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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7742887" data-attributes="member: 996">Yep.  And, sometimes, if you narrate a PC's state of mind or choice, certain players'll get all upset about it, as this thread illustrates.  So you let them choose their PC's state of mind, and let them make a choice, so they stay all immersed and maintain their illusion of being in control, and then narrate the results the game needs. Sometimes the truth is unhelpful to an argument, yes.  The truth is some games leave the DM plenty of latitude to excise player agency via 'illusionism' (or 'Good DMing' or 'immersive play' or whatever, depending on who's making up the label), and others guard against it and/or build in greater player agency.  The game in question happens to be one of the former.  Arguing that you shouldn't do something the game enables you to do, and labeling that 'integrity' is essentially an argument that you shouldn't do it, because you said so.  I tend to think DMs should use the full bag of tricks the game gives them, to deliver the best possible experience.  In classic & 5e D&D, that includes not only engaging in illusionism, but also not using all the rules, not sharing which rules are & aren't being used nor the details of the mechanics when such would (for one instance) give away to the players things the characters don't know, and making up entirely new rules & mechanics (including situation-specific ones). Are you sure labeling the thing you're arguing against 'corruption' isn't the circular thinking going on.  You're arguing DMs shouldn't use a technique that worked well for decades, and the reasons you come up with amount to pasting a label with a negative connotation over them. Nope, you don't (well, you do have more information about the campaign as a whole than the players, and there's factors like breadth of exposure to different systems, depth & years of experience, etc..). But, ultimately, DM's are people too.  But, as a DM, you do have a special responsibility to provide that better game.  So you do your best. Really.  I'm not aware of any objective measure of subjective player experience - though I suppose a neuroscientist could hook players up to the right equipment and figure something out.  But, humans are pretty good at assessing how other human being sitting right in front of them and making no special efforts to mask their state of mind, feel about something they're doing.  We're social animals.   I believe it does, based on having done & seen other DMs do that sort of thing with great success for many years.I've also seen games where such isn't called for nearly so much (if at all).  They play better 'above board.'  But they give a different sort of experience, too.  'Less immersive' some would say.I'm happy to run either sort and use the tools they provide to deliver the best experience I can. That sounds workable, given a system with either a consequence to setting a high DC, or a mechanism for determining the DC that the player has input to.  For instance, in 3.5, you'd be free to declare your initial attitude towards an NPC Diplomancer, including declaring it as 'hostile' even if there's no apparent reason for it (sometimes we just don't like someone on sight, or maybe you're just that suspicious by nature).  Otherwise the player can set an untouchable DC every time, and it's not functionally reciprocal.  What about the illusion of choice in the sense of a magician's force?  Left or Right, your choice.  But what's to the left or right changes behind the screen so that your choice (which is in no way forced nor changed) leads to the adventure, and you have no idea if you chose the way that 'really' led to the adventure in a game w/o illusionism, or if you chose 'wrong' in a game where the DM engages in such.  Same freedom-of-player-choice play experience, same adventure, either way. Is it?  Getting something wrong is a plausible result of trying to determine something.  Further, the roll likely gives it away.  If the system is on a moderately high DC, Insight reveals that the subject is either being honest or 'holding something back,' on a higher DC it gives an idea what the lie may be, while hitting an easier DC means you 'can't tell,' and flubbing it gives you the opposite information from what's really going on.  If that were the system, you'd need to take the roll behind the screen, or the player can just believe the opposite of what you tell him when he rolls really low.   Logical from a gamist perspective, but leaving out a range of plausible results, so not so great from a narrative or simulation perspective. Even if the DM rolls behind the screen and tells you "you're certain he's telling the truth" (either because the roll was a fantastic success and the NPC was being truthful, or because it's an abysmal failure and his deception was high), you can choose not to believe him - he could be mistaken, for instance, or you could feel that believing him would be too risky, or it could be that you believe something else with such conviction that a mere one other person honestly believing & truthfully relating a contrary fact is unacceptable to you and can be completely discounted.Obviously, internet forum debates stand as strong evidence of the plausibility of that last.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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