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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7742987" data-attributes="member: 996">Heck, in some games (most D&D eds, for instance), you can /follow/ play procedures and abridge agency.  Not ignore them, use them, arguably even as intended.   Not anymore than to presume that a technique some rule in some game is designed to prevent is a bad technique in some other game... DMs have been DMing for 40 years.  There's a vast pool of experience & knowledge out there.  Techniques like 'illusionism' get negatively-connoted labels like that precisely because someone is irate that so many DMs have been using them for so long, and yet D&D remains stubbornly dominant in the hobby. I've done a lot of DMing, and it's certainly been my experience.  It felt more like fun than work, for the most part, though. It's a non-magical ability, based on experience, applied to one table of gamers, in the moment.  Seems like they'd have a better shot at it than a game designer trying to make the same kind of judgement for everyone who might ever play his game.   You might want to do more to establish that premise.  Do you consider it an axiom or something? Rather you're engaged in the circular reasoning of assuming the conclusion in your premise.  A technique is bad because it's bad, so it's bad.  It's a powerful tool, you can mess things up with a powerful tool.  That means 'be careful with it.'  Not 'never use it.'So, convert's zeal, then.   OK.IMX, it was often because of Illusionism being used to make the game good in spite of disruptive players or horrifically bad mechanics or the like, too.  There's a lot goes into a good game, and a lot that can make a game go bad... ...if you're insistent that illusionism is innately evil, perhaps we can agree it's a necessary evil - more necessary the further the system in question strays from perfection?  ...nah, you've already dismissed that agree-to-disagree option....But I don't see it as innately evil, in the first place.  It's a technique, you can use it to support a better play experience, or to be a giant douche to your players.   They're the ones that are going to have the greatest impact on the quality of the game, so he better strive to make them so. You're saying it's impossible to tell if your players are having a good experience or not?   Couldn't quantify it, of course.  But, between personal experience, hearsay, and the tremendous growth RPGs have pointedly not experienced over the decades, I'd speculate a truly horrendous amount.  Some of it from misusing illusionism and other such techniques, some of it from not using 'em, some of it from D&D being the de-facto entry point for most folks...  You don't say?  It's sorta the gravity of the forums, really.  Nothing much stands against it for long. Nope. They were often moments that wouldn't have happened at all had I not done so earlier, though. Yep.  Immersion is this freakish, murky, subjective thing:  you can't design it into a game, you can't lead a player to it nor make him drink it - but, sometimes, you can avoid him going off about it being 'shattered' with a little judicious application of illusionism.   Because they're different games.  Different games, different tools, different expectations from the players.   We've both clearly had experiences on both sides of this little game-theory-manufactured divide, so I don't see the contradiction.  I'll happily put up a DMs screen and use illusionism to the hilt to run a good 5e game.  I'm equally happy to take it down and have everything in the open and above board, in a system & with a group where I find that works better. 5e and classic editions mainly, yes, benefit greatly from the technique labeled 'illusionism,' which I wouldn't say is identical with limiting player agency - often it preserves the sense (illusion, I guess) of having agency, for that matter.   The ability to detect the lie is based on the skill of the liar and perspicacity of the one being lied to.  If that's modeled by a die roll in a given system, yeah, it depends on the result of that die roll.  That can make rolling the die in front of the player a problem, because it will create the impression his thoughts/judgements or actions are being dictated or coerced in some way.  Thus, take it behind the screen, so... That should be the experience the player takes away from the table, yes.</blockquote>

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