I stumbled across this blog post and thought it might be fun to talk to ENWorld about Quantum Ogres and the Illusion of Choice.
If you don't want to click through, the tl;dr is that Illusionism Is Bad. The author is responding to a different blog -- one that advocated for what is being referred to as the Quantum Ogre. That is, the GM prepares an encounter with Ogres and when it comes time for the PCs to choose to go left or right on the Forest Road, the Ogre encounter is going to be placed in front of them regardless of their choice. This is to save effort, the thinking goes, and since the PCs did not know there was even supposed to be an Ogre encounter, they lose nothing and gain a fun fight.
There's all sorts of things to unpack in there, but rather than me rambling on about what I think or how I would do it, I thought we should just sort of talk about the general idea of illusionism and how we feel about it in play. This is related to a whole litany of other ideas, such as Railroads (I prefer Rollercoasters, but you know what I mean), linear adventures, non-linear adventures, "story" in games, and on an on.
So to start: how do you feel about illusionism in your games? Do you feel differently about it as a player versus a GM? Does it vary with the game? With the group? With the session?
Thanks.
If you don't want to click through, the tl;dr is that Illusionism Is Bad. The author is responding to a different blog -- one that advocated for what is being referred to as the Quantum Ogre. That is, the GM prepares an encounter with Ogres and when it comes time for the PCs to choose to go left or right on the Forest Road, the Ogre encounter is going to be placed in front of them regardless of their choice. This is to save effort, the thinking goes, and since the PCs did not know there was even supposed to be an Ogre encounter, they lose nothing and gain a fun fight.
There's all sorts of things to unpack in there, but rather than me rambling on about what I think or how I would do it, I thought we should just sort of talk about the general idea of illusionism and how we feel about it in play. This is related to a whole litany of other ideas, such as Railroads (I prefer Rollercoasters, but you know what I mean), linear adventures, non-linear adventures, "story" in games, and on an on.
So to start: how do you feel about illusionism in your games? Do you feel differently about it as a player versus a GM? Does it vary with the game? With the group? With the session?
Thanks.