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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7742976" data-attributes="member: 16814">Ah, we're down to partial quoting, fisking, and gish galloping.  Good to know when you hit that point in the conversation.So many things wrong here.  In order, the "truth" you're trying to say is unhelpful to my argument is that you said you can ignore the play procedure and abridge player agency.  Hardly a truth that supports abridging player agency as it's a truth that just says player agency can be abridged.  So, then, a truth not helpful to your argument, either.Secondly, pointing out there's another method of abridging player agency, namely Illusionism, doesn't show any good reason for abridging player agency.  That the rules don't prevent it is a strange argument -- are we to now assume everything the rules don't explicitly prevent is good technique?  Clearly, not.Third, you claim that DMs use all the tool to get the best possible experience, which is where you again beg the question by asserting that the DM KNOWS that using these tools delivers the best possible experience.  ALL of my challenges to you have been on the basis that this is a flawed argument, yet you continue to point out ways to limit player agency and then claim that these ways show that the DM knows how to use them for the best experience, a thing the DM also somehow just knows.This is a losing argument, Tony.  You haven't done the work to show that the DM limiting player agency will result in a better game that not limiting player agency.Yes, I'm sure, because I'm not the one insisting that DMs have magical abilities to know when to limit player agency for the best possible game.  I'm not using a result as the basis of my argument.  I'm arguing from the premise that limiting player agency is bad in principle and not using a possible outcome to justify other actions.  So, yes, I'm absolutely positive I'm not engaged in circular reasoning where I'm using an outcome to justify a means to gain that will then cause that outcome.As for successful, I disagree that the best possible game was caused.  I believe that sometimes a good game happened, and that many other times poor to horrible games happened when DMs limited player agency through Illusionism and railroading, but I'll let your present the evidence otherwise and promise to review it carefully.  So, then, we'll expect your proof that games that use Illusionism were all good?  I'll accept mostly good, if you like.Snark aside, I don't doubt that good games happened with these things.  I've been in them.  I ran one, a few times, before I <cough> reformed <cough>.  But, I strongly believe that the strength of those games was in spite of tools like Illusionism and not because of it.  When I review my uses of it, I see that clearly -- I used a crutch to prop up my game because I was too married to my ideas.  I had good ideas, so it worked out, but I think that even better ideas would have happened if I actually let my players make choices that mattered and followed those.  It's gone smashingly since.  Hold on lightly.I have more information about my ideas, yes.  I've not seen a coherent argument that the DM's ideas are automatically the best for the game.  I've run for players that have far more experience than I.  As I get older, that gap closes significantly, but I'd say that two of my players have player longer, harder, and in more systems than I have.The best I can do will generally be less good than the best everyone at the table can do.  Why not use my best to provide situations for the players to do things in rather than outcomes to tell them about?No, we've well established that you cannot provide any way to know what a better game experience is, yet you base your entire argument on something you can't show and just insist that we all agree that you can (and, indeed, any DM should) be able to discern strongly enough to remove the one thing the player gets to do at the table: make decisions for their PC.Sorry, Tony, but the level of impact here demands a better argument than knowing it when you see it.  How much failure was there, Tony, across the hobby?  I hate to use another label, but confirmation bias seems to be strong, here.  YOU had a good game (or, at least, a not bad one) and you then assume that the reason for that good game was because you railroaded your players a few (many?) times?  Clearly, there can be no other reasons.But, let me ask you something -- the most awesome moments of your games, where they the moments you limited player agency or where they the moments the players did something unexpected and you let it happen or they took a huge risk and the dice came out their way?  I can tell you that ALL of the awesome moments in my games were those.  Whoa.  You did not just compare limiting player agency to immersion, did you?  As in, less agency, more immersion?  Please tell me you see the wrong there and just made a hasty mistake in typing.  You just made the argument that limiting player agency is the way to provide the best experience you can.  How to you also claim to be able to run great experiences in game systems that limit or prevent your ability to limit player agency?  Also, are you actually making the claim the 5e (or any D&D edition) somehow requires limiting of player agency?!]quote] 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.</blockquote>Yes, it's weird.  It's weird because there's nothing to say the person is lying except a hidebound reading of a die result.Sigh, I'm not going to ask you to actually back that up with more than labels from the Forge because I really don't want to see the gyrations and assumptions necessary to achieve.  Let's just go with me saying this is absolute hogwash and ask to leave GNS Forge theory somewhere else instead of ineptly used to try to get a quick point score in. I'm sorry, but I'm throughly confused.  You're now arguing my position -- that the player should be free to chose their PC's actions and not be told what their PC thinks.  That the phrasing is in terms of what the character thinks is largely chaff, here, if you're actually saying that the player is free to ignore that and can choose to instead have their PC disbelieve.And, if that's the case, if you've been arguing for a phrasing rather than an outcome, I'm at a complete loss as to why you failed so horribly to make that clear posts and posts ago.  So, I think that this is you trying to play both sides to secure another rhetorical gambit rather than an engagement of the ideas.[/QUOTE]

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