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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crimson Longinus" data-source="post: 8696912" data-attributes="member: 7025508">And that's fine. Perfectly legitimate. But if they're unable to articulate what those tolerances actually are, I wouldn't even in theory be unable to meet them. And like I have probably made pretty clear, I'm not terribly interested in trying in the first place. Granted, it probably doesn't help my attitude if the preference is expressed in a manner that implies that a failure to meet it to be a moral flaw.Perhaps this is the pixel hunting problem? The GM has designed 'the correct solution' or the 'the specific interesting thing' but the players keep poking 'wrong things' so nothing interesting happens? As a player I hate this, and I make sure it doesn't happen in my games. I think it is pretty easy to avoid by just having a world full of interesting stuff and no 'correct solutions' but certainly some low-key illusionism can help making sure that the interesting stuff is where and when the PCs are. Like if the players really fixate on something that I hadn't meant to be in anyway relevant, then I probably just make it relevant, at least in a small way. But I'm sure some people would consider that changing the prep, thus deception, or something.. <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="🤷" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f937.png" title="Person shrugging    :person_shrugging:" data-shortname=":person_shrugging:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" />Sure, and GM probably wouldn't ask about clothing unless there was some special occasion for which they might expect the PCs to dress differently than usual. Though that totally could be just for flavour. But like I said, a lot of 'choices' are not actually the GM asking questions, they're choices the players spontaneously make in response to the situation. Like the GM describes how the weather is chilly, and a player in response describes how their PC dresses in a fur cloak. But perhaps the weather was intended just for flavour and GM was not planning for freezing checks... except then later due unforeseen circumstances the character gets trapped in an ice cave for a long time and whether they have warm clothes suddenly becomes relevant.Ok. Let's try to unpack this. I wouldn't mind 'deception' if were it used as a technical term, but it really isn't. It comes along with 'lies' and 'dishonesty.' It is not just used to refer artistic technique of misdirection, it is used as a value judgment.And for the record, I don't think DMG gives advice on illusionism, I don't think it gives much useful GMing advice at all, good or bad. It however gives advice on fudging, as thing GM might do, so I don't think such trickery is in any way considered out of bounds. But let's look what is actually happening in the examples in the OP. They're GM making up stuff, and then describing that stuff to the players. That's it. And that is what GM is supposed to do. The 'deception' that is happening is having the players to think that the world is independently and objectively existing, and not mutable and altered on the spot. But certainly that would be true if the GM would be just improvising this on the spot too? And certainly in broad sense the players are aware that at least some of the world actually is not predetermined (as everything never can be) and is just decided by the GM when relevant. So I really don't think that there is any significantly more nefarious deception going on here than in the general process of making some haphazard notes and stray thoughts coming across as real and existing world the PCs can interact with.</blockquote>

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