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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8985680" data-attributes="member: 4937">It always amazes me that people disagree with me over things that I fully agree with.  Yes, I agree with every point you make in your first reason.But I don't see how it is a strong objection to what I wrote, because I think it should be clear that I think the GM limits himself by writing defeatable challenges.  The GM has infinite resources.  The GM in theory could set the PC's against unwinnable scenarios quite easily and with only a small exercise of imagination.  The GM when creating anything limits himself to the sort of resources implied by the setting, and by throwing out hooks to problems that the players can defeat.  Then, having created reasonable and beatable challenges, the GM then does his best to run the NPCs in those scenarios as cunning adversaries behaving according to their own instincts, intelligence, and motives.  The NPC's have the odds subtly stacked against them, but the GM switches hats at the time of the combat and goes from his hat as designer to his hat as advocate for the adversaries.  He does this not because he wants to win and beat the PCs, but because that's what makes it fun for the players.  The players don't want to win because they see the NPCs being stupid.  The players don't want to win because the NPCs are pushovers.  They want to earn that victory.Likewise, this doesn't seem to be a strong objection, and in fact I find it to be a very spurious one.  Returning to my point that the GM is omnipotent and has unlimited resources and power, one of the ways the GM limits his power over the game is by preparing "myth" for the game that he then as an act of discipline adheres to.  The GM limits himself to only those resources he declared a priori exist.  But the other way the GM limits his power over the game is as an act of discipline he submits himself to the outcome of the dice.   If he's not actually going to do this, then what is the point of rolling the dice but illusion?  Why do you feel the need to pretend by rolling the dice if you don't care what the result is and you are only going to validate the dice if they give you the result that you want?  Fundamentally, the problem with Illusionism is that everyone seems to agree that the fun goes away if you stop lying to the players and take the curtain away and show them what you are really doing.  And that implies I think a deep problem with the methodology. I don't deny that there could possibly be times when Illusionism is justified and you the GM ignore the Rules, your Myth, or the dice and run the game entirely by fiat, but what I am stating is that you should as an Artful GM endeavor to minimize those occasions and that you should especially do so if you are a novice GM.  The reason for this is that it is very easy as a GM to trick yourself about your own motives in these situations, where you keep telling yourself that you are doing it for the good of the game.  But at some point, you have started indulging the idea that what the GM wants is what is good for the game and that's a bad habit to get into.I am the GM that famously has a 600 page house rules document for 3e D&D.  I have yet to run a game that I don't want to change the rules for.  Every RPG I run gets house rules.  When I run Blood Bowl or Necromunda as a league commissioner it comes with extensive house rules.  The idea that I'm some sort of hidebound GM that is afraid to modify the rules to obtain the experience I want is funny.</blockquote>

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