of not actually being a game. It is a magic trick which makes people think they're playing when they're really not. Note that other magic tricks are a neat skill for a GM to have as well, but if a GM shows up to a game night with just a series of magic tricks, they have fundamentally missed the point.

Scripten

2018-03-08, 05:07 PM

jayem

2018-03-08, 05:18 PM

To some extent there's got to be some Golden Rule aspect to this. How would you feel if you were the player. How would you feel if a player fudged his role so you could have the benefit of seeing his character doing awesome awesomeness?

The potential costs of illusionism are obvious. The benefit is the Players get to experience a 'great' scene, and the DM has the thrill of having planned it out in advance (and possibly the players have the fun of analyzing how they were set up).
The example given, was of the GM setting up things so there was a dramatic revelation just as the villain was on the edge of a balcony, ready to be pushed off. Which clearly in this case gave both the benefits (and in both cases it seems avoided the costs).
However if that end scene was not fixed, would you still get the benefits? The villains got to out himself sooner or later either at his leisure or theirs. Most of them seem to avail themselves to potentially coolish scenes. Someone tries to kill them and then they find..., the villain triumphs and kicks them out (and then presumably they take revenge), someone tries to persuade them, tough boss fight, push boss over. It seems to me that just by having the situation [trusted villain], and then doing some prep (& maybe some illusionism) just before the critical episode you probably get the first goal (and even if you don't, there are other sessions, one will be 'awesome'). So in my estimation most of the effort only contributed to the second goal.

In addition the players will notice when things seem 'fixed'. Worse they are beginning from a slightly biased sample as mentioned by Nich G, e.g. won't see when they could have gone down another path that they didn't*, they just see the paths they tried to go down and couldn't. You need their suspension of disbelief or foolish belief in your integrity for when it genuinely is tested.

That said, planning clearly helps. And 'illusion' like techniques clearly allow deeper planning. So when do you get situations where there's minimal deceit in the illusion? I would assert that it's when the 'illusion' is above the players agency and below the players agency.
If the (as far as is known) unstoppable dragon is destroying the city, and nothing that the players do is (likely to) stop it. Then you can plan that easily. If the players do stop it, then the players will have had their own deserved moment of awesomeness and in return they will have to wait while you work out how the city reacts and listen to what might have been (both IC&OOC).
If you're a holiday maker/non-magic person in France 1940, the overall story will be the same, and if the player kills no, one, ten Nazi's during the invasion it makes no difference (a hundred and you might need to deal with the retaliation and make the player go on the run). When they get beaten you do your scene. So in fact you don't have to cut into local agency at all.

While on the other way, if you've the town surrounded by 12 more or less equivelent orc tribes, and they run into one, you may as well swap that one with the one you've prepared names. Any seedy pub will have a black marketeer looking to smuggle goods. If the story's equivalent when you swap A&B. And again if you have it so the posh pub is slightly different then you get the best of both worlds. (Pace Max's comments)

RazorChain

2018-03-08, 05:48 PM

Lying and subterfuge aren't the real problem. In plenty of games, those are the point - not just RPGs, but games in general. (Unless you want to argue that Poker, Diplomacy or, say, Monopoly are horrible, frienship-breaking experiences. :smalltongue:)

The real problem is that at its worst, the illusionist game is only those - to the point of not actually being a game. It is a magic trick which makes people think they're playing when they're really not. Note that other magic tricks are a neat skill for a GM to have as well, but if a GM shows up to a game night with just a series of magic tricks, they have fundamentally missed the point.

This is a good point, even though it's adversarial, subterfuge and lying are generally accepted within games, especially if you aim to win.

But the other point about Illusionism is missing the point of the game is a matter of perception. If the goal of the game is to have fun and everybody is having fun then it seems that the goal has been achieved.

But that's actually my point. Each of those games comes packaged with a social contract, written into the rules, that lays out how players interact. (Also, Monopoly actually is a horrible, friendship-breaking experience, but that's besides the point. :smallwink: )

When the DM breaks the social contract and lies to or manipulates the players without first gaining consent, that's perfectly good grounds for a dressing down or, in really bad cases, ending a friendship.

The matter with rpg is there are a lot of them and most don't come with a social contract. Social contract IME rarely if ever gets established at the start of the game, it usually evolves in a stable group. The players and the GM will not go through GM techniques and vote on what is acceptable and what not. Let's just bring up rule 0: It says that the GM can change the rules or GM fiat is acceptable and to some it even means that the GM is a god and can do whatever he wants. So if a GM looks at rule zero and sees that as his social contract which is steeped in tradition then Illusionism is ACCEPTABLE.

Why has rule zero evolved? It hasn't evolved, it was always there to start with in every system that doesn't give the players narration powers. All agency comes from the GM, the only agency the player has is to participate in the game or not. The GM can veto the players character background, dictate what is allowed to play, he controls the setting, he narrates the results of the rolls, he frames the scenes, he interprets the rules. In the end the rules or the mechanics of the games cannot protect the player from the GM, he can condemn the player with a success or save him with a failure on rolls. This has nothing to do with what a jerkbag the GM is or not or the morality of running the game. This is just a fact and in most system it's written in the rules becaue it is the rules.

So player agency is participation, the rest is hinges on the GM and if an social contract isn't established beforehand and the players don't negotiate for their agency then it must be understood that they have none.

Scripten

2018-03-08, 06:10 PM

The matter with rpg is there are a lot of them and most don't come with a social contract. Social contract IME rarely if ever gets established at the start of the game, it usually evolves in a stable group.

When I say social contract, I don't mean an actual, literal contract that all of the players sign. A social contract is an understanding of social mores and behaviors. How that understanding is reached is largely irrelevant, but the point is that it exists in all RPG groups. Some groups lay theirs out more than others, but each group has one.

Why has rule zero evolved? It hasn't evolved, it was always there to start with in every system that doesn't give the players narration powers. All agency comes from the GM, the only agency the player has is to participate in the game or not.

Rule 0 also means that the DM has the responsibility to be upfront and honest to their players. If they engage in Illusionism, then they should be telling the players that they have (or could) do these things.

The GM can veto the players character background, dictate what is allowed to play, he controls the setting, he narrates the results of the rolls, he frames the scenes, he interprets the rules. In the end the rules or the mechanics of the games cannot protect the player from the GM, he can condemn the player with a success or save him with a failure on rolls. This has nothing to do with what a jerkbag the GM is or not or the morality of running the game. This is just a fact and in most system it's written in the rules becaue it is the rules.

I would argue the opposite. A DM that does not allow the rules to arbitrate the game while saying that they do is indeed being a jerkbag, as you put it. And that's exactly what you are describing: If the DM doesn't say where they are diverging from the rules, they are not engaging in honest gaming. I consider that to be breaching the social contract. I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

So player agency is participation, the rest is hinges on the GM and if an social contract isn't established beforehand and the players don't negotiate for their agency then it must be understood that they have none.

If a player is engaging in an in-game action that requires mechanical arbitration, then it should be assumed that the arbitration is real. Otherwise, they aren't playing a game at all. If the DM says that they engage in Illusionism, then the mechanics of the game have changed. That's why Rule 0 is explicitly spelled out in so many rulebooks. Illusionism must be an opt-in gameplay style.

Darth Ultron

2018-03-08, 06:20 PM

So you are saying that the benefit of Illusionism over Participationism is that you can force it on players who don't like Participationism and wouldn't have agreed to such an experience, if asked ? That is not only dishonest but borderline abusive. It is also a friendship ender.

It's not about players that ''don't like'' something. It's about players that A) Don't have the ability and skill to participate and B) players that are unwilling to participate.

The emotional payoff is paternalistic in the sense that the GM has created an fun immersive experience where the PC's felt that they are the heroes of the story. They might talk about the cool "choreographed" fight scenes and all the good ideas "they" had when the GM was nudging them to his solutions all along. In a sense it's when you let your child win a game and it's really happy that it "won".

"Paternalistic'' is a bit too far: It's just the DM doing the job as part of the game. And yes, some players could not create or run the experiences; but some could: but they are choosing to not play the game in that fashion as they want only the 'single character experience'.

It's controversial because it advocates lying and manipulation as prime tactics for a DM to engage in. Many people game with their friends or attempt to make friends of those they game with. Whilst lying in general isn't great, it's particularly egregious when you do it to people with a measure of trust in you.

The problem is that people immediately go to the insane extreme. Among friends and even more so in the context of a game lying and manipulation is not in any way a bad thing.

A LOT of games involve lying, manipulation and tricks as part of the game....but this is in no way some sort of personal attack at the other players or anything like that.

When you sit down and play a game of poker, people don't whine and cry about how they can't trust you forever and will un-friend you as you bluffed having a good hand.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-08, 06:25 PM

A piece of advice about "the GM can do this" and "the GM can do that"...

Don't be so concerned with whether you can, that you forget to consider whether you should.

The people most fixated on exercising power are the last people who should be allowed anywhere near it.

:cool:

Boci

2018-03-08, 06:25 PM

When you sit down and play a game of poker, people don't whine and cry about how they can't trust you forever and will un-friend you as you bluffed having a good hand.

Yet if your friend were to throw himself at you full force while you were shopping you'd probably have some serious reservations, even if you had played rugy/football with them last weekend.

Scripten

2018-03-08, 06:31 PM

The problem is that people immediately go to the insane extreme. Among friends and even more so in the context of a game lying and manipulation is not in any way a bad thing.

Lying in-character as the DM playing an NPC is part of the game. Lying to your players when they ask if you fudge rolls is not.

When you sit down and play a game of poker, people don't whine and cry about how they can't trust you forever and will un-friend you as you bluffed having a good hand.

That's because bluffing is part of the game. I already responded to this exact point, but I'll do so again. Nobody is going to get angry at you over lying during a game of poker, but people tend to get a bit upset when they catch you palming cards. Illusionism without consent is akin to cheating.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-08, 06:33 PM

Yet if your friend were to throw himself at you full force while you were shopping you'd probably have some serious reservations, even if you had played rugy/football with them last weekend.

To sum up DU's attitude... "I don't understand why the people at work get pissed off when I shoot my paintball gun at them, no one gets pissed off out at the playing field on the weekend."

Frozen_Feet

2018-03-08, 06:39 PM

But the other point about Illusionism is missing the point of the game is a matter of perception. If the goal of the game is to have fun and everybody is having fun then it seems that the goal has been achieved.

Wrong. The goal is to play a game. This is a goal because a specific type of game happens to feel fun. This is why, once the illusion of a game breaks, it will not only make that specific illusion unfun, it will retroactively taint all former experiences of illusions: because it reveals the goal was never met.

Saying "the goal is to have fun" does not support illusionism, it doesn't support any pretension of roleplaying games at all. If you think the goal is to have fun, then you first need to establish why your magic moment is preferable to shooting heroin or whatever, and are metaphorical miles away from even beginning a discussion on good game design.

CharonsHelper

2018-03-08, 06:44 PM

If you think the goal is to have fun, then you first need to establish why your magic moment is preferable to shooting heroin or whatever,

Gaming and heroin aren't mutual exclusive. Why can't I do both at the same time?

RazorChain

2018-03-08, 06:57 PM

When I say social contract, I don't mean an actual, literal contract that all of the players sign. A social contract is an understanding of social mores and behaviors. How that understanding is reached is largely irrelevant, but the point is that it exists in all RPG groups. Some groups lay theirs out more than others, but each group has one.

See if a social contract isn't established verbally or in written form then it's a matter of perspective.

If I think of social contract is according to Hobbes the consent to abdicate their rights in favor of the absolute authority of government. Then I'll assume the GM has absolute authority.

If my perception is that it's allright to bluff or lie in games and role playing game is still a game the my social contract will be different than yours.

How often do we see problems arise in games because of lack of communication? On these forums? All the time.

So here we go and just assume there is a clear social contract in place without communicating about it? I'm sure that will go splendidly.

How understanding is reached IS relevant because often it's just assumed there is an understanding when there is none.

Rule 0 also means that the DM has the responsibility to be upfront and honest to their players. If they engage in Illusionism, then they should be telling the players that they have (or could) do these things.

Rule zero says nothing about honesty. Honesty is an assumed social norm.

I would argue the opposite. A DM that does not allow the rules to arbitrate the game while saying that they do is indeed being a jerkbag, as you put it. And that's exactly what you are describing: If the DM doesn't say where they are diverging from the rules, they are not engaging in honest gaming. I consider that to be breaching the social contract. I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

If a player is engaging in an in-game action that requires mechanical arbitration, then it should be assumed that the arbitration is real. Otherwise, they aren't playing a game at all. If the DM says that they engage in Illusionism, then the mechanics of the game have changed. That's why Rule 0 is explicitly spelled out in so many rulebooks. Illusionism must be an opt-in gameplay style.

I'm saying that players have no agency beyond participation and rule zero stems from that fact.

If you want to contend with that fact then you have supply a way how the players can stop the GM from doing what he wants within the game?

Boci

2018-03-08, 06:59 PM

See if a social contract isn't established verbally or in written form then it's a matter of perspective.

No it isn't, there are plenty of unwritten rules in our society. If we order pizza and I collect it at the door, the understanding is I bring it into the room, not to the kitchen and start eating my share without telling the others, even if this was never specified in verbal or written form.

Frozen_Feet

2018-03-08, 07:09 PM

@CharonsHelper: Sure, you can do both, but why would you? Do you have any evidence that these game things actually improve the experience? Just enjoy the heroin, man. And hand me the needle. :smalltongue:

---

Also, what is this thing about RPGs not having social contracts? All games are defined by social contract, they are called rules. The primary reason to even entertain illusionism is twofold: a) some game rules permit a specific player to change the rules and b) when designing a new game, the designer can arbitrarily include rules of this type to prevent a game's incompleteness from making it unplayable.

Where things go wrong is precisely when someone forgets that the social contract of playing a roleplaying game includes agreement to play a game.

---

EDIT: also, while "Rule 0" *) says nothing about honesty, it also says nothing about player agency.

In order for "Rule 0" to reduce player agency to zero, it would have to state "only the GM has a say". But the actual, typical formulation goes "the GM has the final say". Hence, within typical Rule 0 players have as much say, and as much agency, as the GM lets them, and this value can be anywhere from 0 to theoretical infinity.

*)"Rule 0" is almost never an actual "Rule 0" in the sense the phrase is used outside RPGs. Outside RPGs, a "Rule 0" refers to an implicit, unspoken assumption which underlies a behaviour, but is not found within explicit rules governing it. Meanwhile, "GM has final say" is almost always an explicit, outspoken rule written down in an RPG's rule book and explained to new players before starting play.

OldTrees1

2018-03-08, 07:31 PM

See if a social contract isn't established verbally or in written form then it's a matter of perspective.

If I think of social contract is according to Hobbes the consent to abdicate their rights in favor of the absolute authority of government. Then I'll assume the GM has absolute authority.

If my perception is that it's allright to bluff or lie in games and role playing game is still a game the my social contract will be different than yours.

How often do we see problems arise in games because of lack of communication? On these forums? All the time.

So here we go and just assume there is a clear social contract in place without communicating about it? I'm sure that will go splendidly.

How understanding is reached IS relevant because often it's just assumed there is an understanding when there is none.

Isn't the opening post you writing a love letter to using dishonesty when setting up the social contract? How do you defend that? And yes I did say defend. You have been promoting this malicious style and it is about time you evaluate the benefits by also talking about the drawbacks.

So defend your position. Why is it okay for you to lie to me about what kind of game you want me to play with the intention of getting me to play that game? Why is deceit on this level acceptable in your eyes and why should others consider your position rather than reject it out of hand.

Florian

2018-03-08, 07:35 PM

Isn't the opening post you writing a love letter to using dishonesty when setting up the social contract? How do you defend that? And yes I did say defend. You have been promoting this malicious style and it is about time you evaluate the benefits by also talking about the drawbacks.

So defend your position. Why is it okay for you to lie to me about what kind of game you want me to play with the intention of getting me to play that game? Why is deceit on this level acceptable in your eyes and why should others consider your position rather than reject it out of hand.

There's no need to defend that. There's no dysfunction in having absolute power and giving the impression to share that power, while keeping a tool at hand to retaining that power when you feel it necessary.

I mean, we're talking about gm-centric games like D&D, not Fate, Lady Blackbird or Mountain Witch, so players never have power in the first place.

Scripten

2018-03-08, 07:40 PM

There's no need to defend that. There's no dysfunction in having absolute power and giving the impression to share that power, while keeping a tool at hand to retaining that power when you feel it necessary.

That's practically the definition of a toxic relationship. If you feel comfortable treating other people in that fashion, then all I can say is that I hope you have friends who share your outlook.

Florian

2018-03-08, 07:44 PM

That's practically the definition of a toxic relationship. If you feel comfortable treating other people in that fashion, then all I can say is that I hope you have friends who share your outlook.

I have friends that understand the difference between a gm-based and a gm-less game system and don't fool themselves that those are the same.

Scripten

2018-03-08, 07:52 PM

I have friends that understand the difference between a gm-based and a gm-less game system and don't fool themselves that those are the same.

The existence of a GM in a game has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not someone feels comfortable lying to and manipulating others without garnering consent beforehand. Amazing that I'm actually in a position where I need to argue that lying to people (outside the context of defined constraints) is wrong.

Tell me, would your group be upset if the DM told them that he ignored the result of dice rolls during a pivotal combat encounter? How do you know?

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-08, 08:02 PM

There's no need to defend that. There's no dysfunction in having absolute power and giving the impression to share that power, while keeping a tool at hand to retaining that power when you feel it necessary.

I mean, we're talking about gm-centric games like D&D, not Fate, Lady Blackbird or Mountain Witch, so players never have power in the first place.

I have friends that understand the difference between a gm-based and a gm-less game system and don't fool themselves that those are the same.

Your view of the role of the GM is nowhere near universal.

If anything, it comes across as a heavily-slanted caricature of a sort meant to promote GMless systems.

Most gamers I know wouldn't put up with a GM acting like you're suggesting is "natural" for a GM to act.

ImNotTrevor

2018-03-08, 08:03 PM

I have friends that understand the difference between a gm-based and a gm-less game system and don't fool themselves that those are the same.

Being the GM does not give you absolute authority, though. Rule 0 is about Rulings and making rule changes generally to improve play, not a blank check to be King of the Table.

Often when someone new is GMing Apocalypse World with me as player rather than GM, they'll defer to me on rulings if they're stuck. Usually I don't make a final call but share possible interpretations that may work in the context.

Speaking of AW, that's a system that has no Rule 0, but rather a "Feel free to add stuff that conforms with the GMing rules" rule. The GM has rules. And if they don't follow them, they're explicitly not playing AW.

So yeah... this flippant attempt at dismissal falls apart since there are systems (yes, plural) without a Rule 0 and/or that explicitly encourage certain GMing practices and discourage others.

Florian

2018-03-08, 08:05 PM

How do you know?

It´s pretty central to the german gaming tradition. DSA is soccer to D&D being football and were all very fine with playing soccer, actually expecting things to be this way when we talk a team-based sport including a ball? (DSA and White Wolf games are the big things here, D&D is pretty much unknown and OSR a joke)

Frozen_Feet

2018-03-08, 08:15 PM

There's no need to defend that. There's no dysfunction in having absolute power and giving the impression to share that power, while keeping a tool at hand to retaining that power when you feel it necessary.

I mean, we're talking about gm-centric games like D&D, not Fate, Lady Blackbird or Mountain Witch, so players never have power in the first place.

I already noted this, but it bears repeating: "Rule 0" does not entail the players having no power, it entails them having as much power as the GM lets them.

Now, then, why is the impression of sharing power better than actual sharing of power? The ability to retain power is the same in both cases.

Also: the players can always choose to not play, so it's not true they have no power in the first place. Like with most forms of natural leadership, the GM's position hinges on their underlings accepting that they both need a leader and that the GM is suited to be one.

OldTrees1

2018-03-08, 10:10 PM

There's no need to defend that. There's no dysfunction in having absolute power and giving the impression to share that power, while keeping a tool at hand to retaining that power when you feel it necessary.

I mean, we're talking about gm-centric games like D&D, not Fate, Lady Blackbird or Mountain Witch, so players never have power in the first place.

You see no dysfunction in intentionally lying to me to deceive me into playing a game I did not want to play? Why do you not see that as dysfunctional?

A DM that resorts to tricking people into playing their game is trying to subvert the player's ability to walk away from games they don't want to play. That is abusive and toxic.

Defend that claim.

RazorChain

2018-03-08, 10:29 PM

Being the GM does not give you absolute authority, though. Rule 0 is about Rulings and making rule changes generally to improve play, not a blank check to be King of the Table.

Often when someone new is GMing Apocalypse World with me as player rather than GM, they'll defer to me on rulings if they're stuck. Usually I don't make a final call but share possible interpretations that may work in the context.

Speaking of AW, that's a system that has no Rule 0, but rather a "Feel free to add stuff that conforms with the GMing rules" rule. The GM has rules. And if they don't follow them, they're explicitly not playing AW.

So yeah... this flippant attempt at dismissal falls apart since there are systems (yes, plural) without a Rule 0 and/or that explicitly encourage certain GMing practices and discourage others.

Let's break down GM power. Let's disregard what the GM should do on only focus on what he could do.

In a game where the players aren't awarded narrative powers then GM has absolute power within the game. Rule zero wasn't invented, it's merely the realization of this fact. So what power has the players? His only power is to decide if he participates in the game or not, all other power has to negotiated with the GM not from within the game but without the game.

The only way to dispute that the GM doesn't have absolute power within the game is to showcase that he can't do whatever he likes within the game.

If the GM has absolute power within the game then the players will borrow all agency from the GM. The players only have as much agency as the GM let's them.

This means that the GM is never negating player agency within the game because the players have none if they haven't bargained for it with the GM.

In a game that awards player narrative control rule zero still applies. The GM is just awarding the players narrative control at the start of the game. If the GM stops the game revokes narrative control then there is nothing the players can do about it other than stop playing. Awarding narrative control was the GM's choice to start with by his choice of a system.

So Florian must be right that only a GM less system or a system where everybody is GM is the system where the GM doesn't have absolute authority.

This is just a factual analysis of the GM position. As I've stated if you want to dispute that the GM doesn't have absolute power within the game then you have to showcase that the players can stop the GM from doing what he wants from within the game.

RazorChain

2018-03-08, 10:41 PM

You see no dysfunction in intentionally lying to me to deceive me into playing a game I did not want to play? Why do you not see that as dysfunctional?

A DM that resorts to tricking people into playing their game is trying to subvert the player's ability to walk away from games they don't want to play. That is abusive and toxic.

Defend that claim.

You as a player have no agency except to participate in the game. If you haven't bargained with the GM for agency then he isn't lying to you when he negates your agency because you had none to start with. So when the GM gives you a false choice where both A or B lead to C then it wasn't false to start with because you had no agency.

If you have negotiated with your GM that there will be meaningful choices and player agency and he won't fudge or adjust encounters on the fly then you have a contract. If your GM doesn't abide by what he has negotioated with you, then he's lying and he has deceived you.

If the GM says "Hei, Oldtree1, wanna play a game of D&D?" and you answer "Yes" and nothing else get's negotiated then baked within the rules of the games is that you have no agency. So if the GM doesn't tell you that your choices never had any impact he isn't lying or deceiving you.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-08, 11:34 PM

It's almost like I talked about that somewhere recently...

A piece of advice about "the GM can do this" and "the GM can do that"...

Don't be so concerned with whether you can, that you forget to consider whether you should.

The people most fixated on exercising power are the last people who should be allowed anywhere near it.

Anyone concerned with their "power" as a GM, shouldn't be a GM.

What goes on at the RPG table isn't about power at all.

You as a player have no agency except to participate in the game. If you haven't bargained with the GM for agency then he isn't lying to you when he negates your agency because you had none to start with. So when the GM gives you a false choice where both A or B lead to C then it wasn't false to start with because you had no agency.

If you have negotiated with your GM that there will be meaningful choices and player agency and he won't fudge or adjust encounters on the fly then you have a contract. If your GM doesn't abide by what he has negotioated with you, then he's lying and he has deceived you.

If the GM says "Hei, Oldtree1, wanna play a game of D&D?" and you answer "Yes" and nothing else get's negotiated then baked within the rules of the games is that you have no agency. So if the GM doesn't tell you that your choices never had any impact he isn't lying or deceiving you.

If you brought that attitude to any table I've ever gamed at, especially as the GM, you'd get kicked from the table and your campaign would be over. None of the people I've played with would have put up with that sort of power-mongering or "but you didn't say you wanted me to be decent human being, so I don't have to be" attitude for more than a session. We should never have to negotiate basic fairness and honesty from our fellow gamers... your approach is like the used car salesman who says "I didn't do anything wrong, the never asked me if the brakes work so it's his fault he left the lot and ran into that tree".

One thing this thread has been good for, it's exposing people who are into GMing for a petty little power trip, and illuminating a lot of their last statements about gaming in a whole new light.

OldTrees1

2018-03-08, 11:48 PM

If you have negotiated with your GM that there will be meaningful choices and player agency and he won't fudge or adjust encounters on the fly then you have a contract. If your GM doesn't abide by what he has negotiated with you, then he's lying and he has deceived you.

Then why are you suggesting that the GM do exactly this ^ OR lying to upfront questions about what kind of game they will run. My first post was asking you where you drew the line. Your opening post promotes the DM lying about what kind of game they are going to run and Florian* took it a step further and said there was nothing "dysfunctional" with such deceit (intentional lying to capture an unwilling audience).

*Instead of replying to my reply to you, you decided to reply to my reply to Florian's reply to my reply to you.

So "Where do you draw the line?", and then defend that choice.

PS: Of course since most people understand D&D to involve some amount of Player Agency, running a no agency game of D&D without informing the players is lying by omission. However we can easily chalk that up to you not knowing/recognizing that tendency rather than you promoting intentional lying to capture an unwilling audience.

ImNotTrevor

2018-03-08, 11:59 PM

Let's break down GM power. Let's disregard what the GM should do on only focus on what he could do.
He could light himself on fire and yodel the names of all 50 states. But considering this possibility is a waste of time. Just like the following smokescreen game.

In a game where the players aren't awarded narrative powers then GM has absolute power within the game.
Rolling a die for a success or failure IS a narrative power. One that can be subverted, but this action isn't a part of Rule Zero.

Rule zero wasn't invented, it's merely the realization of this fact. So what power has the players? His only power is to decide if he participates in the game or not, all other power has to negotiated with the GM not from within the game but without the game.
Since you cannot divorce the External Game from the Internal Game (External = Real Life, Internal = Gamespace) with a trpg, this is not a strong point. The player can ALWAYS call BS. Always. The GM is ALWAYS at risk of losing players if he/she behaves poorly.
Humans are always at the table, virtual or real.
Pretending the humans cannot do human stuff or pretending rhe game has any kind of precedence even in theory over human stuff is smokescreening to excuse crappy interpersonal interaction.

The only way to dispute that the GM doesn't have absolute power within the game is to showcase that he can't do whatever he likes within the game.
He does not. He is granted narrative authority by the other players when play begins. This can be revoked at any time. Again, divorcing External from Internal is impossible for trpgs, as they are innately a form of social interaction in the External. Since the Internal is inherently a product of External interactions and negotiations, it cannot be divorced and considered on its own without fundamentally misunderstanding how TRPGs work.
TRPGs involve people interacting with people. You CANNOT remove the people from the equation to excuse crappy interpersonal behavior.

If the GM has absolute power within the game then the players will borrow all agency from the GM. The players only have as much agency as the GM let's them.
That's a very large IF. Most, if not all, players fully expect to retain a degree of agency which is not to be infringed by the GM. Illusionism is the act of infringing upon that agency while trying to get away with it. It is a disregard for the level of consent given. Which, since this is a game played by people, means a person ignoring the limits set by others and trying to get away with doing things these others did not agree to.

This means that the GM is never negating player agency within the game because the players have none if they haven't bargained for it with the GM.

Players ALWAYS have the ability to leave the game.
Players very nearly always have an expectation for a degree of agency they will have.

[QULTE)
In a game that awards player narrative control rule zero still applies. The GM is just awarding the players narrative control at the start of the game. If the GM stops the game revokes narrative control then there is nothing the players can do about it other than stop playing.[/QUOTE]
Or complain. Or switch GMs. (I've seen this happen. It was hilarious, and went much better after the change.)

Awarding narrative control was the GM's choice to start with by his choice of a system.
And also by the players decision to play.
Attempting to divorce the Players playing the game from the Game itself is smokescreening intended to obscure the actually problematic portion of the interaction: the interpersonal.

To put it simply, no amount of game rules make it ok to be an abusive, deceitful anus to the other people at the table, nor do they give you permission to do things they did not agree to.

So Florian must be right that only a GM less system or a system where everybody is GM is the system where the GM doesn't have absolute authority.
The GM does not have absolute authority, in any system, unless the players consent to such. And the number of players who consent to 0 authority is miniscule.

This is just a factual analysis of the GM position. As I've stated if you want to dispute that the GM doesn't have absolute power within the game then you have to showcase that the players can stop the GM from doing what he wants from within the game.

The Game is a product of social interaction. All movement in the game is top-down. Moves from the people at the table down to the game. Nothing is done from the game upwards, except as a reaction to top-down motion (Ie, a die result). Insisting on a reversal of this direction runs counter to how the games actually work, and is invalid for this reason.

Again, you cannot divorce the people sitting around a table playing the game from the game itself, in the same way that Chess players must account for the person they are playing against, and not merely the game rules themselves.

In short, this is a "logical smokescreen" that must divorce itself from reality in order to be true. Meaning it's functionally useless as an assertion.

Since we're talking about people sitting around a table playing a game, removing the people changes the nature of the discussion. I will not allow this shift. Either deal with the entire package of players and GM as has been discussed until now, or buzz off. I'd like to stop wasting my time by reminding you that TRPGs require humans and removing the actions of the humans from the equations means you're now talking about something else.

Again, what the GM theoretically could do if all players are lifeless husks is irrelevant in the same way knowing what would happen of the Earth turned into a giant Gummy Bear tomorrow is irrelevant to our current orbital dynamics or world hunger issues.

RazorChain

2018-03-09, 12:20 AM

Then why are you suggesting that the GM do exactly this ^. My first post was asking you where you drew the line. Your opening post promotes the DM lying about what kind of game they are going to run and Florian* took it a step further and said there was nothing "dysfunctional" with such deceit.

*Instead of replying to my reply to you, you decided to reply to my reply to Florian's reply to my reply to you.

So "Where do you draw the line?", and then defend that choice.

PS: Of course since most people understand D&D to involve some amount of Player Agency, running a no agency game of D&D without informing the players is lying by omission. However we can easily chalk that up to you not knowing/recognizing that tendency rather than you promoting intentional lying to capture an unwilling audience.

Sorry, there just have been so many posts but I believe I answered on page 1 that I consider Illusionism dysfunctional in a social context.

I believe me and Florian have mostly been Theorizing on the fact that IF nobody can dispute the claim that the GM has absolute power or agency within the game then there can be no deceit if the player has no choice or agency.

But:
It's very basic if I tell you that you'll have lots of agency within my game and you don't then that's lying. Plain and simple.

But:
If I run a game and my perception is that rule zero says the GM can do anything. Then you join my game without discussing anything about agency then I hide my railroading with Illusionism tricks. Then this just becomes a matter of perception. You feel like I have been dishonest but I don't.

Best gaming groups are built on trust and that's what I tend to do. My group can trust that I'll screw them six days 'till sunday

OldTrees1

2018-03-09, 12:34 AM

Sorry, there just have been so many posts but I believe I answered on page 1 that I consider Illusionism dysfunctional in a social context.

I believe me and Florian have mostly been Theorizing on the fact that IF nobody can dispute the claim that the GM has absolute power or agency within the game then there can be no deceit if the player has no choice or agency.

But:
It's very basic if I tell you that you'll have lots of agency within my game and you don't then that's lying. Plain and simple.

But:
If I run a game and my perception is that rule zero says the GM can do anything. Then you join my game without discussing anything about agency then I hide my railroading with Illusionism tricks. Then this just becomes a matter of perception. You feel like I have been dishonest but I don't.

Best gaming groups are built on trust and that's what I tend to do. My group can trust that I'll screw them six days 'till sunday

So:
You find it wrong to intentionally lie about the kind of game you are going to be running.
I suspect you find it regrettable when there is an unintentional miscommunication about the kind of game you are going to be running (especially when that results in a player mistakenly wasting time on a game they did not want to play).

So why is this thread about Illusionism rather than about Participationism? If the Players and the DM are on the same page about the game including little to no player agency, then isn't it Participationism even if the DM uses Quantum Ogres and other "invisible" rails?*

The only difference I see is the one about lying to the players to trick them into playing a game they did not want to play. Once you remove that, then most of the argument disappears and you have a healthy thread discussing ways a Participationist DM can hide their rails to the better immersion and enjoyment of everyone (that knowingly and willingly agreed to play) playing the game.

*As a Sandbox DM I will admit to not having as firm a grasp on the precise definition of Participationism. I am going off of what a literal meaning would be.

RazorChain

2018-03-09, 01:39 AM

So:
You find it wrong to intentionally lie about the kind of game you are going to be running.
I suspect you find it regrettable when there is an unintentional miscommunication about the kind of game you are going to be running (especially when that results in a player mistakenly wasting time on a game they did not want to play).

So why is this thread about Illusionism rather than about Participationism? If the Players and the DM are on the same page about the game including little to no player agency, then isn't it Participationism even if the DM uses Quantum Ogres and other "invisible" rails?*

The only difference I see is the one about lying to the players to trick them into playing a game they did not want to play. Once you remove that, then most of the argument disappears and you have a healthy thread discussing ways a Participationist DM can hide their rails to the better immersion and enjoyment of everyone (that knowingly and willingly agreed to play) playing the game.

*As a Sandbox DM I will admit to not having as firm a grasp on the precise definition of Participationism. I am going off of what a literal meaning would be.

I'm fully aware that you have very strict conceptions on how you run your sandboxes. IIRC then even Quantum Ogres were out of the pictures :smallbiggrin:

Because Illusionism is a valid style if we disregard the social context. I firmly believe that GM's that are railroading even aim for Illusionism but they just aren't good enough at maintaining the illusion. The counter argument for Participationism has mostly been that if the GM is up front about running a module or Adventure League or organized play then that is Participationism. So if the GM tells you that he's running The Storm Kings Thunder or Tomb of Annihilaiton or The Times of Troubles then that clearly constitutes as Participationism if you decide to play. But when the same GM that ran those modules decides to run his own module which he no fancy name for and he uses all the same tricks to railroad the groups and negate their agency then suddenly he has become deceptive and violated the trust of the group.

This is just hypocracy. So an official module or organized play is Participationism but your own module isn't, even though you use all the same tricks to hide your railroading. HYPOCRACY in big fat letters even.

The social contract people speak is just their own expectations to the game. They expect an official module to be railroady and the GM is allowed to try to hide the fact but when the same GM runs his own stuff then it isn't supposed to be railroady and he isn't allowed to hide the fact because that is lying to your friends.

Satinavian

2018-03-09, 02:07 AM

Honestly I don't care one way or another about Illusionism other than to explore the method to the madness and what benefits the techniques bring to the table. People have to discern between the aim of the style and the techniques used.

I can't speak universally about why GM's would or should use Illusionism because it it much harder than Participationism but the payoff is emotional one. I believe that many GM that railroad set out to do so the Illusionist way, they are trying to guide their players through their cool scenarios and they have it in their head how the scenes will play out. You see on roleplaying forums where new GM's plan their overarching plots and their cool badguys and how their going to escape from the group in scene 3 and then it goes from A to B to C to D to Climax. Most GM's don't want to railroad in a hamfisted manner but so to realize their vision they might use subterfuge instead and resort to Illusionism without thinking much about it. Just think about it if a GM is running his own module he won't discern much from a published module except he's not telling his player he's running the Rise and Fall of Salhazar the Lichlord, a 3 part adventure module written by the GM. The GM might see that the social contract is in place already because frankly what is the difference between his module and a published module.

The emotional payoff is paternalistic in the sense that the GM has created an fun immersive experience where the PC's felt that they are the heroes of the story. They might talk about the cool "choreographed" fight scenes and all the good ideas "they" had when the GM was nudging them to his solutions all along. In a sense it's when you let your child win a game and it's really happy that it "won". Or yo might just be like me and practice Illusionism to see if it can be done knowing fully that there are easier methods.
You could do the same with Participationism. What is the problem with your players expecting that you use tricks to achieve an outcome ? If they don't recognize the specific instances, the choreographed fight will still look awesome. Is that false sense of achievement they might get really so valuable that it warrants the whole deception and all the anger when they eventually notice ? Certainly not.

The matter with rpg is there are a lot of them and most don't come with a social contract. Social contract IME rarely if ever gets established at the start of the game, it usually evolves in a stable group. The players and the GM will not go through GM techniques and vote on what is acceptable and what not. Let's just bring up rule 0: It says that the GM can change the rules or GM fiat is acceptable and to some it even means that the GM is a god and can do whatever he wants. So if a GM looks at rule zero and sees that as his social contract which is steeped in tradition then Illusionism is ACCEPTABLE.When i start a new group, interested players meet for a session zero do talk about playstyle preferences and about what kind of campaign will be played. If i introduce a new player to an existing group, there will be a meeting with the new player where beforehand, where the group style and rules are explained and his preferences/expectations/experiences are talked about.

Pretty much every group makes a social contract before they start a game. The only exception seem to be one-shot and convention games where the time is too short.

Why has rule zero evolved? It hasn't evolved, it was always there to start with in every system that doesn't give the players narration powers. All agency comes from the GM, the only agency the player has is to participate in the game or not. The GM can veto the players character background, dictate what is allowed to play, he controls the setting, he narrates the results of the rolls, he frames the scenes, he interprets the rules. In the end the rules or the mechanics of the games cannot protect the player from the GM, he can condemn the player with a success or save him with a failure on rolls. This has nothing to do with what a jerkbag the GM is or not or the morality of running the game. This is just a fact and in most system it's written in the rules becaue it is the rules.It sure has evolved. Many modern rulebooks either tone it down severely or omit it completely. Many things that once were GM decisions are now group based decisions. And yes, IME that matches pretty well how table habbits have evolved in the last decade.

Let's break down GM power. Let's disregard what the GM should do on only focus on what he could do.

In a game where the players aren't awarded narrative powers then GM has absolute power within the game. Rule zero wasn't invented, it's merely the realization of this fact. So what power has the players? His only power is to decide if he participates in the game or not, all other power has to negotiated with the GM not from within the game but without the game.He could also just say "Nope, that doesn't happen. It is against the rules/That is impossible/We agreed to handle that differently/That doesn't work in this world" and let the game come to a halt until this is resolved. It is not a particularly nice thing to do. And it might violate meta-rules. But if the GM does not care about the agreed and established meta-rules, the players are not bound by them either.

This is just a factual analysis of the GM position. As I've stated if you want to dispute that the GM doesn't have absolute power within the game then you have to showcase that the players can stop the GM from doing what he wants from within the game.Nothing easier than that. The players don't actually have to accept the GMs narrative. Or his decisions. Especially if those go against table rules. Everything the GM says only becomes reality in the shared imagination after the players accept it. They basically have a veto. Having established boundaries about who can do what makes sure that this veto is rarely needed if everyone keeps following them.

Satinavian

2018-03-09, 02:16 AM

Because Illusionism is a valid style if we disregard the social context. I firmly believe that GM's that are railroading even aim for Illusionism but they just aren't good enough at maintaining the illusion. The counter argument for Participationism has mostly been that if the GM is up front about running a module or Adventure League or organized play then that is Participationism. So if the GM tells you that he's running The Storm Kings Thunder or Tomb of Annihilaiton or The Times of Troubles then that clearly constitutes as Participationism if you decide to play. But when the same GM that ran those modules decides to run his own module which he no fancy name for and he uses all the same tricks to railroad the groups and negate their agency then suddenly he has become deceptive and violated the trust of the group.

This is just hypocracy. So an official module or organized play is Participationism but your own module isn't, even though you use all the same tricks to hide your railroading. HYPOCRACY in big fat letters even.That is rubbish.

Why should a GM using his own module not being able to do Participationism ? Participationism vs. Illusionism has precisely nothing to do with who wrote a module. Keep in mind that the RPGs used when those words were defined mostly didn't even have any kind of organized play. There are many Participationist groups out there which never touch an official module.

OldTrees1

2018-03-09, 02:19 AM

Because Illusionism is a valid style if we disregard the social context.

Well if you ignore deliberately lying to potential players about what kind of game you are going to run as a means of entrapping them in a game they did not want to play, then we are talking about Participationism correct?

IF you are not trying to trick players into playing a game they did/do/will not want to play and are not accidentally tricking players into playing a game they did/do/will not want to play
THEN the players are aware of if and how much agency to expect in your game. This includes when they knowingly and voluntarily participate in your homebrewed railroady campaign where you are using tricks in game to disguise the railroad during play.

Aka if you remove the dysfunctional social context part of illusionism, then you have participationism.

I firmly believe that GM's that are railroading even aim for Illusionism but they just aren't good enough at maintaining the illusion. The counter argument for Participationism has mostly been that if the GM is up front about running a module or Adventure League or organized play then that is Participationism. So if the GM tells you that he's running The Storm Kings Thunder or Tomb of Annihilaiton or The Times of Troubles then that clearly constitutes as Participationism if you decide to play. But when the same GM that ran those modules decides to run his own module which he no fancy name for and he uses all the same tricks to railroad the groups and negate their agency then suddenly he has become deceptive and violated the trust of the group.

This is just hypocracy. So an official module or organized play is Participationism but your own module isn't, even though you use all the same tricks to hide your railroading. HYPOCRACY in big fat letters even.

A) Yes, the difference between Participationism and Illusionism is that Participationism does not use a lie to entrap players into the game. Instead the players agreed to play the game with full knowledge of the level of agency they could expect. Whether it is a published module or a homemade campaign is irrelevant. Right?

B) If your players were able to make an informed can voluntary choice to play the low agency game, then that is Participationism even if it is your own original content/campaign.

The social contract people speak is just their own expectations to the game. They expect an official module to be railroady and the GM is allowed to try to hide the fact but when the same GM runs his own stuff then it isn't supposed to be railroady and he isn't allowed to hide the fact because that is lying to your friends.

Which are you hiding:
Are you hiding that the game will have a railroad?
Are you hiding the railroad that the players know the game will have?

Players expect a module (aka a campaign where the author is not present) to have a railroad, so clearly you are talking about hiding the railroad that everyone is okay with existing.
When you run your own content it might or might not have a railroad.

If your players expect there to be a railroad then you are clearly talking about disguising the railroad the players are okay with existing. That sounds like Participationism to me.
If your players expect there to be agency and you deceive them about what kind of game you are running, then that is the kind of lying that you called dysfunctional.

----
It is important that both the DM and the Players are aware of how much agency is going to be in the game so that the players can make an informed choice about whether to play or not. Misunderstandings by accidental omission (dysfunctional by misfortune cases) or by intentional lying/omission (dysfunctional by deceit cases) result in problematic cases where players are wasting time on a game they did/do/will not want to play.

---

In summary:
Have you tried making sure the players are aware that you want to use a disguised railroad in your original content campaign before they decide to join or not? That one simple step seems to solve all of your problems. It means you are not trying to entrap players into games they did not want to play. It means the Players knowingly decide to participate in your low agency campaign. Communication is not a panacea but sometimes it is the solution.

Glorthindel

2018-03-09, 04:48 AM

If a DM says "I'm not railroading" but then uses illusionism to railroad and I catch them, they've lost my trust and I would have to leave the table... Lying to players (as DM, not as NPC) is not OK.

I always find these sorts of responses hyperbolic and a little absurd. People lie. All the time. If you say you don't, you are. I have lied to three people this morning since I have woken up, and I've only been awake two and a half hours. Odds are over the course of today, at least one member of your family (and more than one if you have kids or siblings), several of your work collegues, and a couple of people on the phone ("you have PPI", "We've heard you've been in an accident"... sure you have) will have lied to you. Mostly about small and irrelevant things ("How's you day?", "ok"... well, it isn't, your actually having a bad day, but you aren't going to say that). Its life, get used to it.

Lying is a fundamental part of the DM skillset. Feigning surprise when a player does something you knew all along they were going to do, fudging the odd dice roll, hell, even pretending you had prepared for something when the party have left your prepared material hours ago, and you've been winging it ever since. And a player shouldn't be surprised that a DM tells the odd lie - I'm sure you could DM with complete 100% honesty, but then you would likely get a reputation as a killer DM, and be constantly breaking the atmosphere with things like:

For example, I had a case where there were multiple destinations within a small area. I had (due to lack of time) only prepared material for 3 of the 9. So I told the players: "Here are the possible destinations--the rest of the city is bombed-out rubble. You can go anywhere, but right now I only have these three planned. For this session, please choose one of these three.

I mean... ouch. That has put a foot fully through the fourth wall and torched any immersion the players had, THAT is something that would make me question the DM's ability, not telling a few lies to keep the game flowing.

I get some people find some things more unpleasant or obnoxious than others. Personally, I find it really obnoxious when someone other than the OP in a thread is making more that 1 or 2 posts per page, since I read it as an attempt to bully or browbeat. But it doesn't stop people doing it.

Frozen_Feet

2018-03-09, 06:13 AM

If the GM has absolute power within the game then the players will borrow all agency from the GM. The players only have as much agency as the GM let's them.

This means that the GM is never negating player agency within the game because the players have none if they haven't bargained for it with the GM.

The first paragraph is true, but the second does not follow and is false.

Basically, you forget one of the most basic things a GM can do: a GM can unilaterally give agency to the players, either explicitly by asking them to decide something or implicitly via scenario design. No separate negotiation required. In fact, this is the default for D&D and most other games with a GM (see below).

Second, regardless of how a player got their agency from the GM, the GM withdrawing that agency is an act of negation in plain common sense way. Like, come on. If I give you an apple, that's one positive apple, if I later take it away, that's one negative apple, if you end up with zero apples then I have negated whatever plans you had for that apple.

Now for the "see below" bit. If you've ever read a D&D rulebook, you may have noticed they are quite thick. This might hint you the fact that they have more rules than just "Rule 0". These rules already define part of the movespace in favor of player action. The purpose of "Rule 0" is not as a blank check to override these willy nilly, it is to fix possible glitches and add new rules when and where the rules don't support the game being played. You can't justify using "Rule 0" to effectively remove the entire game in favor of your illusion, as it's in violation of the spirit of the rules. Gary Gygax himself told you this in 1st Edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide; I suppose I should find me a 2nd or 3rd Edition DMG to see what changed to make people forget this.

RazorChain

2018-03-09, 07:52 AM

Well if you ignore deliberately lying to potential players about what kind of game you are going to run as a means of entrapping them in a game they did not want to play, then we are talking about Participationism correct?

IF you are not trying to trick players into playing a game they did/do/will not want to play and are not accidentally tricking players into playing a game they did/do/will not want to play
THEN the players are aware of if and how much agency to expect in your game. This includes when they knowingly and voluntarily participate in your homebrewed railroady campaign where you are using tricks in game to disguise the railroad during play.

Aka if you remove the dysfunctional social context part of illusionism, then you have participationism.

Participationism is when you are well aware that you are playing MY epic saga and I allow you to choose the character you can bring through My saga in way that I'll sit you on my knee and say "Once upon a time there was a hero, his name was....." and you interject "Oldtree1". You have very little agency in MY saga but you feel like you are contributing because you were allowed to name your hero.

I will make sure you get all the right clues so you find out who the villain is, make sure that you get past the villains guards and make sure to frame the scenes so you can't act until the villain is done with his monologue and I'll end the scene with his escape without you get to do anything about it. You will be allowed to shake your fist at him "I will get you next time you fiend!" you will roleplay your character to the hilt and we'll have lots of fun.

With Illusionism I'll make sure you find the clues but you think you did it by yourself and were clever figuring out who the villain is. Your cunning plan to get past the villain's guards will succeed because I need it to happen so I can move the story forward, any plan would have worked really. I will put the villain in a situation where he gets to deliver his monologue by scene framing or other means and the villain will escape with me fudging his dice rolls or some GM fiat.

A) Yes, the difference between Participationism and Illusionism is that Participationism does not use a lie to entrap players into the game. Instead the players agreed to play the game with full knowledge of the level of agency they could expect. Whether it is a published module or a homemade campaign is irrelevant. Right?

B) If your players were able to make an informed can voluntary choice to play the low agency game, then that is Participationism even if it is your own original content/campaign.

You are right.

Which are you hiding:
Are you hiding that the game will have a railroad?
Are you hiding the railroad that the players know the game will have?

Players expect a module (aka a campaign where the author is not present) to have a railroad, so clearly you are talking about hiding the railroad that everyone is okay with existing.
When you run your own content it might or might not have a railroad.

If your players expect there to be a railroad then you are clearly talking about disguising the railroad the players are okay with existing. That sounds like Participationism to me.
If your players expect there to be agency and you deceive them about what kind of game you are running, then that is the kind of lying that you called dysfunctional.

Participationism the players know the game will have a clear railroad and they will have very low agency. They are aware of this beforehand and the GM doesn't try to hide his railroading and just blocks your choices with no you can't do that. Example: You go see an magician, he tells you he'll be performing tricks and even though his tricks are cool, you can easily see through them.

Participationism 2 the players know the game will have a clear railroad and they will have very low agency. They are aware of this beforehand and even though the GM tries to hide it and even if he's very succesful the players know they had little agency and were being railroaded. Example: You go see an magician, he tells you he'll be performing tricks and even though he's very talented and you can't see through his tricks you still know it's just tricks.

Illusionism. The player isn't told that the game is clear railroad and they have very low agency. If the GM is talented the player will never find out and assume all the choices were his, if the GM isn't talented then the player will noticed his choices are being negated and he's being railroaded. Example: You go see a magician, he just starts performing tricks and you assume it's real magic or you see through his act and know it's only tricks.

Illusionism 2. The player is told that he has full agency and can do whatever he wants to do. The GM will railroad and give the player no agency but use illusions to hide the fact. The player won't find out and assume all choices were his or he will notice his choices are being negated and he's being railroaded. Example: You go see Uri Geller, he tells you he's a psychic and can read minds and bend spoons with the power of his mind. You assume he's the real deal or the Amazing Randi shows up and reveals Uri for a fraud.

----
It is important that both the DM and the Players are aware of how much agency is going to be in the game so that the players can make an informed choice about whether to play or not. Misunderstandings by accidental omission (dysfunctional by misfortune cases) or by intentional lying/omission (dysfunctional by deceit cases) result in problematic cases where players are wasting time on a game they did/do/will not want to play.

Yes, even with clear communication dysfunction my misfortune happens. I know of very few cases where a GM has lied about agency mostly because agency doesn't seem to be discussed all that much. System and Setting comes first and then what kind of a game like hexcrawl, westmarches, sandbox, intrigue, exploration, mystery, horror, dungeoncrawls, hack and slash etc. People tend to just expect that there will be a lot of agency in sandboxes or hexcrawls but that doesn't have to be true.

---

In summary:
Have you tried making sure the players are aware that you want to use a disguised railroad in your original content campaign before they decide to join or not? That one simple step seems to solve all of your problems. It means you are not trying to entrap players into games they did not want to play. It means the Players knowingly decide to participate in your low agency campaign. Communication is not a panacea but sometimes it is the solution.

Eh well I just advertise myself as a dirty bastard of a GM, I change styles between campaigns and even between adventures but I have only used Illusionism twice on purpose to see if it worked and how far I could take it. But generally I run my games fast and loose and adhere more to improv than anything else.

Darth Ultron

2018-03-09, 07:54 AM

So:
You find it wrong to intentionally lie about the kind of game you are going to be running.

I would never do this and don't approve of it, but it is very common. Though a lot of it is unintentional: there is lots of word confusion. People use all sorts of words, often meaningless ones to describe a game. And worse, everyone just makes up whatever definition for whatever words they want. So when someone says ''my game is a sandbox with a story and plot and a pineapple upside down cake'', it just means whatever you want it to mean.

The only difference I see is the one about lying to the players to trick them into playing a game they did not want to play. Once you remove that, then most of the argument disappears and you have a healthy thread discussing ways a Participationist DM can hide their rails to the better immersion and enjoyment of everyone (that knowingly and willingly agreed to play) playing the game.

As a hardcore Railroad Illusionist, even I would not bother tricking players into playing a game they did not want to play. Though, I'd also say I don't ''hide the rails'': if your an awake and aware player you will see them. But that is where the self illusion comes in: the player chooses not to see them.

That one simple step seems to solve all of your problems. Communication is not a panacea but sometimes it is the solution.

I would note this is where the Real Illusionism starts. Take the average less-then-aware or clueless player, and tell them what the game will be like. Mine is a Deadly Unfair Hardcore Railroad with Humor. The unaware clueless type player will just shrug, and play the game. And, amazingly, they will think the game is whatever they want to think it is. They can sprout the endless list of cool buzz words like Agency, A Safe Space Game, Meaningful Reality Altering decisions or whatever and think they both have them and they are part of the game. But it's all an illusion by the DM....

Pleh

2018-03-09, 08:05 AM

Players ALWAYS have the ability to leave the game.
Players very nearly always have an expectation for a degree of agency they will have.

Dude, don't you know? Rule zero gives a GM absolute power, so they can do whatever they want, whenever they want. Players can't leave the game without the GM letting them. The GM is well within their power to kidnap them and point a gun at their head if they refuse to play.

I mean, Jigsaw was SUCH a great Illusionist GM.

I always find these sorts of responses hyperbolic and a little absurd. People lie. All the time. If you say you don't, you are. I have lied to three people this morning since I have woken up, and I've only been awake two and a half hours. Odds are over the course of today, at least one member of your family (and more than one if you have kids or siblings), several of your work collegues, and a couple of people on the phone ("you have PPI", "We've heard you've been in an accident"... sure you have) will have lied to you. Mostly about small and irrelevant things ("How's you day?", "ok"... well, it isn't, your actually having a bad day, but you aren't going to say that). Its life, get used to it.

People doing bad things with frequency doesn't change the negative effects of doing bad things to each other.

Dude, stop complaining when I set you on fire. Fires happen all the time around the world, bro.

Lying is a fundamental part of the DM skillset.

BS.

Feigning surprise when a player does something you knew all along they were going to do,

Is totally unnecessary. I like to smile and laugh with them about what an awesome idea we both came to separately. I have one of my friends I regularly play with and we consistently end up guessing exactly what they other person was planning, regardless which of us is GMing.

Not lying/being lied to about it is fun.

fudging the odd dice roll,

Thats... not lying. Listen, when I fudge dice, it's usually because I called for the roll, thinking, "well, let's see what the dice have to say," then get a result that doesn't sit well with me. When I realize I had a justified preference the dice were interfering with, I'm overruling the dice with my GM authority.

The fact that I omit this mental process from my players isn't lying to them, because it was always my job to interpret the outcome of the situation. The same way that in Baseball, when making a ruling on if the player is or isn't "out," the player is neither until the Umpire declares it. There are rules governing how they ought to make their decision, but even if the Ump makes a bad call, their call is the reality of the game. A technically safe runner who is ruled as "out" is actually out, end of story (and vice versa). It's the fact of declarative authority. The game isn't anything until the officiator dictates the outcome. All the other rules are basic guidelines and I am not under any compulsion to explain my choices for making a ruling.

I mean, I guess lying by omission is a thing sometimes, but I'm not really causing any kind of deception to occur. The player chose to do X, I called for a dice roll, in discerning the outcome, I ruled against the roll and declared a result to the player's action more in keeping with the reality of the game than the dice were suggesting.

The only real reason I don't say anything is because it's distracting to walk them through my process. I might still do just that if I feel like I need to rule against the player, at which point I'd pause my ruling to discuss with the player why I feel like their choice maybe shouldn't succeed and give them an opportunity to maybe argue their case a bit better.

hell, even pretending you had prepared for something when the party have left your prepared material hours ago, and you've been winging it ever since.

Also unnecessary. It's one thing if I simply don't inform them that I am winging it, and another to actively suggest otherwise. I usually only disclose such information if the task of preparing new material on the fly is burdensome enough that its clearly slowing me down.

And sometimes it's a treat to the players to tell them that they were clever enough to think around my prepared material. Why take that away from them?

I mean... ouch. That has put a foot fully through the fourth wall and torched any immersion the players had, THAT is something that would make me question the DM's ability, not telling a few lies to keep the game flowing.

It sounds like you consider Immersion sacrosanct, while many others here consider Honesty to be sacrosanct. That is a matter of preference, not universal GM skill.

I will say again that lying is almost never actually necessary to a good game. There are some GM processes that are better kept behind the curtain, but it shouldn't be in the spirit of misleading the players, only keeping them from getting bogged down in the work so they can stay in character.

Using the prerogative of omission to deceive players is inherently adversarial and makes for a poor table ethic.

RazorChain

2018-03-09, 08:09 AM

The first paragraph is true, but the second does not follow and is false.

Basically, you forget one of the most basic things a GM can do: a GM can unilaterally give agency to the players, either explicitly by asking them to decide something or implicitly via scenario design. No separate negotiation required. In fact, this is the default for D&D and most other games with a GM (see below).

Second, regardless of how a player got their agency from the GM, the GM withdrawing that agency is an act of negation in plain common sense way. Like, come on. If I give you an apple, that's one positive apple, if I later take it away, that's one negative apple, if you end up with zero apples then I have negated whatever plans you had for that apple.

Now for the "see below" bit. If you've ever read a D&D rulebook, you may have noticed they are quite thick. This might hint you the fact that they have more rules than just "Rule 0". These rules already define part of the movespace in favor of player action. The purpose of "Rule 0" is not as a blank check to override these willy nilly, it is to fix possible glitches and add new rules when and where the rules don't support the game being played. You can't justify using "Rule 0" to effectively remove the entire game in favor of your illusion, as it's in violation of the spirit of the rules. Gary Gygax himself told you this in 1st Edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide; I suppose I should find me a 2nd or 3rd Edition DMG to see what changed to make people forget this.

You are true the second paragraph is false, or it assumes that the GM will never share his absolute power with the players which means that pretty much no game will happen.

I know there are lot's of other rules but the rules or the mechanics don't protect the player character from the GM. The GM can always negate the player choices. This will most likely shut down the game as the players will leave or the GM will stop the game. But it's still within the GM's power, I'm not going to count all the methods but the easiest is just rocks fall you die.

So I'm fully aware that the players have a social leverage or else there will be no game.

RazorChain

2018-03-09, 08:15 AM

[COLOR="#0000FF"]
Thats... not lying. Listen, when I fudge dice, it's usually because I called for the roll, thinking, "well, let's see what the dice have to say," then get a result that doesn't sit well with me. When I realize I had a justified preference the dice were interfering with, I'm overruling the dice with my GM authority.

The fact that I omit this mental process from my players isn't lying to them, because it was always my job to interpret the outcome of the situation. The same way that in Baseball, when making a ruling on if the player is or isn't "out," the player is neither until the Umpire declares it. There are rules governing how they ought to make their decision, but even if the Ump makes a bad call, their call is the reality of the game. A technically safe runner who is ruled as "out" is actually out, end of story (and vice versa). It's the fact of declarative authority. The game isn't anything until the officiator dictates the outcome. All the other rules are basic guidelines and I am not under any compulsion to explain my choices for making a ruling.

I mean, I guess lying by omission is a thing sometimes, but I'm not really causing any kind of deception to occur. The player chose to do X, I called for a dice roll, in discerning the outcome, I ruled against the roll and declared a result to the player's action more in keeping with the reality of the game than the dice were suggesting.

The only real reason I don't say anything is because it's distracting to walk them through my process. I might still do just that if I feel like I need to rule against the player, at which point I'd pause my ruling to discuss with the player why I feel like their choice maybe shouldn't succeed and give them an opportunity to maybe argue their case a bit better.

Man, did I laugh out loud, I love your explanation. Next time a round I won't fudge I'll just overrule the die with my GM authority.

Satinavian

2018-03-09, 08:38 AM

Man, did I laugh out loud, I love your explanation. Next time a round I won't fudge I'll just overrule the die with my GM authority.Fudging rolls is just a tool of the participationist GMs. If the players are ok with the GM fudging roll then the GM is allowed to do so (and might even go against the social contract by not negating a bad outcome). If not, then the GM should not fudge rolls.

Frozen_Feet

2018-03-09, 08:38 AM

You are true the second paragraph is false, or it assumes that the GM will never share his absolute power with the players which means that pretty much no game will happen.

I don't disagree, but that's not the assumption I was targeting. I was pointing out that the player doesn't need to bargain separately to gain agency, as well as your dubious take on what negation means.

I know there are lot's of other rules but the rules or the mechanics don't protect the player character from the GM. The GM can always negate the player choices. This will most likely shut down the game as the players will leave or the GM will stop the game. But it's still within the GM's power, I'm not going to count all the methods but the easiest is just rocks fall you die.

So I'm fully aware that the players have a social leverage or else there will be no game.

Wrong. No amount of rules can protect a player from a GM who is either malicious or ignorant of the rules. A highly malicious person will in fact choose the game to be played so that it's rigged in their favor.

But the situation is different when it comes to benevolent GMs who did read the rules. Note: "benevolent" in this case doesn't mean being on the players' side. It simply means willingness to entertain the rules of the game in good faith. That is the social contract of all games. If playing soccer, I won't touch the ball with my hands when others aren't looking, even if it'd get me a goal. If playing D&D, I will not arbitrarily negate decisions of players just to tell my story. So on and so forth.

When sitting down with people who actually want to play the damn game, the game rules will define the movespace, and even a GM will respect that the rules need to be stable enough for the players to make meaningfull decisions. That's what separates use of a GM's authority from its abuse.

RazorChain

2018-03-09, 08:41 AM

That is rubbish.

Why should a GM using his own module not being able to do Participationism ? Participationism vs. Illusionism has precisely nothing to do with who wrote a module. Keep in mind that the RPGs used when those words were defined mostly didn't even have any kind of organized play. There are many Participationist groups out there which never touch an official module.

GM can use his module with Participationism. But very rarely will a GM sell his idea as an epic saga where the players just have to put a name to their character, roll some dice and smile while the GM narrates his story. The GM may pitch his campaign idea with an overarching plot and then he'll try to herd those cat's through his plot and use any means necessary and he'll end up using Illusionism.

Or the GM starts with a published module where everybody expect him to herd them like cats through the necessary hoops, let's say when the published module is finished and the players want the game to continue and the GM continues to herd the players like cat's using the same subterfuge as he tried to hide the rails of the published module. The players may not have the same expectations to something that the GM made himself as they expect from a published module.

If you present me with a published module then I'll think RAILROAD. I will try to go through the hoops and be a good player to keep the game moving. If we continue play after the published module I may not expect the same or if you present me with a campaign with an overarching plot then I'll not assume railroad right away. You on the other hand are expecting me to go through your overarching plot but you'll be hiding the tracks because it helps immersion.

The image of some villainous GM that puts a lot of work and effort into maliciously lying, cheating and deceiving his players so they can have fun sounds good to me.

Lorsa

2018-03-09, 08:49 AM

I can't believe noone linked to this very accurate flowchart yet:

http://i43.tinypic.com/rkvjg3.jpg

Frozen_Feet

2018-03-09, 08:52 AM

Fudging rolls is just a tool of the participationist GMs. If the players are ok with the GM fudging roll then the GM is allowed to do so (and might even go against the social contract by not negating a bad outcome). If not, then the GM should not fudge rolls.

Or, the playgroup could just use a diceless system such as Amber or STALKER and bypass the entire talk about fudging.

Dice are not actually fundamental to roleplaying games. They're there to help at decision making when someone (typically the GM) can't make up their mind about what would be the most suitable outcome, with lipservice paid to simulating reality and the concept of fair chance. You can replace any instance of dierolling with suitable algorithmic ruleset, after which you can throw dice out of the window, as they have become useless.

Satinavian

2018-03-09, 08:53 AM

GM can use his module with Participationism. But very rarely will a GM sell his idea as an epic saga where the players just have to put a name to their character, roll some dice and smile while the GM narrates his story.Why would that be a hard sell ? The same players that enjoy being railroaded through an official module would likely enjoy being railroaded through an unofficial one by the same GM. Especially as now the module is probably about something the GM actually cares.

If you present me with a published module then I'll think RAILROAD. I will try to go through the hoops and be a good player to keep the game moving. If we continue play after the published module I may not expect the same or if you present me with a campaign with an overarching plot then I'll not assume railroad right away.That might just be a problem with your expectations.

You on the other hand are expecting me to go through your overarching plot but you'll be hiding the tracks because it helps immersion.Yes, if i have a railroad plot, i try to hide the rails for immersion purposes. Regardless of if i use an official module or not.
But if i were under the impression that you as player think this was a sandbox, i certainly would correct that misunderstanding out of game.

RazorChain

2018-03-09, 08:55 AM

I don't disagree, but that's not the assumption I was targeting. I was pointing out that the player doesn't need to bargain separately to gain agency, as well as your dubious take on what negation means.

In that context I was referring to the social contract that people want to point out. A player can try to negotiate for more agency before the game starts. This can be what kind of game will be run, what he can play or how much meaningful choice will be within the game.

Wrong. No amount of rules can protect a player from a GM who is either malicious or ignorant of the rules. A highly malicious person will in fact choose the game to be played so that it's rigged in their favor.

But the situation is different when it comes to benevolent GMs who did read the rules. Note: "benevolent" in this case doesn't mean being on the players' side. It simply means willingness to entertain the rules of the game in good faith. That is the social contract of all games. If playing soccer, I won't touch the ball with my hands when others aren't looking, even if it'd get me a goal. If playing D&D, I will not arbitrarily negate decisions of players just to tell my story. So on and so forth.

This is where the system contradicts you. Published modules that belong to the system will actively try to railroad the players through the authors story. IIRC Ed Greenwood was one of the most hamfisted railroaders in his modules.

Frozen_Feet

2018-03-09, 09:05 AM

In that context I was referring to the social contract that people want to point out. A player can try to negotiate for more agency before the game starts. This can be what kind of game will be run, what he can play or how much meaningful choice will be within the game.

:eyeroll:

All of the above is called "picking the game to be played", and quite often literally encompassed by the singular action of drawing the right rulebook off the shelf.

This is where the system contradicts you. Published modules that belong to the system will actively try to railroad the players through the authors story. IIRC Ed Greenwood was one of the most hamfisted railroaders in his modules.

1) The published D&D modules I grew up playing were all location-based sandboxes with next to no story.
2) Don't confuse scenarios for the system. Virtually any RPG system can be rigged to a railroad, this doesn't mean that's the best or intended way to use them.
3) This said, you may have unintentionally answered my question of what, exactly, made people forget how D&D is supposed to be played. :smalltongue:

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-09, 09:14 AM

I can't believe noone linked to this very accurate flowchart yet:

http://i43.tinypic.com/rkvjg3.jpg

Seems a bit slanted toward that far lower right corner... with some preloaded questions.

Appears to rest on very broad assumptions about what is "story" or "narrative", such as assuming that a game driven by the characters "as people" will be story/narrative/collaborative improv.

Pleh

2018-03-09, 09:20 AM

Man, did I laugh out loud, I love your explanation. Next time a round I won't fudge I'll just overrule the die with my GM authority.

What else does "fudging the roll" ever mean? Do you use literal, baked fudge products on your d20s?

Fudging the dice is inherently a GM utilizing authority to overrule a strict adherence to the Dice Result. Maybe they justify it by limiting themselves to only slightly modifying something.

But remember that if Illusionism is where you limit player agency without the player's knowledge, fudging dice can be used to INCREASE player agency where the DICE would be the actor limiting the player's agency.

Player tries to do X, dice say they didn't succeed, and DM decides "rule of cool" wins out over "versimilitude" in this contest.

Therefore, Dice Fudging is not exclusively a tool belonging to Illusionist GMs, because it is also used by strictly Non-Illusionist GMs.

The tool can be used for creating Illusionism, but it doesn't have to be.

Yes, in many games the GM has absolute authority, but that doesn't justify them using it to create the illusion of a game that isn't actually happening. There is a Man Behind The Curtain, but the Man should be trustworthy, and not a con artist. The Curtain may sometimes be necessary, but it doesn't make Illusionism necessary. That isn't what the curtain is for.

This is in contrast with "pretending you aren't having to wing it" or "feigning surprise" which are meant to deceive the players (in a vain and futile attempt to maintain control the GM doesn't actually have) which really amounts to condescension and pandering.

These have never been necessary components of any of my games and my groups have had some great games.

Pelle

2018-03-09, 09:42 AM

Player tries to do X, dice say they didn't succeed, and DM decides "rule of cool" wins out over "versimilitude" in this contest.

[...]

This is in contrast with "pretending you aren't having to wing it" or "feigning surprise" which are meant to deceive the players (in a vain and futile attempt to maintain control the GM doesn't actually have) which really amounts to condescension and pandering.

I would just like to comment that if I were to fudge and allow rule of cool to override the die result, some of my players would find that condescending as well. They want to succeed on their own merits, not because the DM thinks their characters are cute enough. I find it better to simply not roll at all if I know I will not accept "bad" outcomes.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-09, 09:52 AM

What else does "fudging the roll" ever mean? Do you use literal, baked fudge products on your d20s?

Fudging the dice is inherently a GM utilizing authority to overrule a strict adherence to the Dice Result. Maybe they justify it by limiting themselves to only slightly modifying something.

But remember that if Illusionism is where you limit player agency without the player's knowledge, fudging dice can be used to INCREASE player agency where the DICE would be the actor limiting the player's agency.

Player tries to do X, dice say they didn't succeed, and DM decides "rule of cool" wins out over "versimilitude" in this contest.

From time to time, occasionally, you have to fudge the dice to avoid harming verisimilitude -- "rule of cool" doesn't even have to come into it.

Therefore, Dice Fudging is not exclusively a tool belonging to Illusionist GMs, because it is also used by strictly Non-Illusionist GMs.

The tool can be used for creating Illusionism, but it doesn't have to be.

There are some posters in this thread who are insisting that if a tool can be used for illusionism, then using it IS illusionism.

This is like insisting that because a hammer can be used to build a house, anyone using a hammer is building a house.

Yes, in many games the GM has absolute authority, but that doesn't justify them using it to create the illusion of a game that isn't actually happening. There is a Man Behind The Curtain, but the Man should be trustworthy, and not a con artist. The Curtain may sometimes be necessary, but it doesn't make Illusionism necessary. That isn't what the curtain is for.

Exactly.

Furthermore, there's nothing linking any one system to any one level of GM "power" or "authority". There's nothing magical about some systems over others that makes a jerk less of a jerk, or a good GM less of a good GM. Eliminating the particular position of GM doesn't remove the potential for jerks or powermongering or abusive behavior in games.

This is in contrast with "pretending you aren't having to wing it" or "feigning surprise" which are meant to deceive the players (in a vain and futile attempt to maintain control the GM doesn't actually have) which really amounts to condescension and pandering.

These have never been necessary components of any of my games and my groups have had some great games.

In terms of winging it vs not winging it, there's a reason other than deceit to try to blur the lines.

I want the players' experience of the world through the "lens" of their characters to be seamless -- I don't want it to radically shift between the material I prepped 5 days ago, and the material I've been adding in the last 5 seconds. It's not about lying, I don't actually care if they suspect that I'm having to wing it -- it's about the quality of the campaign that I'm providing to the players.

Segev

2018-03-09, 10:59 AM

From time to time, occasionally, you have to fudge the dice to avoid harming verisimilitude

Can you give an example or few? This seems an extraordinary claim to me.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-09, 11:06 AM

Can you give an example or few? This seems an extraordinary claim to me.

1) Situations where there probably shouldn't have been a roll in the first place, and you were moving along quickly and didn't think about it, and then realized how ridiculous it would be for the character to fail in that situation.

2) Situations where an extreme result is possible mechanically but makes no sense "in fiction" -- most systems have odd corners and edges that aren't always clearly visible until the dice come up.

Generally, situations where not being a perfect GMing paragon leads to a roll outcome that makes no damn sense, and you can either fudge a bit behind the scenes, try to improv something that makes sense of the roll without contradicting it, or let the game come to a screeching halt because you're a slave to the dice/rules.

Koo Rehtorb

2018-03-09, 11:29 AM

Lying is a fundamental part of the DM skillset. Feigning surprise when a player does something you knew all along they were going to do, fudging the odd dice roll, hell, even pretending you had prepared for something when the party have left your prepared material hours ago, and you've been winging it ever since. And a player shouldn't be surprised that a DM tells the odd lie - I'm sure you could DM with complete 100% honesty, but then you would likely get a reputation as a killer DM, and be constantly breaking the atmosphere with things like:

I find all of these examples bizarre and wonder why anyone would ever do them.

I mean... ouch. That has put a foot fully through the fourth wall and torched any immersion the players had, THAT is something that would make me question the DM's ability, not telling a few lies to keep the game flowing.

And found the given example an entirely reasonable thing to do.

There's this weird perception certain people have that think GMs are supposed to be projecting this aura of infallible confidence, or something. And I think it's really dumb.

Pleh

2018-03-09, 11:34 AM

Can you give an example or few? This seems an extraordinary claim to me.

Yes, the point of rolling dice in favor of verisimilitude is to leave a few aspects of the game to chance just as it is in real life.

The place where chance hurts verisimilitude is where the chances for success and failure (either by their existence or by their disproportion) strain our suspension of disbelief.

Friv

2018-03-09, 11:53 AM

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-09, 12:04 PM

There's this weird perception certain people have that think GMs are supposed to be projecting this aura of infallible confidence, or something. And I think it's really dumb.

At least based on my experience, I think most players are going to be far more appreciative of a GM who is clearly doing their best, being honest about the game, and is more concerned with giving them the best game possible rather than grasping at "power" and "authority".

kyoryu

2018-03-09, 12:17 PM

I can't believe noone linked to this very accurate flowchart yet:

http://i43.tinypic.com/rkvjg3.jpg

That. Is. Brilliant.

From time to time, occasionally, you have to fudge the dice to avoid harming verisimilitude -- "rule of cool" doesn't even have to come into it.

That's a prime example of system/expectation mismatch.

I generally prefer systems that don't tell me *what* happens, they put constraints on what can happen. That way, I don't need to fudge!

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-09, 12:24 PM

At least based on my experience, I think most players are going to be far more appreciative of a GM who is clearly doing their best, being honest about the game, and is more concerned with giving them the best game possible rather than grasping at "power" and "authority".

I strongly agree. I'd much rather a DM tell me flat out that only one route forward is possible and let me figure out why my character is ok with that. Wasting everyone's time with invisible walls or BS reasons why that's not possible (that make things much less consistent going forward) is not OK.

In fact, the best way I've found to DM is something like active participationism--

Enlist the players (not the characters) in the effort to keep the game moving forward. Once they have bought in, they'll help keep things going--figure out reasons their characters want to be there and want to do that thing. More heads are better than one. This also promotes immersion--then everyone's on the same page with the same image. I've had players spend entire sessions OOC, nailing down exactly what their choice would be--what choice they want and what choice their characters would be willing to make. I've had players suggest reasons why a particular thing is the way it is that were much better than my reasons. This does require trusting the players though, and the players trusting the DM.

I tend to do this to shape short arcs (3-5 sessions)--they choose what the focus of the next arc is (sometimes freely, sometimes from constrained choices), and then play along as we explore that arc, suggesting ways to make it better. This iterative process makes for a game that's both less work to prepare and much more fun to run, because everyone's in on it and working together to make it fun and immersive.

CharonsHelper

2018-03-09, 12:30 PM

I can't believe noone linked to this very accurate flowchart yet:

http://i43.tinypic.com/rkvjg3.jpg

That's awesome.

By those 3 options - I generally run a mix of sandbox & participationism. (I don't consider them mutually exclusive.)

I do problems for the PCs to solve but the PCs choose how to tackle them, and the PCs could ignore the hooks if they really wanted. My big thing is that I have them make big decisions at the end of the session so that I have time to plan it out (I'm mediocre at total improv).

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-09, 12:36 PM

My big thing is that I have them make big decisions at the end of the session so that I have time to plan it out (I'm mediocre at total improv).

That's something I started doing when we come to the end of an arc--lay out some options and get them to decide where they want to go and what they want to do next. It helps a lot. Gives me a week (at least) to get started with the flow of the arc. Within an arc they're pretty good at finding rails to follow, even if I didn't place them there.

kyoryu

2018-03-09, 12:39 PM

I do problems for the PCs to solve but the PCs choose how to tackle them, and the PCs could ignore the hooks if they really wanted. My big thing is that I have them make big decisions at the end of the session so that I have time to plan it out (I'm mediocre at total improv).

Yeah, it's not perfect. Most games will have some switching between at least two of the styles, and a few of the differentiating questions aren't what I'd make them. For instance, in most of the games I run the Big Problem is imposed by me, but how the players do it is up to them. So, since it's not self-motivated goals, it's not Story-Now according to the chart, but the descriptions of Sandbox don't really match up either. (Which, now that I read it again, sounds closer to what you do than most things, except I run more improv).

That said, those are minor issues compared to the overall brilliance.

Pleh

2018-03-09, 02:32 PM

Enlist the players (not the characters) in the effort to keep the game moving forward.

What? But how can players know what comes next in my story? And if they add stuff to the story, then it won't be the awesome, special thing I have in mind.
Why can't they just sit back and enjoy feeling like they are telling a story while they listen to my spectacular ideas?

RazorChain

2018-03-09, 02:37 PM

So, I know it's a tangent, but I have called against die rolls in the past. I've just done it openly.

I definitely had a scene in which so many failures got rolled in a row that I said, "Okay, this is ridiculous, all of your failures to date stand but this roll you're making now just succeeds, don't roll it." I have had a scene in which, after a roll produced a nonsense result, I said, "Um.... that's a nonsense result. Let's dial it to the closest result that makes any kind of sense."

It's been a long time since I've flat-out ignored a result, though. Maybe I've just gotten better at not rolling when I already know what I want to happen?

This might be a situations where no roll is needed. Say yes or roll a die. When you ask a player to roll a die you are essentially saying no to his action to succeed but he get's to roll for it. In diceless roleplaying you might just ask the player if his character succeed at the task.

Frozen_Feet

2018-03-09, 03:54 PM

Can you give an example of [fudging to preserve verisimilitude]? This seems an extraordinary claim to me.

A more concrete example of this: several games have poorly thought out crit tables. A crit might sever a limb, but the rules leave it undefined what happens if the same crit is rolled again. In such a case, the GM obviously has to modify the roll or its result.

I've also fudged rolls for some of the crazier effects of the Summon spell in LotFP, when I realized mid-process that it will take too long and disrupt the game if I resolve it strictly by the book.

kyoryu

2018-03-09, 04:07 PM

This might be a situations where no roll is needed. Say yes or roll a die. When you ask a player to roll a die you are essentially saying no to his action to succeed but he get's to roll for it.

What? That doesn't make sense. You're saying "there's a chance, but it's not guaranteed," not "no, but I'll let you roll because I like the sound dice make."

"Say yes or roll a die" is best understood assuming good faith on the part of all involved, and makes the presumption that the player in that situation believes that his character could do the thing in good faith. And if the player belives that, then most of the time you should accept that unless you know there's some reason that it's not actually possible.

In diceless roleplaying you might just ask the player if his character succeed at the task.

That's not how diceless roleplaying works (at least in the major example, starting with Amber).

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-09, 04:08 PM

A more concrete example of this: several games have poorly thought out crit tables. A crit might sever a limb, but the rules leave it undefined what happens if the same crit is rolled again. In such a case, the GM obviously has to modify the roll or its result.

I've also fudged rolls for some of the crazier effects of the Summon spell in LotFP, when I realized mid-process that it will take too long and disrupt the game if I resolve it strictly by the book.

I've seen it for those, or for correcting a mistake on my part (especially where really no roll would be needed but I missed part of the context that made that clear).

I've had cases where I called for the roll/made the roll too early (before my mind caught up with me) and what I was rolling for was really a foregone conclusion (in either direction). I've bodged the numbers (not the dice, particularly, but the defenses/health of a monster) where the original design was pants-on-head (I misread something) or to be consistent with what I had told another person. For example, I told someone that they hit when they shouldn't have (because I did the math wrong and they were off by one). From then on, that monster had 1 lower AC than their printed value (to be consistent for the rest of the party).

Edit: Or for loot tables. I'll over-ride those constantly if it gives stupid stuff. But those are usually rerolls until it looks decent.

In keeping with my love of honesty in DMs, when I make a mistake like that I try to mention it (after the session if not sooner) and admit my mistake. Everyone screws up. But it irritates me strongly if someone refuses to admit fault or take responsibility for screwing up.

Scripten

2018-03-09, 04:31 PM

As an anecdote, I made a pretty significant mistake with a D&D 5E combat encounter several weeks ago. I had put together a bunch of monsters which (I thought) conferred the Incapacitated status effect onto anyone grappled by them. The combat ended up being much harder than usual, but it was tense and exciting and made the players pull out every stop to survive. Near the end of the combat, I checked the monster stats and noticed that they only caused players to be Restrained, which is far less debilitating.

I could have kept up the illusion, because it ultimately made the combat better, but I instead told the players that I'd messed up and apologized. We then continued the combat. Telling the truth didn't pull the players out of their immersion, nor would they have appreciated finding out later that I had inadvertently cheated them.

RazorChain

2018-03-09, 06:08 PM

What? That doesn't make sense. You're saying "there's a chance, but it's not guaranteed," not "no, but I'll let you roll because I like the sound dice make."

"Say yes or roll a die" is best understood assuming good faith on the part of all involved, and makes the presumption that the player in that situation believes that his character could do the thing in good faith. And if the player belives that, then most of the time you should accept that unless you know there's some reason that it's not actually possible.

I'm not saying no I like the sound of dice. I'm saying no unless you make your roll. I could say yes unless you fail your roll, but to put it in improv terms I consider it a block, you are blocking the flow until it can be resolved with a die roll.

That's not how diceless roleplaying works (at least in the major example, starting with Amber).

Amber doesnt always know what it makes of it. If you have 60 points in warfare you are better than Brand but worse than Benedict but doesnt quite explain how good you are compared to the rest of the multiverse. Will Benedict armed only with a rock defeat a giant Mecha? Depends mostly on how the scene is narrated.

In Theatrix you might just ask the player if his character succeeds or not because there are no stats and the player might narrate his success or failure.

NichG

2018-03-09, 10:37 PM

The honesty thing is misleading here, I think. In terms of what honesty means for interpersonal relationships, an actor playing a part isn't being dishonest for trying to play it convincingly, and if they give a very vivid performance of pain, anguish, or death, it's not helpful for them to drop OOC and say 'don't worry, this is just part of the act'.

The example of 'guys, I only have 3 of 9 locations prepared, choose' is like the actor dropping character, or a player dropping OOC to explain why their character is doing something irrelevant. It's basically unnecessary, because just as the actor's job is to convincingly depict a character, in that situation the GM's job is to convincingly depict a world.

They could have just said e.g.: 'scouts have reported three locations so far which seem to still be intact'. The GM doesn't have to tell the players that they originally intended for there to be 9 - that information only exists within the GM's head, is within the bounds of scenario design that is explicitly their job, and has no bearing on player agency (characters are not taking actions here).

If the players go to location 4, the GM can then decide 'it's rubble' and the scouts will not later report it standing, or can improv, or can ask for time at that point ('yeah, there would be something here, give me a bit').

Now, there can be reasons why a GM would want to share this process - there are other people in the group interested in GMing and this is the equivalent of talking shop, the timing is such that ending the session and generating the rest would be reasonable and the GM wants players to weigh in on that decision, etc.

But I don't think 'wanting to be honest' holds water here. There should be no ethics-based expectation that the world exposes its generation process to the players, even if it's fine if that's a table preference.

Where it does become about honesty in the social sense would be if, when asked OOC, the GM lies about something rather than just choosing not to answer. And in that case, I'd generally support the stance of tell the truth or say nothing. But say nothing should be an acceptable answer - "I'm not going to tell you the villain's motives, find out in character", "I'm not going to tell you what stuff was prep or improv because I think it would diminish the game", etc. If a player says 'tell me or I leave', better to let them leave than to lie in that case.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-10, 07:25 AM

NichG

2018-03-10, 08:41 AM

Counter point: DM ing is not acting, players aren't an audience. Staying "in character" isn't that important. Being able to trust each other is. As is having a clear, shared understanding of the situation. Locking important details in one person's mind hurts the shared mental picture, impoverishing play and hurting immersion. It also reduces agency.

In that particular case, I fully expect them to visit many, if not all of those locations. If I said only 3 were standing, that's a continuity error when later they go there. If they had ignored my request, I would have let them go there with the warning that it was going to be improvised and likely unbalanced.

Instead, I treat my players as equals and ask for cooperation instead of lying about the state of the world. I'm fine with characters lying to characters. Real people shouldn't lie to real people.

Not all silence is deception either, so staying silent (about motives, traps, or other things that require surprise to be effective) is expected behavior, not deception.

What I'm arguing here is that saying that these things are matters of trust is an incorrect escalation of something that can easily be part of the gameplay and in-character layer into an out-of-character, social interaction issue. There are many game experiences and styles of play which rely extensively upon hidden information, deception, misleading cues, and faux antagonism. If you read faux antagonism as real antagonism, or the existence of hidden information in the game as an act of out-of-character aggression, then of course it can seem to be very hostile. But at the same time, it is perfectly possible for many people to play games with the understanding that all of those things are part of the game, not part of the real social interaction between people at the table.

When the GM creates a situation which deceives me, that's fair game in my eyes - it's an opportunity for me to play at trying to pierce the deception, or to experience surprise or shock in an environment where the worst possible things that could actually happen are some momentary frustration or upset. I could choose to try to make that an issue, but because I'm able to extend trust to the GM, I can experience a wider variety of games than if I felt like I had to actually be in on everything going on behind the screen.

'When should the GM come clean?' is a really complex issue, its not something so easily answered by 'honesty is good, always do it'. In a recent campaign, I've got a GM who is experimenting with improvisation and trying to become more flexible as a result. However, he's obviously not entirely comfortable with it yet and occasionally breaks and asks OOC questions about things. Although it'll help him improve to do this, every time it happens it really sucks the wind out of the sails of the game - any tension or pressure that we thought we were pushing against in character, now we know exactly where things are giving way to the metagame considerations of e.g. how excited we sound about a given plan or things like that. So there's a sort of 'why bother?' feeling that I have to fight past. If he just didn't take cues from us at all, well, we tend to push the game in very unanticipated ways and there'd likely be a lot of chaos which would be frustrating for all involved and not really all that interesting (I've been on both sides of that kind of situation). But if he took cues, threw in twists that were customized for the directions play was proceeding in, and kept mum about what stuff was planned and what stuff was off the cuff, that'd make me happiest (and hopefully, through table communication, eventually that's where he'll get).

Similarly, I've been the 'GM coming clean' about things and had it crash out people's enjoyment of the game on a couple of occasions - at one point it was a frank discussion about a numbers arms race going on between two players that was basically going to render the game mechanically sort of boring (which robbed them of the enjoyment of that arms race - something that they were actually getting a lot out of, despite being a destabilizing influence to the campaign; now, I've got a set of monster design tricks which I'll break out in those cases which expands the dynamic range). At another point it was a string of frustrating strategic scenarios where an offer to discuss the game difficulty and make adjustments left everyone feeling as though their victories were fake.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-10, 09:07 AM

What I'm arguing here is that saying that these things are matters of trust is an incorrect escalation of something that can easily be part of the gameplay and in-character layer into an out-of-character, social interaction issue. There are many game experiences and styles of play which rely extensively upon hidden information, deception, misleading cues, and faux antagonism. If you read faux antagonism as real antagonism, or the existence of hidden information in the game as an act of out-of-character aggression, then of course it can seem to be very hostile. But at the same time, it is perfectly possible for many people to play games with the understanding that all of those things are part of the game, not part of the real social interaction between people at the table.

If you're playing a game where the DM is expected to be deceptive, that's different. There, it's part of the game. I object to being deceptive in an attempt to save face, control the game, or reduce agency. Covering up a lack of preparation with fake obstacles is purely about saving face, in my experience, and an unsuccessful one at that. Even if the players don't know what is wrong, they usually know something is wrong.

When the GM creates a situation which deceives me, that's fair game in my eyes - it's an opportunity for me to play at trying to pierce the deception, or to experience surprise or shock in an environment where the worst possible things that could actually happen are some momentary frustration or upset. I could choose to try to make that an issue, but because I'm able to extend trust to the GM, I can experience a wider variety of games than if I felt like I had to actually be in on everything going on behind the screen.

Deceptive situations are fine, as long as it's the characters that are being deceived. The players might not have all the information, but they're not being fed false information in an attempt to control their agency. The only window that the players have into the game world is through the words of the DM. Inserting false "state of the world" data (unless required by game mechanics such as illusions) into that stream corrupts the process. Again, it's a matter of expectations. I try to err on the side of giving too much information, trusting the players not to meta-game. Part of this is some bad experiences with DMs being controlling jerks by not revealing critical information that the characters would know--the characters know more than the DM can tell (because they're really there, not getting a compressed, lossy description). So more information is usually better.

'When should the GM come clean?' is a really complex issue, its not something so easily answered by 'honesty is good, always do it'. In a recent campaign, I've got a GM who is experimenting with improvisation and trying to become more flexible as a result. However, he's obviously not entirely comfortable with it yet and occasionally breaks and asks OOC questions about things. Although it'll help him improve to do this, every time it happens it really sucks the wind out of the sails of the game - any tension or pressure that we thought we were pushing against in character, now we know exactly where things are giving way to the metagame considerations of e.g. how excited we sound about a given plan or things like that. So there's a sort of 'why bother?' feeling that I have to fight past. If he just didn't take cues from us at all, well, we tend to push the game in very unanticipated ways and there'd likely be a lot of chaos which would be frustrating for all involved and not really all that interesting (I've been on both sides of that kind of situation). But if he took cues, threw in twists that were customized for the directions play was proceeding in, and kept mum about what stuff was planned and what stuff was off the cuff, that'd make me happiest (and hopefully, through table communication, eventually that's where he'll get).

This is a play-style thing. I agree that most honesty belongs after a session, but immersion really doesn't mean much to me. Most of what I do is OOC or is as narrator. There I'm talking to the players, not the characters. I'm describing what they see, what they feel, etc. And if I can paint that best by using modern terms or in other ways that "break the 4th wall", that only helps the game flow, IMX.

Similarly, I've been the 'GM coming clean' about things and had it crash out people's enjoyment of the game on a couple of occasions - at one point it was a frank discussion about a numbers arms race going on between two players that was basically going to render the game mechanically sort of boring (which robbed them of the enjoyment of that arms race - something that they were actually getting a lot out of, despite being a destabilizing influence to the campaign; now, I've got a set of monster design tricks which I'll break out in those cases which expands the dynamic range). At another point it was a string of frustrating strategic scenarios where an offer to discuss the game difficulty and make adjustments left everyone feeling as though their victories were fake.

If those two players were the only ones in the group, fine. Adjust the difficulty dynamically. But if there are others who weren't participating, letting them arms-race is the worst thing. Because it robs the others of their fun by making them useless. Fun at the expense of others is not valid fun--its selfishness and immaturity. Warping the game around those players by adjusting the range is unfair to the other players. "Git Gud Nub" ("well, they should just optimize more") is a toxic attitude, in part because many people don't find that game-play fun at all. Part of a DM's job is to police the balance, not let players warp the game around themselves. And the DM counts as a player here--if he's not having fun because the players have broken the system, that's a problem.

I don't want to make it seem like I'm saying the DM can't keep secrets--he certainly can (and must, at times). But the default should be (IMO) towards openness and mutual understanding. The players aren't the audience and the DM is not the entertainer. They're equals, albeit with asymmetric roles, in the pursuit of fun. And letting them in on the secrets where possible shares the load, reducing it from being a one-man show to having everyone participate in making awesome things happen. That's my repeated experience over many groups with differing maturity levels (I play with a lot of teenagers). All the bad times I've had were due to people acting in antagonistic ways to other players (through their characters), often with the excuse "it's what my character would do" (from players) or by concealing critical facts that the characters would know to try to manipulate the players.

RazorChain

2018-03-10, 09:30 AM

What I'm arguing here is that saying that these things are matters of trust is an incorrect escalation of something that can easily be part of the gameplay and in-character layer into an out-of-character, social interaction issue. There are many game experiences and styles of play which rely extensively upon hidden information, deception, misleading cues, and faux antagonism. If you read faux antagonism as real antagonism, or the existence of hidden information in the game as an act of out-of-character aggression, then of course it can seem to be very hostile. But at the same time, it is perfectly possible for many people to play games with the understanding that all of those things are part of the game, not part of the real social interaction between people at the table.

When the GM creates a situation which deceives me, that's fair game in my eyes - it's an opportunity for me to play at trying to pierce the deception, or to experience surprise or shock in an environment where the worst possible things that could actually happen are some momentary frustration or upset. I could choose to try to make that an issue, but because I'm able to extend trust to the GM, I can experience a wider variety of games than if I felt like I had to actually be in on everything going on behind the screen.

'When should the GM come clean?' is a really complex issue, its not something so easily answered by 'honesty is good, always do it'. In a recent campaign, I've got a GM who is experimenting with improvisation and trying to become more flexible as a result. However, he's obviously not entirely comfortable with it yet and occasionally breaks and asks OOC questions about things. Although it'll help him improve to do this, every time it happens it really sucks the wind out of the sails of the game - any tension or pressure that we thought we were pushing against in character, now we know exactly where things are giving way to the metagame considerations of e.g. how excited we sound about a given plan or things like that. So there's a sort of 'why bother?' feeling that I have to fight past. If he just didn't take cues from us at all, well, we tend to push the game in very unanticipated ways and there'd likely be a lot of chaos which would be frustrating for all involved and not really all that interesting (I've been on both sides of that kind of situation). But if he took cues, threw in twists that were customized for the directions play was proceeding in, and kept mum about what stuff was planned and what stuff was off the cuff, that'd make me happiest (and hopefully, through table communication, eventually that's where he'll get).

Similarly, I've been the 'GM coming clean' about things and had it crash out people's enjoyment of the game on a couple of occasions - at one point it was a frank discussion about a numbers arms race going on between two players that was basically going to render the game mechanically sort of boring (which robbed them of the enjoyment of that arms race - something that they were actually getting a lot out of, despite being a destabilizing influence to the campaign; now, I've got a set of monster design tricks which I'll break out in those cases which expands the dynamic range). At another point it was a string of frustrating strategic scenarios where an offer to discuss the game difficulty and make adjustments left everyone feeling as though their victories were fake.

I think Pleh hit on something where he mentioned that some hold honesty sacrosanct while others hold immersion sacrosanct. I hold immersion sacrosanct, I game for an immersive experience. I don't care if the GM fudges for the benefit of the game or choice between A and B only lead to C or that the GM changes the stats of monsters in the middle of an encounters to make it more interesting, puts down plothooks right in front of the group or changes the scene.

I don't care so long as I don't know or notice, so long these things are kept behind the curtain. I look at a GM as an entertainer or an performer and the players as well, we are the performers and the audience at the same time. When the GM stops the show because he can't cope with things, made a mistake, has to retcon or explain you can't do a thing or go there because he isn't prepared this brings everything to stop and brings me out of the immersion. I value flow and immersion therefore the most important part of GMing skill for me is improvisation and the ability to create drama. What I value most in my players is the ability to immerse themselves and their ability to expose themselves to drama.

If another player character betrays my character I won't scream about deception or dishonesty EVEN if the player has been insinuating that our characters are friends OOC. I will think "well played sir!" because I'm feeling the betrayal of my character.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-10, 09:39 AM

Honesty and immersion are not somehow mutually exclusive. Illusionism is contrary to both, however.

Not all fudging is based in deceit or illusion.

I think some are taking honesty, or the preference for honesty, as meaning adherence to some sort of doctrinaire absolute based on action alone, rather than taking intent and context into consideration.

Red Fel

2018-03-10, 09:43 AM

I think Pleh hit on something where he mentioned that some hold honesty sacrosanct while others hold immersion sacrosanct. I hold immersion sacrosanct, I game for an immersive experience. I don't care if the GM fudges for the benefit of the game or choice between A and B only lead to C or that the GM changes the stats of monsters in the middle of an encounters to make it more interesting, puts down plothooks right in front of the group or changes the scene.

I don't think that the two are mutually exclusive. I think it's possible to hold immersion sacrosanct, even to fudge some rolls or story beats, if the players understand and expect that this will happen for the sake of an effective and immersive story.

APs are a great example of this. An AP requires certain events to play out a certain way. So the players need to know, coming into it, that "This is an AP, you guys, so certain things are just going to have to happen. All I ask is that you come along for the ride when they do."

That's honesty. It's also immersion-building, because it's designed to build a coherent and engaging world. But when you have both, the players can stay engaged and not feel betrayed when the reins are periodically taken out of their hands.

Me, personally, I like things to be more open-ended. I love it when an unexpected die roll takes a scene - or the entire plot - in some random, unexpected direction. But I understand that some people don't like that. For people like that, I'll paraphrase Machiavelli:

Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to wield immersion over honesty or honesty over immersion? One should wish to use both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be honest than immersive.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-10, 09:48 AM

I don't think that the two are mutually exclusive. I think it's possible to hold immersion sacrosanct, even to fudge some rolls or story beats, if the players understand and expect that this will happen for the sake of an effective and immersive story.

APs are a great example of this. An AP requires certain events to play out a certain way. So the players need to know, coming into it, that "This is an AP, you guys, so certain things are just going to have to happen. All I ask is that you come along for the ride when they do."

That's honesty. It's also immersion-building, because it's designed to build a coherent and engaging world. But when you have both, the players can stay engaged and not feel betrayed when the reins are periodically taken out of their hands.

Me, personally, I like things to be more open-ended. I love it when an unexpected die roll takes a scene - or the entire plot - in some random, unexpected direction. But I understand that some people don't like that. For people like that, I'll paraphrase Machiavelli:

Agreed. I like your paraphrase. I find much more immersion in honesty, honestly. Once I feel like I'm being BS'd, my ability to maintain the illusion goes way down. I don't have any problem with fudging numbers though--those aren't things the players (or the characters) would know. I do have a problem with deceptive manipulation of in-game reality, especially trying to reduce my agency for someone else's benefit. I'm allergic to Gotcha DM'ing, and deception and manipulation of reality (in-game gaslighting, in a sense) are common steps down that road in my experience.

NichG

2018-03-10, 09:58 AM

If you're playing a game where the DM is expected to be deceptive, that's different. There, it's part of the game. I object to being deceptive in an attempt to save face, control the game, or reduce agency. Covering up a lack of preparation with fake obstacles is purely about saving face, in my experience, and an unsuccessful one at that. Even if the players don't know what is wrong, they usually know something is wrong.

I can agree with the first part - if the only thing at stake is the GM's ego, let it burn. But covering up lack of preparation isn't really about saving face, its about making the game run smoothly no matter what. If players perceive that certain things will take the game off the rails, they may end up carrying that around with them in their decision making process. 'I don't want to leave the prepared stuff, because it's going to tank the game/end the session', etc. If you can use techniques such as buying time, you can make that quality drop more graceful and have it be mostly in places that matter the least, and in turn actually empower players to feel better about going off the rails than if you suddenly crash out.

Doing this well means that yes, the players can still end up going where they want, and can even do it that session. That's worth a lot more than saving face.

Deceptive situations are fine, as long as it's the characters that are being deceived. The players might not have all the information, but they're not being fed false information in an attempt to control their agency. The only window that the players have into the game world is through the words of the DM. Inserting false "state of the world" data (unless required by game mechanics such as illusions) into that stream corrupts the process. Again, it's a matter of expectations. I try to err on the side of giving too much information, trusting the players not to meta-game. Part of this is some bad experiences with DMs being controlling jerks by not revealing critical information that the characters would know--the characters know more than the DM can tell (because they're really there, not getting a compressed, lossy description). So more information is usually better.

This is a play-style thing. I agree that most honesty belongs after a session, but immersion really doesn't mean much to me. Most of what I do is OOC or is as narrator. There I'm talking to the players, not the characters. I'm describing what they see, what they feel, etc. And if I can paint that best by using modern terms or in other ways that "break the 4th wall", that only helps the game flow, IMX.

If those two players were the only ones in the group, fine. Adjust the difficulty dynamically. But if there are others who weren't participating, letting them arms-race is the worst thing. Because it robs the others of their fun by making them useless. Fun at the expense of others is not valid fun--its selfishness and immaturity. Warping the game around those players by adjusting the range is unfair to the other players. "Git Gud Nub" ("well, they should just optimize more") is a toxic attitude, in part because many people don't find that game-play fun at all. Part of a DM's job is to police the balance, not let players warp the game around themselves. And the DM counts as a player here--if he's not having fun because the players have broken the system, that's a problem.

An arms race doesn't have to be a problem, but making a campaign in which an arms race can exist and the other players are still useful does tend to require a lot of the things that people are decrying here - namely, adaptive behind-the-scenes mechanisms to create the illusion that the things underlying the arms race are paying off for those characters, while in reality those things are being made less relevant relative to other things that aren't under the arms race condition. For example, someone who obtains a 100% miss chance against melee attacks is going to feel like that was worthless if everything is just throwing around fireballs or save or dies from then on. But if there's an uptick of fireballs and save or dies while at the same time there's a couple really heavy-hitting melee glass cannons who are e.g. easy to taunt, or personal duels against famous swordsmen, or things like that, then the players are more likely to feel that their cool thing is not being no-sold, while at the same time the game doesn't just devolve into 'watch them do stuff'.

Arms races are generally about quantifiable intensity, so spreading around a lot of utility powers or weird stuff can also help there. Sure, there's someone in the party who does 10k damage per hit, but now someone else in the party has the ability to cut abstract connections between things with a touch attack. The first person can one-shot the boss, the second person can separate the boss from their ambitions and redeem them, it all kind of works out. At the same time, you can do this, and you can even do it openly, but if you do it too explicitly openly then it tends to ruin the fun because now people may end up playing the metagame of e.g. 'I'd better not become too powerful or I won't get a cool thing' which tends to be more frustrating than interesting.

It's again a tricky balance point to take between openness and illusion. I generally give the caveat at the start of the campaign by describing my GM style - expect most things to be improvised, mechanics evolve during play, expect lots of strange stuff both as character options and in use by the rest of the world, and that I'm willing to run a very high power/influence level if people go for it, but that also means the game will very much become about whatever scale the players manage to reach. It's enough that people who don't like that kind of thing in the broad sense can choose not to play.

RazorChain

2018-03-10, 10:06 AM

I don't think that the two are mutually exclusive. I think it's possible to hold immersion sacrosanct, even to fudge some rolls or story beats, if the players understand and expect that this will happen for the sake of an effective and immersive story.

APs are a great example of this. An AP requires certain events to play out a certain way. So the players need to know, coming into it, that "This is an AP, you guys, so certain things are just going to have to happen. All I ask is that you come along for the ride when they do."

That's honesty. It's also immersion-building, because it's designed to build a coherent and engaging world. But when you have both, the players can stay engaged and not feel betrayed when the reins are periodically taken out of their hands.

Me, personally, I like things to be more open-ended. I love it when an unexpected die roll takes a scene - or the entire plot - in some random, unexpected direction. But I understand that some people don't like that. For people like that, I'll paraphrase Machiavelli:

I agree that honesty and immersion aren't exclusive to each other in so far that honesty encompasses the absence of lying and cheating. If within the framework of the game you are allowed to lie and cheat then honesty hasn't been sacrificed. I would rather say that trust and immersion go hand in hand, my fellow players can trust that my dishonesty within the game doesn't extend outside of the game.

kyoryu

2018-03-10, 02:36 PM

Agreed. I like your paraphrase. I find much more immersion in honesty, honestly. Once I feel like I'm being BS'd, my ability to maintain the illusion goes way down. I don't have any problem with fudging numbers though--those aren't things the players (or the characters) would know. I do have a problem with deceptive manipulation of in-game reality, especially trying to reduce my agency for someone else's benefit. I'm allergic to Gotcha DM'ing, and deception and manipulation of reality (in-game gaslighting, in a sense) are common steps down that road in my experience.

I think the point here is that participationism can be less immersion breaking than illusionism - if you know railroading can and will happen, and have agreed to it, it's easy to go "oh, I'm being railroaded", and get on with it and past it. Thinking in a meta way? Sure. For about three seconds.

On the other hand, if you're being illusionismed, and you suspect it, you start thinking about it with everything that happens, start trying to test it, etc. Very immersion-breaking.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-10, 02:46 PM

I think the point here is that participationism can be less immersion breaking than illusionism - if you know railroading can and will happen, and have agreed to it, it's easy to go "oh, I'm being railroaded", and get on with it and past it. Thinking in a meta way? Sure. For about three seconds.

On the other hand, if you're being illusionismed, and you suspect it, you start thinking about it with everything that happens, start trying to test it, etc. Very immersion-breaking.

And you start seeing illusions everywhere, even when they're not in use. That's why illusionism is so destructive--it breeds a cycle of self-reinforcing paranoia by just being mentioned. Getting player buy-in (participationism or just plain honesty) solves that entirely.

I'm fine with being railroaded as long as two things are true:

* I know and have consented in advance
* The things my character does are meaningful in context even if they aren't by my choice (so I'm not just an audience for the DM's uber-NPCs).

Heck, starting tomorrow I'll be playing in a 5e adventure path. Because I know there are rails and a pre-planned story, I can work to stay on them and make my character such that he wants to stay on them without having to be forced or tricked.

Pleh

2018-03-10, 03:59 PM

NichG

2018-03-10, 10:42 PM

Railroading tends to ruin things for me, participation or illusion. Illusionism isn't for railroading. Illusionism is so that you don't have to railroad.

If an AP requires the party to be captured and transported on a slave ship to a city where there's a cult preparing a ritual to summon a demon that the PCs are going to want to stop, that may be what was prepared, but it's a far lesser sin to me to let the PCs avoid capture if they figure out how, then just transplant the cult to somewhere near the PC's base of operations. Which indeed is a kind of quantum ogre, but it has nothing to do with an intentional plans the PCs have about outcomes (since they didn't yet know about the cult, avoiding capture wasn't an action taken to intentionally avoid learning about them). So no agency loss, and a significant amount of agency gain in that they can influence whether they approach the scenario free or in chains, at home or abroad, etc.

Pleh

2018-03-10, 11:27 PM

Railroading tends to ruin things for me, participation or illusion. Illusionism isn't for railroading. Illusionism is so that you don't have to railroad.

That's not how it works. Illusionism is often a method of concealing the act of railroading rather than an alternative to it.

NichG

2018-03-10, 11:53 PM

That's not how it works. Illusionism is often a method of concealing the act of railroading rather than an alternative to it.

The thing that makes it problematic in that case is the railroading, not the illusionism. I disagree that they're things which should be equated. I've given several examples so far of cases where one would want to create the impression that things are one way while having them be another way - e.g. craft illusions - that have nothing to do with railroading, and do not impact player agency at all. If people look at these techniques as an opportunity to railroad and get away with it, I'd suggest the problem is with their overall mindset in approaching the game, not with the techniques themselves.

Paraphrasing PhoenixPhyre, when a GM does things just to save face, massage their own ego, or demonstrate control, that's going to make for a bad game. GMs can use deceptions and sleight of hand to do that, and when they use those tools for that it will be bad. Just as if the GM does all of that in the open, it will still be bad. That's because ultimately the GM is making decisions not with regards to what makes the game fun for the people at the table, but as their own power trip.

On the other hand, good uses of illusionist techniques can help game flow better, allow players to drop baggage with respect to metagame expectations, etc - it can serve the game rather than the GM. And players can use these techniques as well, it's not a GM-only thing.

Pleh

2018-03-11, 05:38 AM

I think you may have the same misunderstanding here as I had elsewhere. It's tempting to use the term, "illusionism" to mean any practice that involves the art of concealment, especially due to the name and the fact that a lot of people try to use it that way.

I think it was the meaningless sandbox thread where people corrected me on this. The term came from a set of articles on DMing and had a specific meaning that is misunderstood if it isn't held in contrast with Participationism.

Participationism is the benign acceptance of things that not just any group of players might allow. You are quite correct that hidden information falls in this category and swings both ways between player and GM.

Creating illusions for players can be Participationism rather than Illusionism if the people experiencing the illusions accept and condone the creation of these illusions (which people very commonly do).

Illusionism, in contrast, is *defined as* the act of trying to convince players they are playing a different game than they actually are. It is inherently a violation of their choice, or else it would be Participationism.

Illusionism is Participationism without consent; you hide the fact that you are trying to get away with something the other player (by definition) would not allow if they knew what you were doing.

Some people say it doesn't hurt anything if the targeted playmates never find out. This isn't how consent works, though.

Some people argue that it's fine because they're only doing things that advance the game and the other players would be fine with it anyway. First of all, if you are right that the other players would be fine with your actions, then this is Participationism, not Illusionism. Second, if the players would not be fine with it, then you violate consent.

Next we get into the hairier territory with the consideration of "advancing the game." It's readily obvious that sometimes GMs have to overrule a player to move things forward. Several threads have been devoted to answering good tactics for breaking a game out of a rut it gets stuck in. Very commonly, the answer comes out to, "make a ruling quickly and decisively, then come back after and talk as a table about how to handle it better in the future."

From there, one could argue that they do the same with Illusionism, except they do not intervene with immersion to do so.

The counterpoint is that this does not allow the second half: coming back to discuss it later. That is the critical resolution of consent in a manner that does not disrupt play.

But why do we need to come back to it at all? If you have reason to believe that these other people might not like what you have done, it's probably better to confess than hope it continues to work.

Wouldn't the conversation afterward ruin the game in hindsight? It depends on the players. If it doesn't harm their ability to participate, then no harm is done. It sounds like you might be upset that they said anything at all and broke immersion. That means that your ability to participate hinges strongly on immersion and you are quite flexible with participation in a game that is heavily immersive. I suspect if a GM was running a game with Max Killjoy and confessed later to having used Illusionism to compensate for lack of preparation, that Max might be more upset by the use of illusionism than the break in immersion and would likely urge the GM to do better prep work or even offer to help them learn better how to prepare games.

The point being that no amount of skill at creating illusions makes Illusionism okay, because it definitively requires lack of consent, especially when creating illusions is harmless when players get the opportunity to give their consent.

Asking forgiveness rather than permission is fine, but it does involve asking forgiveness later.

NichG

2018-03-11, 05:51 AM

Both of those sound broken to me.

For me as a player the ideal is to recognize that I don't need to know exactly what game I'm playing, which leaves me open to experiencing things that are only possible when the game is mutable and, yes, deceptive.

The whole reason that trust is so important in gaming is that it lets you not feel like you have to be in constant negotiation or control over the game, but can rather let people pursue interesting lines of play or GMing that you don't actually need to understand or explicitly endorse in the moment.

In that sense, a game run only by piecemeal, session to session consent sounds unbearably tedious. If I'm at the table, I'm giving the GM leeway to do something interesting. If it becomes awful, I will just leave.

Satinavian

2018-03-11, 05:56 AM

In that sense, a game run only by piecemeal, session to session consent sounds unbearably tedious. I'll pass on that one.Participationism of course does allow you to give your OK for an indefinite timescale into the future. There is no need to give consent every session. But it should be somewhere.

NichG

2018-03-11, 06:21 AM

Satinavian

2018-03-11, 07:53 AM

Well, maybe you do.

I would never consent to such a thing and would feel betrayed if such a thing happened without my consent.

NichG

2018-03-11, 08:48 AM

Well, maybe you do.

I would never consent to such a thing and would feel betrayed if such a thing happened without my consent.

That's fine, as a choice of preference. But it does mean that if illusionist techniques are all getting tarred with the brush that assumes a priori that they can only be used in a way to bypass consent or abuse trust, I think that ends up being a waste, because those techniques actually have a far wider range of applications in which they can be used properly and in a way which enhances the game for everyone involved. So I'd prefer to resist the Participationism vs Illusionism as diametrically opposed views on consent narrative, since I think it renders a whole set of gaming methods into what amounts to a strawman.

Pleh

2018-03-11, 08:57 AM

If I go by Pleh's started definition, that Illusionism is the act of trying to convince players that they're playing a different game than they actually are, the thing I object to is the idea that this is necessarily an attempt to bypass consent.

Whereas if I give long term consent to not need to know truly what game I'm playing, that's a counterexample.

If you give consent, you are using Participationism, not Illusionism.

Writing a blank check to your GM is Participationism. You volunteer to participate in whatever they present. Illusionism at this point is impossible, because your expectations cannot be violated if you intend to not have any.

Illusionism is a tactic to convince players to buy into a game they have not consented to.

NichG

2018-03-11, 09:11 AM

If you give consent, you are using Participationism, not Illusionism.

Writing a blank check to your GM is Participationism. You volunteer to participate in whatever they present. Illusionism at this point is impossible, because your expectations cannot be violated if you intend to not have any.

Illusionism is a tactic to convince players to buy into a game they have not consented to.

The previous definition you gave though was that it's a tactic to convince players that the game they're playing is different than the actual game, which is a very different thing...

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-11, 09:25 AM

jayem

2018-03-11, 09:30 AM

The previous definition you gave though was that it's a tactic to convince players that the game they're playing is different than the actual game, which is a very different thing...
But if you've consented to "play a game where the rules aren't what you think", you may be surprised and tricked within the rules of the wider meta-game about the inner game (in the same way if I play Diplomacy I may be surprised if England actually attacked Normandy this turn, no matter how honest he sounded). But that was what you participated in. You were 'betrayed' in game.

If instead Diplomacy had been introduced as a Strategic WarGame, I'm British your French and we have to beat the axis powers. Then you would be right to feel betrayed in real life. Similarly if I've signed up for Diplomacy, I would feel pissed off in real life if England rearranged the bored while I wasn't looking.

Pleh

2018-03-11, 09:31 AM

The previous definition you gave though was that it's a tactic to convince players that the game they're playing is different than the actual game, which is a very different thing...

Any game different than the one the player expects has not been granted valid consent, but is instead a counterfeit appropriating the consent (thereby invalidating the consent).

Again, you can bypass this by writing a blank check, granting consent to any game presented.

They aren't different. One is just a special case of the other.

NichG

2018-03-11, 09:56 AM

Sounds the same to me.

The former is subject to the counterexample where I consent for the GM to use any techniques they like including deception. The latter is not subject to that counterexample because it defines it away.

In the former, when I say 'please trick me', the GM could still be using illusionism (with my consent) to do so. In the latter, when I say 'please trick me', then all deceptions the GM employs are by way of definition not illusionism.

I'd argue that in the former, the phrase 'illusionist techniques' could still be meaningful, whereas in the latter 'illusionist techniques' is a somewhat meaningless phrase because the techniques themselves are independent of whether or not consent has been granted.

Any game different than the one the player expects has not been granted valid consent, but is instead a counterfeit appropriating the consent (thereby invalidating the consent).

Again, you can bypass this by writing a blank check, granting consent to any game presented.

They aren't different. One is just a special case of the other.

This doesn't follow. If I go to something that I think is going to be a fantasy game, and find that suddenly at some point in the campaign there are aliens and space ships and sci-fi elements, that's not the game I expected. However, at the same time, I can go to such a game and tell the GM 'do whatever you like' - in which case, I've given consent for that twist, without specifically expecting that particular twist out of the infinity of things that follow under 'do whatever you like'.

Or more to the direct point, if I ask a GM 'please trick me', and they do so in a way that I'm expecting, then they've actually failed to deliver what I've asked for. Yet it's something I can choose to ask for, and it's not particularly incoherent to do so. Similarly, I tend to hold GMs to the expectation that they will do something to make the game in play greater than the sum of its rules (by homebrewing, by running things based on internal logic, by being really clever and putting forth scenarios which pose questions that surpass the mechanics, etc), but that doesn't mean that my expectations in detail are fully formed when I request that - its not 'do this piece of homebrew', it's 'show me something I've never seen before, catch me by surprise'.

Those aren't counterfeits appropriating the consent, they're explicitly what I asked for. And yet at the same time, they may in many cases benefit from or even require the GM to deceive me about what game I'm actually playing.

Pleh

2018-03-11, 10:22 AM

The former is subject to the counterexample where I consent for the GM to use any techniques they like including deception. The latter is not subject to that counterexample because it defines it away.

In the former, when I say 'please trick me', the GM could still be using illusionism (with my consent) to do so. In the latter, when I say 'please trick me', then all deceptions the GM employs are by way of definition not illusionism.

I'd argue that in the former, the phrase 'illusionist techniques' could still be meaningful, whereas in the latter 'illusionist techniques' is a somewhat meaningless phrase because the techniques themselves are independent of whether or not consent has been granted.

This doesn't follow. If I go to something that I think is going to be a fantasy game, and find that suddenly at some point in the campaign there are aliens and space ships and sci-fi elements, that's not the game I expected. However, at the same time, I can go to such a game and tell the GM 'do whatever you like' - in which case, I've given consent for that twist, without specifically expecting that particular twist out of the infinity of things that follow under 'do whatever you like'.

Or more to the direct point, if I ask a GM 'please trick me', and they do so in a way that I'm expecting, then they've actually failed to deliver what I've asked for. Yet it's something I can choose to ask for, and it's not particularly incoherent to do so. Similarly, I tend to hold GMs to the expectation that they will do something to make the game in play greater than the sum of its rules (by homebrewing, by running things based on internal logic, by being really clever and putting forth scenarios which pose questions that surpass the mechanics, etc), but that doesn't mean that my expectations in detail are fully formed when I request that - its not 'do this piece of homebrew', it's 'show me something I've never seen before, catch me by surprise'.

Those aren't counterfeits appropriating the consent, they're explicitly what I asked for. And yet at the same time, they may in many cases benefit from or even require the GM to deceive me about what game I'm actually playing.

It all becomes Participationism the moment you decide you're fine playing that game. You are defending participationism, not illusionism.

It becomes Railroading when the GM doesn't care if you consent.

It becomes Illusionism when the GM withholds information relevant to the Player's decision(s) about participating (specifically to prevent participation because of the uncertainty in participation or certainty in the lack thereof).

As you pointed out, a player can be universally participatory, but this is just setting the equation equal to zero.

"Where does the player draw the line about what they consider acceptable?"

"Nowhere" is the special case scenario where illusionism becomes impossible, because the player has waived the right to make such decisions and accepts whatever the GM provides. The GM can disclose or conceal anything and it isn't illusionism because the player isn't using information to make decisions, so it isn't possible to undermine decisions the player isn't making.

Remember that Illusionism =/= using deception or illusions. This is precisely BECAUSE players can ask to be tricked, which demonstrates they are PARTICIPATING in being tricked (even if only to the extent of offering consent). Illusionism only really has meaning (due to the definition of participationism) to describe an effort to create the appearance of consent being honored when it isn't.

NichG

2018-03-11, 11:07 AM

jayem

2018-03-11, 11:16 AM

Because it's creating the 'illusion' of being what was consented too (while being what was not consented to),

OldTrees1

2018-03-11, 11:18 AM

Illusionism, in contrast, is *defined as* the act of trying to convince players they are playing a different game than they actually are. It is inherently a violation of their choice, or else it would be Participationism.

Illusionism is Participationism without consent; you hide the fact that you are trying to get away with something the other player (by definition) would not allow if they knew what you were doing.

That sounds like defining a strawman in order to attack it then. Why call it Illusionism, rather than, say, non-consensual gaming? If consensual illusions are considered not to be illusionist, then that makes for a pretty bad misnomer.

These two definitions are not precisely equal which lead to NichG's comment about Pleh's definition.

If Illusionism is just lying to the players about what type of game they are going to be playing, then NichG is an example of an extreme case where the player does not care about the lie and thus no wrong was done. Considering players with less extreme positions we can still see cases where a Player is okay with a set of games and okay with the DM tricking them into thinking they were playing approved game X when it runs as approved game Y (say an Eldritch Horror game that appears to be using D&D but the DM resolves things under the hood using Call of Cthulhu). Obviously this doesn't remove the real danger that the player might have cared about the lie.

The second definition leans heavily on the intentional violation of consent. Players with universal consent like NichG's (at least for this example) will never be harmed by this definition either. However they may mark the intention as malicious even if they themselves were immune. This definition also ignores cases where the DM accidentally misinforms the players by action or omission about what kind of game they are going to be running. This includes the DM that says nothing about their campaign before they start and expects to hide a railroad while the players expected some limited agency. Do we want to include or exclude this accident in our definition of Illusionism?

Personally I think Pleh's first definition is a good definition to use for Illusionism even with the special cases where the deceit is not wrong. Illusionism is the act of tricking the player into thinking they are playing a different game than they actually are. If the Players all would have consented to either game and the DM intended the actual game to be one the Players would have consented to, then there is no harm and no malicious intent. In cases that remove either of those qualifiers, Illusionism stops being acceptable.

If we're talking about techniques in particular, using the word 'illusion' but then insisting that it's definition is strictly about lack of consent tars a class of gaming techniques by implication - e.g. that if someone speaks about creating the illusion of something, now by default they are likely to be assumed to be trying to bypass consent.

Given conversation in this thread, it's a real problem. Take for example the situation with having only 3 locations prepped out of 9 planned. Hiding the fact that there should have been 9 was decried as illusionist, even though nothing at all had anything to do with consent in that situation.

I don't think we are talking about "techniques in particular" because during the game, Illusionism uses a subset of the techniques Participationism has access to. The difference between the two seems to be at the entry point into the game. You could use a Quantum Ogre to create an illusion that the players could use direction to choose what to encounter. You could do that in a game the Players knew had limited agency or you could do that in a game where the Players did not know they had limited agency. The former is Participationism and the latter is Illusionism. However you did work as a good example where the deception of Illusionism is not always wrong and that made me realize a case where it might be positive.

Pleh

2018-03-11, 11:24 AM

That sounds like defining a strawman in order to attack it then. Why call it Illusionism, rather than, say, non-consensual gaming? If consensual illusions are considered not to be illusionist, then that makes for a pretty bad misnomer.

If we're talking about techniques in particular, using the word 'illusion' but then insisting that it's definition is strictly about lack of consent tars a class of gaming techniques by implication - e.g. that if someone speaks about creating the illusion of something, now by default they are likely to be assumed to be trying to bypass consent.

Given conversation in this thread, it's a real problem. Take for example the situation with having only 3 locations prepped out of 9 planned. Hiding the fact that there should have been 9 was decried as illusionist, even though nothing at all had anything to do with consent in that situation.

So it feels like an attempt to tar a set of approaches that (the original author of the terms) didn't like.

Just like the terms 'power-gamer' or 'roll-player' force discussion of things like optimization into a judgemental frame, it seems that the term 'Illusionism' in this particular meaning of it acts to force discussion about manipulative and deceptive elements of play into a frame in which consent is assumed to be absent. Which I think is singularly unhelpful.

I didn't pick the term or its name, but using "illusionist" to mean, "a GM who uses illusions on their players" is rather meaningless because most every GM employs some illusion (or something that can be described as such). It's just "Normal" to have a Man Behind the Curtain, so there is no need to use another word to describe something so universal.

Sure, maybe another term would be better, but go ahead and propose something.

I believe the reason for why the term, "illusionism" was first chosen because GMs wanting to justify their non consensual games would use the idea of benign illusions to defend their practices.

Thus Participationism was clarified from Illusionism in response.

NichG

2018-03-11, 11:58 AM

I didn't pick the term or its name, but using "illusionist" to mean, "a GM who uses illusions on their players" is rather meaningless because most every GM employs some illusion (or something that can be described as such). It's just "Normal" to have a Man Behind the Curtain, so there is no need to use another word to describe something so universal.

The way I'd tend to take it, independent of discussions of consent and such, would be that an Illusionist GM is a GM who operates on the principle that nothing is real until it's revealed - e.g. that no, there wasn't actually an ogre camping by the mountain pass and a gnoll raiding camp operating around the forest road until the very moment where those details are mentioned at the table. This would be opposed to a GM who runs things in a strictly status quo fashion, where prepping things is a commitment to following through on the execution of the specific things which have been prepped.

So in that sense, an illusionist GM would be comfortable with the use of techniques such as quantum ogres, modular prep, re-usable set pieces, adaptive re-balancing, etc. Not to mention techniques such as taking cues on outcomes from the players (e.g. designing yet unseen parts of the campaign based on a good idea or explanation which a player says during table discussion, so that the thing the player said will turn out to have been right many games later).

The thing that makes it confusing is that while there can be an agency issue here, but there isn't really so much of a consent issue to most of these things because in almost all cases part of the GM's stated job is to actually come up with the adventure, and whether they do it the day before game or on the fly during game isn't really pre-specified. So by consenting to play someone's campaign of their own design, you're consenting to let them design the campaign, which means you're consenting to letting them decide where the ogre is and where the gnolls are. It could happen, but I'd take it to be fairly rare that a player would say explicitly 'I'm okay with you running your campaign, but only if you run it strictly from your campaign notes'

In terms of the agency issue, 'character agency', 'player agency', and 'player consent' are very easily entangled. So it is natural to discuss the potential downside of using this kind of illusion with respect to character and player agency - and the answer to that is that basically what I gave in my original post on the thread, which is that you should make sure to do this stuff in a way that maintains consistency (so that the reasoning of players with respect to the intended consequences of their actions is preserved), and in a way that does not convey the impression (real or not) of bias.

I think that discussion - with respect to ensuring the preservation of agency when using illusion - is a much more productive direction which can derive from the term 'Illusionist' than the discussion on consent.

Sure, maybe another term would be better, but go ahead and propose something.

I believe the reason for why the term, "illusionism" was first chosen because GMs wanting to justify their non consensual games would use the idea of benign illusions to defend their practices.

Thus Participationism was clarified from Illusionism.

Lets say we take a player who, at the beginning of the campaign, explicitly says 'I don't want to play in a railroaded game'. So, explicit non-consent for railroading.

If the GM says 'fine' and then proceeds to run a railroaded game but hides it, and if the GM says 'fine' and then proceeds to run an openly railroaded game, the problem is actually the same - that the GM acknowledged, but then basically ignored the player's concerns and requests. The important aspect of that isn't whether things were hidden, it's the non-consensual nature of the interaction. So I think that illusions are a red herring when it comes to discussing consent. Illusions may be one way, but not the only way, that consent can be violated at the gaming table.

At the same time, most issues with game are not actually consent issues, but matters of gradated preference. Consider a player who wouldn't refuse outright to play in a railroaded game, but is happier in a game which is not railroaded than one which is. In that case, consent isn't at issue since they'd play in both the openly railroaded and openly non-railroaded games. Framing things in terms of consent specifically excludes these middle cases, but lots of things that are actually relevant to the question of GMs treating the players well and trying to run a game they will enjoy depend strongly on things that live in these middle cases. The actual place where illusions (rather than, I suppose, 'Illusionism') can be beneficial lives in this grey area, where dressing things up differently or engaging in manipulation by way of presentation can satisfy otherwise impossible juxtapositions of player preferences.

Pleh

2018-03-11, 12:40 PM

NichG

2018-03-11, 01:14 PM

"It's not about whether things are hidden, but whether things are consensual."

To an extent, yes, because exceedingly few in number are the games that are totally devoid of a Man Behind the Curtain. It depends a rather great deal WHAT things are being hidden. Even a totally Railroaded game can be justified by authentic Participationism (which involves the act of giving consent).

My points don't exclude middle or grey area. I was showing how the work at the end points so the range they cover in between could be more generally extrapolated. What I'm describing is meant to give examples of how the concepts work, not an exhaustive exhibition in ALL the ways in which it works.

"[There can be games where] nothing is real until it is revealed."

Or in other words, "Illusions can't be bad because everything can be an illusion." Again, all Illusions are capable of being accepted under Participationism, so yes

In the sense of what I would like the term to mean, it has nothing to do with things being good or bad. Rather, it has to do with a particular philosophy of how to understand the game state. I don't mean that 'in some games, nothing is real until revealed'. I mean that 'in all games, it is impossible to say what is real or not until revealed - but we may pretend otherwise'.

It's an observation about the realities of how games work as a set of real players at the table. Although we pretend that there is a game world, there isn't really one, and that has implications to what things can and cannot be distinguished. A particular game can choose to eschew intentional usage of those realities of course, and in that sense not all games make use of those illusions.

The interesting point isn't to render judgment about practices, but rather to see where following that view leads and to see how the implications of that view may be used and the consequences and considerations surrounding doing so.

"Most issues with game are not actually consent issues, but matters of gradated preference."

This is true, but we still run into trouble with the idea that any consent can be specifically given when the proposal is deceptive and manipulative.

I think that's an artifact of artificial specificity. It requires the proposal to make some overclaim, or the players to make highly specific requests which for some reason the GM accepts with the intent to thwart rather than just telling those players they might want to find another have. In most cases, consent necessarily involves broad strokes rather than exhaustive enumeration.

In terms of cases where illusion is used to justify violating consent and there actually is a consent issue, I still think the relevant thing is the non-consensual aspect, not the illusion aspect. Where there may be interesting nuance is in mapping the space of implied or assumed consent, something that has nothing at all to do with illusion but would be relevant to concepts of participation. That would make for a much more informative contrast in views.

With respect to justifications, there's just not that much to really say. Even with consent, if someone ends up being a jerk and delivers an awful experience, it doesn't matter what pretty words they use to cover it - the player is under no obligation to keep playing if they're feeling put off just because the GM justified things.

ImNotTrevor

2018-03-11, 02:10 PM

Frozen_Feet

2018-03-11, 04:19 PM

That analogy sucks. Illusionism isn't in any way homologous to getting the wrong tattoo made.

If you really want to find analogues to illusionism outside gaming, look at pick-up artistry. The pick-up artist acts manipulative to get another person to make choices which further the pick-up artist's goals instead of that person's. And unsurprisingly pick-up artists have a bed rep because of all the people who realized they'd been cheated into acting as stepping stones towards someone else's goals, without really getting anything out of the deal themselves.

In this context, "the point of RPGs is to have fun, so if everyone had fun in the illusionist game, what's the problem?" is homologous to "the point of relationships is to have sex, so if everyone had sex, what's the problem...?" :smalltongue:

RazorChain

2018-03-11, 04:49 PM

kyoryu

2018-03-11, 05:01 PM

Red Fel

2018-03-11, 05:19 PM

Illusionism stems from determinist branch of philosophy: Free will doesn't exist, it's merely an illusion.

Players don't give their consent and aren't informed that their choices don't have any meaning in the game or parts of the game. This does not mean that the players have stated that they don't want to participate in a game where their choices have no meaning. As the players don't know that their choices have no meaning they have no way of showing their disapproval of the fact.

Just to clear up what Illusionism stands for.

I'm not sure I agree with that. There is already a term for a game in which the players' choices have no meaning in part or in whole - participationism. That's a game where the players show up with the expectation that they are essentially riding along in the story; they are given their lines to speak and roles to play, but are more or less following the DM's lead. And that's fine.

In order for illusionism to distinguish itself from participationism, the only element that can differ is the players' advance knowledge. Participationism is when the players' choices have no impact, and they know it. So illusionism, then, is when the players' choices have no impact, and they don't know it. Says so in the thread title - "What your players don't know won't hurt them."

Here's the thing, though. Because the players know, coming into a participationist game, that it will be participationist, there's no harm, no foul. If they don't want to play, they won't, and if they do, they will.

But the players don't know coming into an illusionist game that it will be illusionist. That's by definition and design. And if they find out, at some point, they are likely to feel hurt or betrayed. Yes, it's possible that some will say, "Well, it's been fun so far, I can keep playing along," but even if they're enjoying, a reasonable reaction is still, "Yes, but why didn't you tell me?"

That's what I meant by "honesty," upthread. Not that they should be able to trust you out of game, but that the premise of the game itself should be honest.

Because here's the key thing, in my mind: If you're good enough to run a compelling, immersive story, where the players will be happy just to ride along with you, why not tell them?

RazorChain

2018-03-11, 05:33 PM

Your argument rests on two assumptions which I disagree with.

A) That you won't get caught.
B) Any action is morally okay if you don't get caught.

I'm not arguing anything really, it's more of an explanation. The discussion has been focusing on what Illusionism really is.

Let me try again

Illusionism stems from determinist branch of philosophy: Free will doesn't exist, it's merely an illusion. Another way to put it is as a term for a style where the GM has tight control over the storyline, by a variety of means, and the players do not recognize this control.

Most people come to a roleplaying game with the expectation that there will be agency and that choices they make matter.

The players will start the game without consent or knowledge that their choices don't matter. This does not mean that the GM has explicitly stated that their choices will matter.

We have 3 options here

A) The GM states that player choice will matter
B) There are not statements made about choices
C) The GM states that player choice doesn't matter

Only in statements A & B can there be Illusionism because if the GM has stated that choices will not matter then the players both know and consent if they take part in the game.

Florian

2018-03-11, 05:48 PM

Most people come to a roleplaying game with the expectation that there will be agency and that choices they make matter.

And to expand upon that, they often come with some expectations about the level of control and influence they or their characters have on the game world. Hence people often having trouble separating a time line from railroading, such things.

kyoryu

2018-03-11, 05:59 PM

I'm not arguing anything really, it's more of an explanation. The discussion has been focusing on what Illusionism really is.
...

We have 3 options here

A) The GM states that player choice will matter
B) There are not statements made about choices
C) The GM states that player choice doesn't matter

Only in statements A & B can there be Illusionism because if the GM has stated that choices will not matter then the players both know and consent if they take part in the game.

Well, agreed.

I'd go further that for option B, there's an implicit statement made by the GM that choices matter as soon as the GM presents a choice.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-11, 06:04 PM

I'd go further that for option B, there's an implicit statement made by the GM that choices matter as soon as the GM presents a choice.

I'd say that as a general rule players can fairly expect that their choices matter unless the GM has specifically said otherwise -- and a GM who does not say otherwise and make it clear to the players that their choices won't matter, is lying by omission.

Pleh

2018-03-11, 06:07 PM

The players will start the game without consent or knowledge that their choices don't matter.

Important to remember here that the players have *acted* voluntarily: "start the game."

Since they intend to do something together, they have consented to *something* and have some idea as to what it is (expectation).

The fact that the game is nothing like their expectations is where their consent for one thing has been appropriated to some unauthorized use (theoretically without their knowledge).

NichG

2018-03-11, 10:03 PM

Illusionism is violating player consent while pretending you aren't. It's that simple.

You give the illusion of operating withing accepted and consented-to boundaries while in reality not doing so.

Let us suppose you go to get a tattoo on your back. You request, let's say, a tiger.

...

This example works for all gray areas.
This isn't hard.

Those aren't examples of grey areas. A grey area is, you go in and request a tiger, and find out afterwards that you got Hobbes.

You asked for a tiger and got one, but you might still end up being very disappointed with the result if the reason you had in mind for asking for a tiger was very different than what Hobbes represents. This is by and large the sort of thing that happens at gaming tables, more so than literal consent violation. Most of the time when illusions as a technique are used, it's within this grey area.

The tattoo artist isn't going to be able to tell you that the mermaid you got is in fact a tiger, but they might be able to sell you on Hobbes. The interesting question isn't 'should the tattoo artist give you a mermaid when you ask for a tiger', because it's a trivial question when framed that way. It may not even be 'should they give you Hobbes?'. But if we want to actually talk about deception and manipulation rather than just not doing what you're asked (or perversely choosing something that might violate the spirit of what was asked while obeying the word), the question is more about how the tattoo artist might try to sell you on their idea over your idea.

E.g. if the tattoo artist says 'You want a tiger? Well, okay, but there's a lot of really generic ones out there. I can do something special though, it'll be great, really unique, but it'll probably be a bit different than you had in mind.' then in the definitions given above, if the person accepts that would not be considered Illusionism (because it's considered Participationism due to consent, and those are being presented as opposite things). But at the same time, there's a huge difference between that exchange and someone walking in and saying 'give me a tattoo of Hobbes'.

I'm not sure I agree with that. There is already a term for a game in which the players' choices have no meaning in part or in whole - participationism. That's a game where the players show up with the expectation that they are essentially riding along in the story; they are given their lines to speak and roles to play, but are more or less following the DM's lead. And that's fine.

In order for illusionism to distinguish itself from participationism, the only element that can differ is the players' advance knowledge. Participationism is when the players' choices have no impact, and they know it. So illusionism, then, is when the players' choices have no impact, and they don't know it. Says so in the thread title - "What your players don't know won't hurt them."

Illusionism can distinguish itself from Participationism by referring to matters that don't have to do with the consent state, and which don't have to do with removing meaning from the players' choices. Saying 'we have this thing where everything is okay consent-wise, called Participationism, and now we need a term to refer to not-that - I know, how about Illusionism, because some GMs use illusion to override consent' is an error of type. The opposite of consent isn't illusion, it's non-consent. Illusion may be involved, but that's not a good reason to choose the representative term for non-consent to be 'illusion'.

It's like saying 'we have role players and roll players - role players get into their role and play their characters, and roll players optimize their statistics' - you end up drawing a false dichotomy by taking a large class of behaviors presented as 'good' and contrasting it with a small, specific class of behaviors you want target and label as 'bad' by comparison. Then of course you can defend the term 'roll players' by saying that some players do emphasize mechanical optimization at the cost of their characterization so it refers to that, but as a result you're also tarring anyone who engages in mechanical optimization of any form with the same brush.

ImNotTrevor

2018-03-11, 10:41 PM

Those aren't examples of grey areas. A grey area is, you go in and request a tiger, and find out afterwards that you got Hobbes.

You asked for a tiger and got one, but you might still end up being very disappointed with the result if the reason you had in mind for asking for a tiger was very different than what Hobbes represents. This is by and large the sort of thing that happens at gaming tables, more so than literal consent violation. Most of the time when illusions as a technique are used, it's within this grey area.

The tattoo artist isn't going to be able to tell you that the mermaid you got is in fact a tiger, but they might be able to sell you on Hobbes. The interesting question isn't 'should the tattoo artist give you a mermaid when you ask for a tiger', because it's a trivial question when framed that way. It may not even be 'should they give you Hobbes?'. But if we want to actually talk about deception and manipulation rather than just not doing what you're asked (or perversely choosing something that might violate the spirit of what was asked while obeying the word), the question is more about how the tattoo artist might try to sell you on their idea over your idea.

E.g. if the tattoo artist says 'You want a tiger? Well, okay, but there's a lot of really generic ones out there. I can do something special though, it'll be great, really unique, but it'll probably be a bit different than you had in mind.' then in the definitions given above, if the person accepts that would not be considered Illusionism (because it's considered Participationism due to consent, and those are being presented as opposite things). But at the same time, there's a huge difference between that exchange and someone walking in and saying 'give me a tattoo of Hobbes'.

It depends how broad their definition of "Tiger" is, but for the purpose of the example if all they want is some form of thing that can reasonably be called a Tiger, Hobbes would count and no harm done.

If they clearly mean a Tiger as a person with no knowledge of Waterson's comic would, then giving them Hobbes would be a no-go. You're fulfilling the letter of the request while ignoring the intent. If it counts only via technicality and obviously subverts the person's actual wants while technically hitting their stated requirements, they have good reason to be upset with you.

If you owe me 100 dollars and you pay me in coupons with an effective value of $100, I am within reasonable response to say "no, F off, I need 100 actual dollars."

So the gray area is... not actually all that gray.

Illusionism can distinguish itself from Participationism by referring to matters that don't have to do with the consent state, and which don't have to do with removing meaning from the players' choices. Saying 'we have this thing where everything is okay consent-wise, called Participationism, and now we need a term to refer to not-that - I know, how about Illusionism, because some GMs use illusion to override consent' is an error of type. The opposite of consent isn't illusion, it's non-consent. Illusion may be involved, but that's not a good reason to choose the representative term for non-consent to be 'illusion'.
Not every term for an opposite thing need be a literal opposite. Illusionism gets its name because it is SPECIFICALLY doing TWO things:
1. Violating player consent
2. Creating the *"illusion"* that you arent.

Violating player consent without part 2 is called "False Advertising."

Participationism isn't the OPPOSITE of Illusionism. Nobody has argued that they are opposites. But they do need to be *distinguished.*

Noting important differences between two things =/= declaring them to be opposites. Hence why nobody I've seen has made that assertion. Because it's stupid.

RazorChain

2018-03-11, 11:36 PM

OldTrees1

2018-03-12, 01:14 AM

How is that lying by omission?
By negligence or intention, you failed, by omission, to align expectations about the game with the actual reality of the game you are going to run.

Sidenote:
Why do you keep pushing for the negligent DM? You seem to want someone to validate a claim about "I am not to blame for any misunderstandings the Players may have about the game if I (as the DM) choose not to communicate anything about the game to the Players". I see no reason not to accept one's share of the blame when there is a misunderstanding related to a communication you were responsible for participating in.

NichG

2018-03-12, 01:20 AM

It depends how broad their definition of "Tiger" is, but for the purpose of the example if all they want is some form of thing that can reasonably be called a Tiger, Hobbes would count and no harm done.

If they clearly mean a Tiger as a person with no knowledge of Waterson's comic would, then giving them Hobbes would be a no-go. You're fulfilling the letter of the request while ignoring the intent. If it counts only via technicality and obviously subverts the person's actual wants while technically hitting their stated requirements, they have good reason to be upset with you.

If you owe me 100 dollars and you pay me in coupons with an effective value of $100, I am within reasonable response to say "no, F off, I need 100 actual dollars."

So the gray area is... not actually all that gray.

If I ask for something that can reasonably be called a Tiger, I may still have preferences of some tigers over others, it's just that those preferences were not sufficiently strong that I would say 'I would rather have nothing than have this'. If someone delivers results consistently on the low end of my allowable range, there's still harm done, it's just not a 'betrayal'.

My consent boundaries for gaming might be, say, 'no abusive or toxic environment at the table', but that doesn't mean that within those boundaries all games will be equal. It also means that if someone consistently delivers an experience that is sub par but within the consent boundaries, even if I said 'these are my only hard rules', I'm probably still going to leave that table in favor of one that consistently delivers high level experiences.

The grey area is that framing things only in terms of whether consent was or was not violated totally flattens any discussion of the actual quality of what was delivered. The thing about quality is that delivering low or high quality is that its not a hard line - while it's the fault of a GM who delivers low quality that the quality was low, it's not specifically a betrayal that they delivered low quality. But at the same time, that doesn't make it okay for them to settle with low quality. There are consequences to doing so that are more nuanced than just fulfilling the wording of a social contract.

Not every term for an opposite thing need be a literal opposite. Illusionism gets its name because it is SPECIFICALLY doing TWO things:
1. Violating player consent
2. Creating the *"illusion"* that you arent.

Violating player consent without part 2 is called "False Advertising."

Participationism isn't the OPPOSITE of Illusionism. Nobody has argued that they are opposites. But they do need to be *distinguished.*

Noting important differences between two things =/= declaring them to be opposites. Hence why nobody I've seen has made that assertion. Because it's stupid.

I'm arguing that choosing that the term 'Illusionism' should specifically contrast with Participationism, rather than, say, covering a wide variety of things which can be considered as having to do with the use of illusions that don't necessarily have anything whatsoever to do with consent ends up wasting the term. Note the multitude of situations which are created where someone says 'I'm using illusions for X' and someone else says 'that's Participationism and not illusionism, because illusionism doesn't have to do with the use of illusions, but just the use of illusions to remove consent'.

That is, Illusionism as a term can be much more meaningful in reference to other things, but because it has been appropriated for a discussion of consent (which really doesn't have much to do with the use of illusion), it makes it seem as if the most important thing to discuss with respect to the use of illusion is the matter of consent - and that's the point I disagree with.

Satinavian

2018-03-12, 02:04 AM

I'm arguing that choosing that the term 'Illusionism' should specifically contrast with Participationism, rather than, say, covering a wide variety of things which can be considered as having to do with the use of illusions that don't necessarily have anything whatsoever to do with consent ends up wasting the term. Note the multitude of situations which are created where someone says 'I'm using illusions for X' and someone else says 'that's Participationism and not illusionism, because illusionism doesn't have to do with the use of illusions, but just the use of illusions to remove consent'.That is how the terms were established. And Illusionism was coined first. By people who had a problem with this hidden railroading, quantum ogres and all the related GM advide then often found in modules or even rulebooks. Railroading was the most common way to play once, often hamfisted. Authors did not feel bad to suggest Illusionism to cover up non-working rules or really obvious plotholes in their modules. And quite a number of texts were pretty condescending towards the players as if the author really wanted to convince themself that the players would never find out.
Eventually players rebelled. Usually against being railroaded and having no agency. But often also against being seen as idiots. The heated debate lasted for a while and finally a lot of people tried to identify the problems and to classify them. RGP theory started to evolve/became some traction. Things like player agency or even the underlying social contract of the game were discribed. And Illusionism was coined for that deceptive condescending railroading that was oh so common and at the heart of maybe a third of all RPG disputes. Ways around that were promoted, things like sandboxes or certain forms of shared GM responsibility. GMs were advised to improvise instead of railroad. It was assumed that Illusionism was just a bad habit introduced by bad authors leading to a dysfuncional game.

It took some more time until those theorist revisited the supposed illusionist tables that still existed. Because many people still played the very railroady official modules and had actually fun. But upon deeper inspectation they found out that the players in those working groups generally full well knew what was going on and even often recognized the tricks. What is more, there were suddenly complaints from groups where the GM tried to switch to sandboxes or to improvisation. Players complained that he should have intervened to make sure the plot stays sensible or should have fugded rolls on occasions.
In short, those hobby theorists recognized, that one of the base assumptions of illusionism was wrong for nearly all the groups playing in this oldfashioned way. The players nearly always knew about it and even expected it. It even had began to become the core assumption for certain games which had lots of those modules/GM advide, because players or GMs did not really knew any other way. When people signed up for a game they expected a game with all the cheats to keep the group on rails. The "no consent" certainly did not fit here, nor did the "GM is on metalevel dishonest to players".
So they recognized an actually working style that uses all the tricks of Illusionism but works inherently different on the social contract level. It was hard to recognize in those days as the "social contract" was yet missing from most rulebooks and thus a vague, often implicit thing consisting of different assumptions and expectations about the game.
Nevertheless they coined this working form Participationism.

That was a long time ago. Should have Illusionism been the name of Participationism instead and the consent violating thing something else? Maybe. But when Illusionism was coined, Participationism was not yet known and all those Illusions seemed a distinguishing element of that style. And when Participationism was coined, it was explicitly in contrast to Illusionism, with the players participating willingly and knowingly in this whole excercise as distinguishing element.

Lorsa

2018-03-12, 02:51 AM

The players will start the game without consent or knowledge that their choices don't matter. This does not mean that the GM has explicitly stated that their choices will matter.

So uh....

Person A: "Do you want to come home to me to play a game?"
Person B: "Yeah, sure!"
When person B arrives, person A ties him to a chair and starts to torture him.
Person B: "Stop! This was not the game I had in mind!!"
Person A: "Sorry, we are playing 'torture the terrorist', it's a very fun game I like and I never explicitly stated which game we would play when you made your consent so now you've agreed to be tortured."

What you are saying is that unless person B explicitly explains WHAT he considers to be an acceptable "game" when he consents to a game, person A is well within his right to impose any type of game on him?

NichG

2018-03-12, 04:05 AM

That was a long time ago. Should have Illusionism been the name of Participationism instead and the consent violating thing something else? Maybe. But when Illusionism was coined, Participationism was not yet known and all those Illusions seemed a distinguishing element of that style. And when Participationism was coined, it was explicitly in contrast to Illusionism, with the players participating willingly and knowingly in this whole excercise as distinguishing element.

The language we use to talk about things does matter though. Think of the whole roleplay vs rollplay conversation here and elsewhere. Discussion of the implications of using those terms as a dichotomy led to things like the Stormwind Fallacy as ways to refute that particular use of language as constructive.

Frozen_Feet

2018-03-12, 04:24 AM

Any talk about uses of illusions that isn't limited to covering up railroading, becomes a talk of well-known principles of verisimilitude, immersion, willing suspension of disbelief. If you think of it two seconds, you'll realize much of talk about what separates "illusionism" from "participationism" is actually about the last, underlined part.

Satinavian

2018-03-12, 05:09 AM

The language we use to talk about things does matter though. Think of the whole roleplay vs rollplay conversation here and elsewhere. Discussion of the implications of using those terms as a dichotomy led to things like the Stormwind Fallacy as ways to refute that particular use of language as constructive.
It is an establiished word. Everyone in this thread uses as pretty much the same way. Including the OP and other proponents of Illusionism. Trying to change the meaning of the word is futile and will result in nothing but being misunderstood.

And of course there exists a dichotomy between Illusionism and Participationism. Participationism was invented for that very reason. To make sure that very different uses of Illusions are not conflated with each other.

I also don't know how the Stormwind fallacy plays into this. Sure, you can optimize and do very immersive acting as the same person in the same game - but by definition this can't be true for Illusionism and Participationism. A player can't be aware of being guided on rails and be completely oblicious to it on the same time.

NichG

2018-03-12, 06:27 AM

It is an establiished word. Everyone in this thread uses as pretty much the same way. Including the OP and other proponents of Illusionism. Trying to change the meaning of the word is futile and will result in nothing but being misunderstood.

And of course there exists a dichotomy between Illusionism and Participationism. Participationism was invented for that very reason. To make sure that very different uses of Illusions are not conflated with each other.

I also don't know how the Stormwind fallacy plays into this. Sure, you can optimize and do very immersive acting as the same person in the same game - but by definition this can't be true for Illusionism and Participationism. A player can't be aware of being guided on rails and be completely oblicious to it on the same time.

If I define, say, 'power-gamers' as people who pursue power and 'role-players' as people who pursue immersive acting, and present them as being in contrast, then I'm creating definitions which exclude the middle of people who do both. Similarly, if I define 'Illusionists' vs 'Participationists' as a dichotomy centered around consent, then I exclude discussion of people who use illusions but in a way that does not have consent issues (because they're getting lumped in a non-informative way into Participationists).

Frozen_Feet

2018-03-12, 06:46 AM

Thought for the day: instead of trying to redefine loaded pieces of jargon, use plain English instead.

Criticism of flawed terms or the flawed viewpoints from whence they come does not need to lead to better definitions of those terms. You can just abandon the terms.

Satinavian

2018-03-12, 07:14 AM

If I define, say, 'power-gamers' as people who pursue power and 'role-players' as people who pursue immersive acting, and present them as being in contrast, then I'm creating definitions which exclude the middle of people who do both. Similarly, if I define 'Illusionists' vs 'Participationists' as a dichotomy centered around consent, then I exclude discussion of people who use illusions but in a way that does not have consent issues (because they're getting lumped in a non-informative way into Participationists).I do have problems understanding what you mean.

Sure, people using illusions without those consent issues would be firmly under Participationism. And what exactly is your problem with that ? Where is Participationism somehow non-informative ?
I don't see any excluded middle here.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-12, 07:22 AM

How is that lying by omission?

I ask three players if they want to play a RPG, agency never gets mentioned.

first player comes with the expectation that choices matter

second player has no expectations.

third player is so used to railroads that he has the expectation that his choices don't matter.

Now I run a game chock full of meaningful choices. Was I then lying to the third player?

No.

Consider two products -- one carries a risk of causing cancer, the other does not. If neither one mentions this on the label, which one do we hold accountable for lying by omission?

The GM who isn't going to lie to his players, isn't going to manipulate and deceive the players, isn't going to negate the PC's actions and choices in order to present the story he wanted to present all along, isn't going turn what was supposed to be an RPG campaign into story time with DM... shouldn't need to tell the players this up front any more than the company whose product doesn't cause cancer should have to label everything they make with a "warning" that it doesn't cause cancer.

And yes, I just compared railroading and illusionism to cancer. I stand by the comparison on the metaphorical level of the effect they have on a campaign.

Frozen_Feet

2018-03-12, 07:29 AM

Participationism is non-informative because it comes from "to participate", yet carries idea of zero agency during participation. Yet there are countless ways for participants to have agency in a game and use of illusions does not itself entail zero agency.

Really, this is where Illusionism and Participationism both fail as terms. In actuality, both the amount of illusions and the amount of agency can be rated on separate scales going from zero to theoretical infinity. You can have a game that has a great number of illusionary choices and a great number of real choices.

Red Fel

2018-03-12, 08:58 AM

I'd say that as a general rule players can fairly expect that their choices matter unless the GM has specifically said otherwise -- and a GM who does not say otherwise and make it clear to the players that their choices won't matter, is lying by omission.

How is that lying by omission?

By definition. Literally, that's the definition of a lie by omission. A lie by omission is one where you allow a person's inaccurate expectations to prevail without correcting them, in order to deceive.

Saying, "I have told my players nothing, therefore they have no expectations," is false. Everyone has expectations. You, as DM, have expectations. The players have expectations. In advance of a game, it is appropriate to communicate those expectations. Otherwise, whatever you do not express is assumed to be the default, whatever that may be. And that may vary from one person to the next, which might necessitate further communication.

For example, let's say that I have a group that meets for games of Pathfinder once a month, which I DM. Let's say, a week before every monthly session, I send out a reminder email to confirm who plans to attend "game night." One month, I send out another email, "Just confirming game night next week. You in?" Everyone shows up, and I reveal that tonight we're playing FATE.

Is that a lie by omission? Yes. Everyone has the very reasonable expectation that we will be playing Pathfinder. That's what we do on our monthly "game night." I have not given any impression that we'll be doing anything different. So for me to send out an email about "game night" while omitting that the "game" will be FATE is a lie of omission. That's how those work.

One of the default assumptions for most players of tabletop games is that your decisions carry meaning. That is, choosing option A over option B will have some impact, however minor. That's a default assumption that most players have.

To deviate from that default, you really do need to tell them in advance. They aren't agreeing to a deviation from the default of which they are unaware. The fact that they showed up to a game where that deviation will happen is not consent to deviation unless they know. To simply let the players believe their incorrect assumption that their decisions have meaning, without trying to correct them, is a lie by omission.

Lorsa

2018-03-12, 09:19 AM

I can admit to having used a couple of techniques listed in the first post; most notably dice fudging. More specifically, I have fudged dice in favor of my players, so they would survive a fight that might otherwise have killed them. I never fudged dice in favor of my NPCs.

Basically, the reasons for this was the core of Illusionism. I wanted my players to have the illusion of a dangerous fight when indeed it was never meant to kill them.

I am also sure that I've at least on some occasions presented choices in such a way as to steer them towards a particular one that I wanted them to make.

In any case, over the course of my GMing career, I have gotten rid of more and more of these "illusionist" practices (not that they were ever that prevalent) - and my games have become all the better for it. More than simply not engaging in, say, the illusion of choice, I have consciously tried to give my players more actual real choices.

I think the practice of, as a GM, giving the players an illusion of choice, danger or ability to affect the story comes from two major beliefs.

1. It is my job as a GM to instill as many emotions in the players as possible; to make them really engaged.
2. It is my job as a GM to create as good a story as possible (which may tie back to reason #1).

The reason why this fails, and Illusionism is bad, should be quite evident from the reasons one might want to do it.

For example, you don't need to give the players the illusion of danger in order to make them as engaged as possible. You can give them real, actual danger. As a matter of fact, there is nothing that says that removing the practices of illusion (especially the illusion of choice) would not lead to a game of equally large amounts of emotion. There is a false assumption here that "illusion of choice" leads to more engaged players compared with "real choice". In fact, I have found the opposite to be true; that when the players have real choices, they are MORE engaged.

The second one has a similar refutation. That is, you can't know, for certain, that the story you create by railroading your players without their awareness is any better than the story that would be created if you didn't. And even IF that was the case, are the players interested in a "good story" above their interest in "creative input and real choices"? This is basically where the idea of "participationism" arise, and it is up to you, as a GM, to make damn sure that the players WANT you to drive the story before you do so. It's not up to them to make it explicit that they don't want to be railroaded, it's up to you to ask them.

I guess there is a third reason for Illusionism, and that is GMs who are too afraid to give up control of the game simply because they are control freaks, and they have such low esteem for the players that they feel within their right to not give it up. Control freaks don't make for very good GMs, unless the players are somehow very meek in nature.

In any case, I have found that giving the players real, actual choices, allowing them to succeed or fail at their own merit and otherwise giving them the ability to drive the direction of the game have vastly improved the RPG experience both for them AND for me. I've ran games without railroading (covered with illusion or otherwise) for well over a decade now, and not a single player have complained. There is absolutely nothing in the practice of Illusionism that is needed to make a good game.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-12, 11:05 AM

1. It is my job as a GM to instill as many emotions in the players as possible; to make them really engaged.
2. It is my job as a GM to create as good a story as possible (which may tie back to reason #1).

IMO, it is my job as the GM to present as rich and robust a setting as I can manage, with places, events, and (non-player) characters that "could be real", for the players to interact with via their (player) characters. It is further my job to maintain the internal consistency and coherence of these elements, and to make their interactions as "real" as possible, avoiding narrative causality, caricatures, cliches, and tropes.

Any story that occurs will emerge naturally from the interaction of all these elements; any emotion that occurs will arise naturally from the interaction of these elements.

It is specifically NOT my job to impose emotions or force a story.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-12, 11:13 AM

IMO, it is my job as the GM to present as rich and robust a setting as I can manage, with places, events, and (non-player) characters that "could be real", for the players to interact with via their (player) characters. It is further my job to maintain the internal consistency and coherence of these elements, and to make their interactions as "real" as possible, avoiding narrative causality, caricatures, cliches, and tropes.

Any story that occurs will emerge naturally from the interaction of all these elements; any emotion that occurs will arise naturally from the interaction of these elements.

It is specifically NOT my job to impose emotions or force a story.

@Max_Killjoy and I have very different styles, but I agree wholeheartedly with that last sentence.

Koo Rehtorb

2018-03-12, 11:19 AM

@Max_Killjoy and I have very different styles, but I agree wholeheartedly with that last sentence.

Yeah, I agree too.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-03-12, 11:33 AM

@Max_Killjoy and I have very different styles, but I agree wholeheartedly with that last sentence.

To expand a bit,

My job as DM (in the "content-designer/master of events" role) is to iteratively play What If?--to explore the lines of IF (to steal a quote). To present a starting point (with events/plots/setting/etc) and explore the consequences of choices made by the players for their characters. This includes the consequences of inaction. To create their story, based on what they do and how the world reacts to them (or they react to the world, or both). Often this means forcing them to make a choice, whatever that choice may be. That makes inaction an active choice that has the same scale of consequences as action. Not the same outcomes, but the same scale.

I had a player (new player, playing a 5e monk) tell me that her favorite part of the last campaign, the part that made her feel really cool, was when she stun-locked a beholder for long enough that they could nuke it without it getting a single action in. Turned what should have been a mini-boss/hard fight into a curb-stomping.

For another, the crowning moment was the session we played with goblin kids when his racist jerk of a high-elf character learned to love his fellow sapient beings. That one was entirely ad-libbed by me. They had taken a hard left at the last quest hook and I was scrambling to catch up.

ImNotTrevor

2018-03-12, 11:36 AM

If I ask for something that can reasonably be called a Tiger, I may still have preferences of some tigers over others, it's just that those preferences were not sufficiently strong that I would say 'I would rather have nothing than have this'. If someone delivers results consistently on the low end of my allowable range, there's still harm done, it's just not a 'betrayal'.

My consent boundaries for gaming might be, say, 'no abusive or toxic environment at the table', but that doesn't mean that within those boundaries all games will be equal. It also means that if someone consistently delivers an experience that is sub par but within the consent boundaries, even if I said 'these are my only hard rules', I'm probably still going to leave that table in favor of one that consistently delivers high level experiences.
You're mixing up problems into a soup.
A thing can fall within your consent range and also not be fun.
Those are two entirely differemt things.

The grey area is that framing things only in terms of whether consent was or was not violated totally flattens any discussion of the actual quality of what was delivered.
Good. Because quality is not part of the term. Excluding tangentialities from the definition is a good thing.

The thing about quality is that delivering low or high quality is that its not a hard line - while it's the fault of a GM who delivers low quality that the quality was low, it's not specifically a betrayal that they delivered low quality. But at the same time, that doesn't make it okay for them to settle with low quality. There are consequences to doing so that are more nuanced than just fulfilling the wording of a social contract.
This is neat and true.
And has nothing to do with Illusionism or Participationism. This is a different question entirely.
Whether the soup is vegetarian or not has nothing to do with how good it is.

I'm arguing that choosing that the term 'Illusionism' should specifically contrast with Participationism, rather than, say, covering a wide variety of things which can be considered as having to do with the use of illusions that don't necessarily have anything whatsoever to do with consent ends up wasting the term. Note the multitude of situations which are created where someone says 'I'm using illusions for X' and someone else says 'that's Participationism and not illusionism, because illusionism doesn't have to do with the use of illusions, but just the use of illusions to remove consent'.
Thankfully, people don't say "I use illusions for X" because that's a janky sentence. Not grammatically, it just sounds weird. They usually talk about practices to enhance or preserve immersion.

That is, Illusionism as a term can be much more meaningful in reference to other things, but because it has been appropriated for a discussion of consent (which really doesn't have much to do with the use of illusion), it makes it seem as if the most important thing to discuss with respect to the use of illusion is the matter of consent - and that's the point I disagree with.

Neat. Chilean Sea Bass are an Antarctic fish with no relation to bass. Not everything has a perfectly accurate name, and that's ok.

kyoryu

2018-03-12, 11:47 AM

This is neat and true.
And has nothing to do with Illusionism or Participationism. This is a different question entirely.
Whether the soup is vegetarian or not has nothing to do with how good it is.

To expand your analogy:

You can make good or bad vegetable soup. (Sandbox play)

You can make good or bad soup with meat. (Railroad play)

People might like one or the other.

If you tell someone you're going to make them vegetable soup, but actually give them soup with meat, you're kind of a jerk, no matter how well you hide the fact that there's meat in there. (Illusionism)

RazorChain

2018-03-12, 02:47 PM

By definition. Literally, that's the definition of a lie by omission. A lie by omission is one where you allow a person's inaccurate expectations to prevail without correcting them, in order to deceive.

Saying, "I have told my players nothing, therefore they have no expectations," is false. Everyone has expectations. You, as DM, have expectations. The players have expectations. In advance of a game, it is appropriate to communicate those expectations. Otherwise, whatever you do not express is assumed to be the default, whatever that may be. And that may vary from one person to the next, which might necessitate further communication.

For example, let's say that I have a group that meets for games of Pathfinder once a month, which I DM. Let's say, a week before every monthly session, I send out a reminder email to confirm who plans to attend "game night." One month, I send out another email, "Just confirming game night next week. You in?" Everyone shows up, and I reveal that tonight we're playing FATE.

Is that a lie by omission? Yes. Everyone has the very reasonable expectation that we will be playing Pathfinder. That's what we do on our monthly "game night." I have not given any impression that we'll be doing anything different. So for me to send out an email about "game night" while omitting that the "game" will be FATE is a lie of omission. That's how those work.

One of the default assumptions for most players of tabletop games is that your decisions carry meaning. That is, choosing option A over option B will have some impact, however minor. That's a default assumption that most players have.

To deviate from that default, you really do need to tell them in advance. They aren't agreeing to a deviation from the default of which they are unaware. The fact that they showed up to a game where that deviation will happen is not consent to deviation unless they know. To simply let the players believe their incorrect assumption that their decisions have meaning, without trying to correct them, is a lie by omission.

Yes, not correcting a misconception is lying by omission.

So let's say I'm 11 years old and pick up AD&D 2nd edition, read through the book. I Pick up The Times of Troubles or the Avatar Wars adventure modules (Shadowdale, Tantras, Waterdeep) and run them for my new players. So what are my expectations to RPG's after running these modules based on book where the PC's are allowed to play second fiddle no less than 3 DMPC's that become gods?

I am pretty sure people come with different expectation to the game. Joe doesn't care much so long there is enough combat. Bob wants a grindy adversarial game where there is a good chance of PC death. John wants to be a ninja, being as much ninja as possible will make him happy. Beth wants to focus on story, all her character decisions are made to further the plot or for the sake of drama. Max wants verisimilitude and meaningful choices.

All the players may have different expectations. So if suddenly if I give my the players some narrative control in a game of D&D, I tell them to narrate their success or failures, have I then by lying by omission because it didn't adhere to their expectations or that it is fairly reasonable to expect that I narrate everything. The thing here is that expectation is a strong belief of something will or won't happen. Belief is the acceptance is something is true or not without a proof.

There is a fairly divided opinion on fudging, so if I suddenly run a game for a group that is strongly against fudging and their expectation is that fudging is not allowed. If they never communicated their expectations have I then been lying by omission.

When things don't live up to peoples expectations they will usually be disappointed, they may feel cheated, they may feel angry, the may feel unhappy.
A lot of problems that crop up in games is when people with different expectations meet and their expectations don't match.

"Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” -Alexander Pope
“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.” - Bruce Lee
“My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus." -Stephen Hawking

Most games that include railroading include myriad of choices. It's only the choices the GM deems important for whatever reasons, mostly story related that the GM tries to control.

Railroading is not a wrong way to play the game, it's just that many players don't like it.

Jama7301

2018-03-12, 03:31 PM

I wish I had historical data for this, but I wonder how much of this pushback against this is a correction/overcorrection to a period of controlling, killer and/or railroading DMs.

kyoryu

2018-03-12, 05:53 PM

...Railroading is not a wrong way to play the game, it's just that many players don't like it.

I agree with this sentiment mostly but would say "there are no wrong and right ways to play, just what people do or don't like."

I find your points kind of... interesting. As best as I can tell, it's basically saying "well, you can't please anyone, so it doesn't matter what you do. And people might not be aware of differing expectations, so that means that even if you're aware of expectations, it's okay to ignore them. And really, it would be better if players didn't have expectations so that it didn't matter anyway, and if you have expectations, maybe the problem is with you. Get woke."

It's true that you can't meet everyone's expectations, and also that you might be unaware of expectations. But the process is easy.

1) Identify an expectation mismatch
2) Say what you're going to do about it
3) Do that thing

So if someone wants more ninja, and it doesn't fit in your game, you can say "I'm sorry, but I'm not going to add more ninja to this game. I hope you still want to play with us."

And if someone doesn't like railroading, you can either tell them "well, that's how I run games" or you can say "Okay, that's fair, I'll make the game more open." Both of those are perfectly fine.

What's not fine is saying you're not going to railroad and then doing it. (Or saying that you'll add more ninjas and then not adding them.)

The fact that you were unaware of the expectation beforehand doesn't change this.

Max_Killjoy

2018-03-12, 06:04 PM

Railroading is not a wrong way to play the game, it's just that many players don't like it.

Railroading is inherently, by definition, a wrong way to play. There is no such thing as "good railroading" or "benign railroading".

Remove the bad elements, and it's no longer railroading.

This was covered in depth in one of the previous threads. Asserting "good railroading" or "justifiable railroading" or "benign railroading" is like asserting "justifiable murder"... murder is the more specific category of killing that's especially bad. If it's justifiable in some way, it's still killing, but not murder. If it's accidental but caused by neglect or such, it's some degree of homocide, but not murder.

NichG

2018-03-12, 09:03 PM

I do have problems understanding what you mean.

Sure, people using illusions without those consent issues would be firmly under Participationism. And what exactly is your problem with that ? Where is Participationism somehow non-informative ?
I don't see any excluded middle here.

It's non-informative in that now there is no distinct term for people who argue that the use of illusions, deception, and manipulation have a natural place in gaming and embrace that. Which is a fairly strong philosophical stance which does have implications as to things like the meaning of player agency. Instead, they're now categorized based on the consent status of their players, which is basically uncorrelated with the use of illusions, deception, and manipulation techniques.

The issue is that the terms contrast consent and illusion, rather than contrasting consent and non-consent, illusion and status quo/things fall as they may reality. This makes it very hard to actually talk about illusion without being sidetracked into an irrelevant conversation about consent. Similarly, given other conversations on this thread, even if the terms have a precise historical definition, it's clear that conversations surrounding the terms tend to bleed into other aspects and consequences of the use of illusions - see for example PhoenixPhyre's posts regarding player agency, which touch on things which are not consent issues but which do present practical issues with the use of deceptive techniques - e.g. even if you have consent to lower player agency, it's still generally a bad idea to do so, and so there's a discussion to be had there about how even if players voluntarily participate in the use of a certain set of GMing tools, those tools can still be used in ways which would be harmful to player enjoyment.

Or as another example, take the quantum ogre, which you mentioned as a historically 'Illusionist' technique. However, in games where the GM's job is scenario design, there has already been consent from the players for the GM to make those choices. So the canonical Illusionist technique is actually something which can't be an Illusionist technique at least by any 'hard-boundary' picture of consent. At the same time, portraying that as a consent issue relies on establishing that even if players have consented to the GM designing the scenario, there are still ways in which the GM could design the scenario that would make players feel betrayed or uncomfortable - e.g. it hinges on defining railroading as requiring additional special consent above and beyond consenting to play a game that empowers the GM to railroad freely. But if that's the main thesis (of introducing specific things which should require special consent above and beyond consent via agreement over the rules), that should be the focus of the discussion rather than on the mechanics of how people can hide railroading, which would miss that point.

You're mixing up problems into a soup.
A thing can fall within your consent range and also not be fun.
Those are two entirely differemt things.

Good. Because quality is not part of the term. Excluding tangntialities from the definition is a good thing.

To me, consent is a tangentiality to any discussion of illusions. It's not that consent is unimportant, it's just that it tends to hash out in ways that means there's little to discuss at least with anything having to do with the use of illusion. We might as well start from the point where consent is granted, because everything on the other side of that tends to reduce to trivialities (e.g. 'they shouldn't do it but they won't care so they're going to do it anyhow so just get out of that game' - okay, we're done with that side now). However, even with consent granted, there's still plenty to hash out about the use of illusion.

Thrudd

2018-03-12, 10:33 PM

Railroading = taking away the player's ability to make meaningful choices/meaningfully impact the game. This is contrary to the point of any game.

Illusionism = hiding the fact that you are railroading (implying that the players think they are playing a game, but really aren't, like a 3yr old standing at the arcade console pushing buttons while the demo plays.)

A game requires that the players know what it is they are supposed to be doing, and that they then can actually do that. If you want an acting game, where players are meant to portray characters in as authentic a manner as possible, develop their personal relationships, and act dramatically within a story written by the GM, tell them that this is the game. The players don't need to be given any pretense that they can alter the story, only to act as their characters in the scenes described by the GM, if that is indeed what the GM intends the game to be. That way you get players that want to play the game you're running, and you don't need to lie to them. Of course, you'd want to choose a game system that actually supports this sort of thing.

Some games might be a series of set-piece battles, and I wouldn't call that railroading if it is clear that this is the format of the game. The players get to choose their tactics and actions within the scenario, and their choices will determine whether they win or lose the battle. But if the game is supposed to be a battle game, the players' choices in combat better well make a difference - fudging dice either for or against the players is cheating and you might as well not be playing. You don't need to worry about "quantum ogre" or hooking or leading the players along to the right place - you just narrate what happens between battles. As long as the players know this is the game they're playing, it's fine. The game is about tactical combat, and the story is revealed or changed based on their performance in each battle.

There is no excuse for the players not being absolutely clear regarding the type and scope of the decisions they are meant to be making in a game. If the rules of the game leave this at all questionable, the GM ought to clarify. RPGs are a range of different games, and sometimes even the same system can be applied in different ways. There is no reason to trick the players into believing they are playing a game they are not playing. If you feel like nobody would willingly sign up to play the game you want to run - well that should probably tell you something.

ImNotTrevor

2018-03-12, 11:16 PM

To me, consent is a tangentiality to any discussion of illusions.
Neat. Illusions =/= Illusionism. That term existed prior to you deciding to take issue with it, and we all seem to understand it fine.

It's not that consent is unimportant, it's just that it tends to hash out in ways that means there's little to discuss at least with anything having to do with the use of illusion. We might as well start from the point where consent is granted, because everything on the other side of that tends to reduce to trivialities (e.g. 'they shouldn't do it but they won't care so they're going to do it anyhow so just get out of that game' - okay, we're done with that side now). However, even with consent granted, there's still plenty to hash out about the use of illusion.

Define for me how you're using the term "Illusion."

Do you mean giving the false impression of choice? Do you mean lying in-character?
Do you mean withholding information the players didn't specifically ask for to use against them later?

Because these aren't really Illusions by the proper metric of the term besides the first. (Namely: A thing that is likely to be wrongly perceived.)

And, what's more, these "illusions" are either Fine If Players Are Cool With It (1), or pretty much par for the course (2), OR just a butt move in general (3).

So what kind of "illusion" aside from making the rails less blunt and obvious are we talking about?

RazorChain

2018-03-12, 11:55 PM

So uh....

Person A: "Do you want to come home to me to play a game?"
Person B: "Yeah, sure!"
When person B arrives, person A ties him to a chair and starts to torture him.
Person B: "Stop! This was not the game I had in mind!!"
Person A: "Sorry, we are playing 'torture the terrorist', it's a very fun game I like and I never explicitly stated which game we would play when you made your consent so now you've agreed to be tortured."

What you are saying is that unless person B explicitly explains WHAT he considers to be an acceptable "game" when he consents to a game, person A is well within his right to impose any type of game on him?

No I'm just saying that people have different expectations. If I invite you home so I can show you my stamp collection then you might expect different things than me excitedly showing off my stamps. This is a clear mismatch in expectations.

I agree with this sentiment mostly but would say "there are no wrong and right ways to play, just what people do or don't like."

I find your points kind of... interesting. As best as I can tell, it's basically saying "well, you can't please anyone, so it doesn't matter what you do. And people might not be aware of differing expectations, so that means that even if you're aware of expectations, it's okay to ignore them. And really, it would be better if players didn't have expectations so that it didn't matter anyway, and if you have expectations, maybe the problem is with you. Get woke."

I've played at countless tables with lots of GMs and I never know what to expect! Some times I've joined existing campaign as a guest player, sometimes it has been a one shot or a mini campaign, sometimes homebrew, sometimes modules, sometimes I haven't had a clue. Most of the time the exact style of play hasn't been discussed or how much agency you get as a player. In fact agency or meaningful choices weren't much discussed in my gaming cirlce for couple of decades other than as railroading. Even then there was a consensus that some players liked railroads and others didn't.

So for me the only way to see if I like a GM's style is to play with him, it helps if he has a good pitch.

The most boring games I have played in is where NOTHING INTERESTING HAPPENED, even when the players did their best to get something going.

It's true that you can't meet everyone's expectations, and also that you might be unaware of expectations. But the process is easy.

1) Identify an expectation mismatch
2) Say what you're going to do about it
3) Do that thing

This usually happens naturally. Group gets formed and starts to play and learns about each others expectations, wants and needs. Then you find about mismatches, this guy wants a dungeoncrawl but he's happy to stay with the group for an occasional crawl. The next guy prefers sandbox play with exploration. The third guy likes to optimize the hell out of everything and wreck combat or just break the system. Then you got the ninja...he's happy if there is a something that resembles a ninja in the game, be it an assassin or a cyberninja.

Then you have the GM, he likes story, with beginning, middle and an end and tries to push that. Then nobody is happy, the group breaks a part and the GM finds himself a disgruntled group of VtM players who got fed up with their Storyteller who played VtM like a superhero game and BINGO you have a group the fits perfectly together.

So if someone wants more ninja, and it doesn't fit in your game, you can say "I'm sorry, but I'm not going to add more ninja to this game. I hope you still want to play with us."

And if someone doesn't like railroading, you can either tell them "well, that's how I run games" or you can say "Okay, that's fair, I'll make the game more open." Both of those are perfectly fine.

What's not fine is saying you're not going to railroad and then doing it. (Or saying that you'll add more ninjas and then not adding them.)

The fact that you were unaware of the expectation beforehand doesn't change this.

This is how things go when expectations get into the open and if the players can communicate their expectations and their wants. Some people stick it out in games that aren't exactly to their tastes because they don't have any alternative. The railroading GM may be the only person who wants to GM even if players want more agency.

kyoryu

2018-03-13, 01:37 AM

This is how things go when expectations get into the open and if the players can communicate their expectations and their wants. Some people stick it out in games that aren't exactly to their tastes because they don't have any alternative. The railroading GM may be the only person who wants to GM even if players want more agency.

And that's fine. Then you say "okay, this is what the game is, I'm just gonna suck it up and deal with it." And then you do that, and don't complain.

This is like adult communication 101.

RazorChain

2018-03-13, 02:00 AM

And that's fine. Then you say "okay, this is what the game is, I'm just gonna suck it up and deal with it." And then you do that, and don't complain.

This is like adult communication 101.

I am sometimes surprised how much at how people suck at communicating, even though we do it all the time, myself included.

Lorsa

2018-03-13, 02:55 AM

No I'm just saying that people have different expectations. If I invite you home so I can show you my stamp collection then you might expect different things than me excitedly showing off my stamps. This is a clear mismatch in expectations.

And then, when you try to show me your stamp collection, you can't very well be upset that I don't want to look at it.

Or perhaps you are going to force me to look at it by sneakingly placing it on every table we'll sit next to, the toilet floor and perhaps even the walls? So as to not make it "obvious" that all you really wanted was for me to see your stamp collection and you inviting me home was just a pretext?

This usually happens naturally. Group gets formed and starts to play and learns about each others expectations, wants and needs. Then you find about mismatches, this guy wants a dungeoncrawl but he's happy to stay with the group for an occasional crawl. The next guy prefers sandbox play with exploration. The third guy likes to optimize the hell out of everything and wreck combat or just break the system. Then you got the ninja...he's happy if there is a something that resembles a ninja in the game, be it an assassin or a cyberninja.

Then you have the GM, he likes story, with beginning, middle and an end and tries to push that. Then nobody is happy, the group breaks a part and the GM finds himself a disgruntled group of VtM players who got fed up with their Storyteller who played VtM like a superhero game and BINGO you have a group the fits perfectly together.

This is how things go when expectations get into the open and if the players can communicate their expectations and their wants. Some people stick it out in games that aren't exactly to their tastes because they don't have any alternative. The railroading GM may be the only person who wants to GM even if players want more agency.

Except that what you are arguing for is that the GM should, for as long as is absolutely possible, try to cover up what kind of game it actually is. By deceiving the players on the nature of the game, you make it all the harder for their expectations to clash with yours and therefore for them to leave a game which they don't like.

Illusionism is the practice of hiding railroading from the players. This will prevent players who doesn't like railroading from leaving and finding a group they prefer. If you claim this "expectation thing" should be cleared out through play, your game needs to be honest.

NichG

2018-03-13, 02:59 AM

Neat. Illusions =/= Illusionism. That term existed prior to you deciding to take issue with it, and we all seem to understand it fine.

And 'illusion' existed before Illusionism.
Suggest another term for what I've been talking about then, which won't get confused with this particular one.

Define for me how you're using the term "Illusion."

Do you mean giving the false impression of choice? Do you mean lying in-character?
Do you mean withholding information the players didn't specifically ask for to use against them later?

Because these aren't really Illusions by the proper metric of the term besides the first. (Namely: A thing that is likely to be wrongly perceived.)

And, what's more, these "illusions" are either Fine If Players Are Cool With It (1), or pretty much par for the course (2), OR just a butt move in general (3).

So what kind of "illusion" aside from making the rails less blunt and obvious are we talking about?

Out of those, only the first is an example of illusion, and is an example of illusion.

Another example of illusion is to misrepresent the underlying reasons or explanations for things. Having an NPC help the party because their healer is on vacation, but giving a plausible (and IC true but OOC false) explanation for why the NPC is helping is illusion (an example which has nothing to do with player choice).

Creating false impressions, for example suggesting through cues and hints that something is urgent and getting worse, while actually letting the players determine the timing though their decisions is another example of illusion. Randomly rolling dice during a session to give the impression that there might be hidden enemies or stuff going on in the background (or just to mask which roll is real) is illusion.

Having another victim appear in a murder mystery because the group is stuck and spinning their wheels is illusion.

An illusion is implicitly conveying the impression that things are one way, while in reality they differ. Whereas lying is doing it explicitly. E.g. 'the creature doesn't flinch' when it just got taken to 1hp is implicit deception, but 'the creature has 30hp left' when it has 1hp left is explicit deception.

Assume in all cases I'm talking about situations where the players are aware in general that the GM uses this kind of thing, and have not objected categorically (e.g. consent exists, but the players may find after the fact that they enjoyed or were bothered by such cases individually).

Darth Ultron

2018-03-13, 09:38 AM

No I'm just saying that people have different expectations.

This is SO true. The average player when they say ''make something hard'' will think something like adding +1 to a DC. When I think more like +10 or +20.

It works for role playing too. To me a ''heavily guarded'' tower means guards that work on three shifts around the clock, while the average player thinks the guards should work 9 to 5 and then go home and leave the tower completely unguarded.

I am sometimes surprised how much at how people suck at communicating, even though we do it all the time, myself included.

It's no surprise to me: I expect it.

Except that what you are arguing for is that the GM should, for as long as is absolutely possible, try to cover up what kind of game it actually is. By deceiving the players on the nature of the game, you make it all the harder for their expectations to clash with yours and therefore for them to leave a game which they don't like.

Illusionism is the practice of hiding railroading from the players. This will prevent players who doesn't like railroading from leaving and finding a group they prefer. If you claim this "expectation thing" should be cleared out through play, your game needs to be honest.

Like most things we disagree with(aka everything), I think your wrong to limit illusionism to just the badwrongfun railroading. It is much more then that.

In any case, I have found that giving the players real, actual choices, allowing them to succeed or fail at their own merit and otherwise giving them the ability to drive the direction of the game have vastly improved the RPG experience both for them AND for me. I've ran games without railroading (covered with illusion or otherwise) for well over a decade now, and not a single player have complained. There is absolutely nothing in the practice of Illusionism that is needed to make a good game.

I find the extreme opposite.

If I do your version of Casual DMing and only react to the players and Quantum Ogre whatever they want on a whim and let the players run wild.....it will be a mess of a game where no one has fun. Give the players ''real'' control of a game, and they just drive it into the ground. And maybe worst of all: the players will never see it and never understand what happened.

It is specifically NOT my job to impose emotions or force a story.

I think this is one of the biggest jobs for a DM.

Works kinda like this: Role playing is fun. Role playing a character with real depth and emotion is even more fun. But, sadly, most player can't do this. Tell a player to say, have their character act scared and they will just say in a monotone ''My character Zor is so scared''. BUT toss the character into a plot and story where the player is afraid(in a fictional fear sense, not ''for real''), then amazingly the player will tap into their real emotions and role play their character for real.

Works the same with a Story. Again telling a story is a ton of more fun then either just sitting there at the table not doing anything or saying ''can we fight something now?' once every thirty seconds or so. And again, most players are clueless on how to tell a story. They will just have their character aimlessly do nothing and not even attempt to tell a story. BUT toss the character into a story and very often the player will play along with it and tell the story. Then just need a little help