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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 8987055" data-attributes="member: 75787">The techniques I have suggested to use:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">If a fight is effectively over, stop running it. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">If a fight is not as challenging as you thought it should be, add in a few monsters</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">When it gets late at night, end the encounter when people start yawning</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">If a character has a nemesis, make minor scene adjustments to give them a chance of facing their nemesis.</li> </ol>Are these really examples of techniques "normally associated with Illusionism"? Specifically you feel these are technics that remove the player's agency -- not just a little bit, but completely? I think you're grasping at straws here just to keep your argument going. Everything a GM does changes a player's agency, and these examples certainly do, but stating they are techniques that people associate with illusionism seems like a bit of a stretch. As for "I have no direct experience with that style of play" I'm guessing you've never played living campaigns or at conventions or time-constrained games. If you had you would have seen regular examples of the GM telling the players straight up that they were shorting fights, skipping encounters, allowing players to succeed where they normally wouldn't -- all so they could get to a final scene or finish in time for lunch or whatever. Ask anyone active in the LC, LG, LFR, LF or current D&D living communities and they'll set you straight. I would argue that it's a necessary skill for a GM to have. Sometimes players spend more time in scenes more than expected and so you need to fix pacing. The "non-fudging" way to play is to keep going and then suddenly stop at the end, giving a poor experience for most players. The "fudging" way to play is to adjust the scenes to fix the pacing. I don't think I've met a GM who thinks the "non-fudging" way is better, and certainly those who are respected in the community and give advice on podcasts are pretty uniform in saying that managing pacing is important. And you do that by managing the pacing of scenes, and that means modifying encounters mid-flow.</blockquote>

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