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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cadfan" data-source="post: 4586519" data-attributes="member: 40961">Why I use "illusionism."  I'm scare quoting it on purpose, because I think its a dumb way of phrasing things that obscures more than it reveals- the whole D&D world is an illusion, after all. Lets use the mystery plotline example, since it was big in another related thread. Suppose my players, if successful in an interrogation, will learn that the guy they're interrogating recently had an affair with someone important to the crime the PCs are investigating. Now, everyone in that thread agreed that failure to succeed in the interrogation shouldn't stall the investigation. The question is, what to do? DM Option 1: The PCs learn a different clue through some other avenue of investigation. DM Option 2: The PCs learn the same clue through some other avenue of investigation. For some reason, people call Option 2 "illusionism."  Then they say that the interrogation obviously didn't matter, because they got the clue anyways. What I'd say is that a DM who uses DM Option 1 is writing twice as many clues as he actually uses, and he's not even getting any value out of it, because the PCs can't know that he's doing it.  In a way, this is a form of illusionism as well- the DM is providing himself the illusion that information never given to the PCs somehow matters.  Of course it doesn't, its like believing that your campaign world is a more rich, vibrant place because you've written out detailed rules on a secret society that the PCs never discover and who's actions never affect the PCs in any way.  It might be more vibrant to you, but not to the people in your game. Note that I'm bracketing the issue of how realistic it is to find the clue in the other way chosen.  I'm assuming that whichever route is chosen will be done with a standard level of DM skill and believability. The key is simply realizing that the game world consists only of the things conveyed to the players.</blockquote>

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