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Illusionism: Where Do You Stand?
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<blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 9081368" data-attributes="member: 70468"><p>I am running a sandbox-style game and designing a homebrew system to support it. My goal is to be a neutral referee. I sometimes call this “campaign as science experiment”. If I put my thumb on things, I am undermining the integrity of experiment (seeing whether the PCs can accomplishment their campaign goal via the play of the campaign). I have some prep, but I rely on the system to enforce my role as a neutral referee.</p><p></p><p>One of the things it does is constrain how I can respond by separating my role as adjudicator from that of content creator. If there is an ogre in the woods, it was either put there as prep, or it resulted from a system-defined point that allows me to put it there (like an event check or a consequence). To help reinforce that an illusion is not being staged by my decision-making, mechanics and resolution are transparent.</p><p></p><p>If an ogre’s being in the woods is a consequence, and it’s not an obvious one, it needs to be articulated as part of the process of setting up the Skill Check to navigate to the woods. That allows the players to reason and decide what to do. They can risk it and go anyway. If the ogre shows up as a consequence, they can resist the consequence to avoid it (though a failure cannot be resisted fully). They can also back out, which I have had happen (in that case my players did not like the possibly seen by raiders they were trying to avoid while climbing a tree to scout the area, so they opted not to do that).</p><p></p><p>With that established, to answer your questions: no, not in my games. Transparency of resolution does not work with illusionism unless I am playing my role of neutral referee unprincipled or in bad faith (neither which I endeavor to do). As a player, it depends. If it’s established that we’re doing a particular style of play that is amenable to it, then I guess it’s fine, though I think the kind of game where that would happen is unlikely to be one I would normally play outside of convention play.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="kenada, post: 9081368, member: 70468"] I am running a sandbox-style game and designing a homebrew system to support it. My goal is to be a neutral referee. I sometimes call this “campaign as science experiment”. If I put my thumb on things, I am undermining the integrity of experiment (seeing whether the PCs can accomplishment their campaign goal via the play of the campaign). I have some prep, but I rely on the system to enforce my role as a neutral referee. One of the things it does is constrain how I can respond by separating my role as adjudicator from that of content creator. If there is an ogre in the woods, it was either put there as prep, or it resulted from a system-defined point that allows me to put it there (like an event check or a consequence). To help reinforce that an illusion is not being staged by my decision-making, mechanics and resolution are transparent. If an ogre’s being in the woods is a consequence, and it’s not an obvious one, it needs to be articulated as part of the process of setting up the Skill Check to navigate to the woods. That allows the players to reason and decide what to do. They can risk it and go anyway. If the ogre shows up as a consequence, they can resist the consequence to avoid it (though a failure cannot be resisted fully). They can also back out, which I have had happen (in that case my players did not like the possibly seen by raiders they were trying to avoid while climbing a tree to scout the area, so they opted not to do that). With that established, to answer your questions: no, not in my games. Transparency of resolution does not work with illusionism unless I am playing my role of neutral referee unprincipled or in bad faith (neither which I endeavor to do). As a player, it depends. If it’s established that we’re doing a particular style of play that is amenable to it, then I guess it’s fine, though I think the kind of game where that would happen is unlikely to be one I would normally play outside of convention play. [/QUOTE]
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