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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8133367" data-attributes="member: 6696971">This post has been nagging me and I realize now why that is, so I want to explain.You say you aren't hostile to analysis but then the first sentence conveys a premise that seems pretty fundamentally hostile to analysis:"<TTRPG analysis often> lose(s) sight of things that actually matter for enjoyable gaming experience."That fundamentally disagrees with the post I wrote that you responded to because it seems to presupposes that you can derive some unified theory of "things that actually matter for an enjoyable gaming experience" that people agree upon.  The point of this analysis (again, unless you think its just navel-gazing...which someone who is not hostile to this sort of analysis wouldn't think) in the first place is uncovering the significant variance within "enjoyable gaming experience" and then working from first principles to pick (or design) and successfully run games that cater to a particular type of "enjoyable gaming experience"Then the last sentence asking "what practical difference these actually make from the perspective of the players" seems to presuppose a lot of things regarding system and play ethos such as (i) system is (or should) be mostly/wholly GM-facing and (ii) players don't (or shouldn't) care about how content is generated and the machinery of action resolution.Let me put this all together to show why this paragraph has been nagging at me (and relate it directly to Illusionism).Let us say I'm playing (not GMing) Dungeon World.  The game's ethos is "play to find out what happens", "make a map but leave blanks (to fill in during play as content emerges as a byproduct of play - no metaplot and no high-resolution setting)", and "fill the character's lives with adventure (by challenge their thematic portfolio - Bonds, Alignment - and through the type of danger and discover inherent to the genre and the End of Session questions)."  The robust PCs, the player-facing mechanics, the "ask the players questions and use their answers", the advancement paradigm being heavily predicated upon failure encourages bold, thematic play (it does not encourage turtling).This arrangement spits out a very specific type of play and is an "enjoyable gaming experience" for a particular type of player.  The deployment of overt Force and covert Illusionism is fundamentally anathema to this game in every way:a)  It fundamentally goes against the game's basic tenants.b)  The game has a beautiful engine for emergent play so you don't need to deploy it anyway.c)  If you try to deploy it (i) the game will fight you (the results will be absolutely ham-fisted...there is no such thing as "deft Illusionism" in Dungeon World) because its so deeply player-facing (from ethos to resolution mechanics) (ii) , as such, it will be bloody obvious, and (iii) the sum of which will be a betrayal of the spirit of play and the players (and your own) investment in playing the game at all (the social contract).So if you try to impose metaplot by (say) using moves that the game forbids on certain results...it will be obvious and everything falls apart.  If you secretly flesh out the setting behind the scenes and don't let the map (and subsequent maps to that) flesh out through the process of play...it will be obvious and everything falls apart.  If you don't challenge the players along the axis of each of their (and the collective that will emerge through their entangled Bonds and what is established through play) thematic portfolios, but rather propel play through thematically neutral setting stuff (making the setting the protagonist) or through the villain's dramatic need (eg Strahd's dramatic need being the overwhelming/exclusive propellant of Ravenloft games...thereby turning Strahd into the actual protagonist)...it will be bloody obvious and will make for a completely incoherent Dungeon World game, not an "enjoyable gaming experience" and "the practical difference (with respect to orthodox DW play) from the perspective of the players" will be significant and almost surely insurmountable.I hope that illuminates my issue with your response here.</blockquote>

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