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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8599001" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Ooooooor...you don't make an illusion of fake danger, and instead keep the danger grounded in consequences that could actually happen. Which is what I do. My players know I won't kill off their characters forever (and, in exchange, they have promised not to abuse that situation to behave irrationally) unless that's the story they wish to tell. Instead, I have built a world with things the players care about, stuff that they're excited about, NPCs they enjoy interacting with, opponents they love to hate. Stuff that would harm or threaten those things, people, principles, etc. is so much more meaningful to them, because they know, truly for certain, that I won't hold back if something goes wrong. By giving away the illusion of dangers that would not be interesting or entertaining, I have made the (fictive) reality of dangers that are so.I can play with my proverbial cards face up.Charlaquin has it covered:My words will do no better.Being a player by necessity contains a pretty massive amount of metalevel thinking too. Especially if you're even passingly familiar with the MM. You almost inherently have meta knowledge, but only the player is super duper ultra frowned upon for altering their behavior purely for meta reasons. That's what I'm opposed to.There's nothing adversarial about this? I'm confused as to why you would see it as such. Just as DMs ask players to explain how or why something makes sense, don't players do exactly the same thing with DMs? For example, the majority of the time if my players have an idea, I run with it, but sometimes something hitches and I'm not seeing how or why it works, so I ask them to "sell me on it." I likewise welcome, even expect my players to question anything I do that doesn't make sense to them. Addressing the times and places where that happens is how we keep everyone on the same page....as I said earlier in this thread, I actually prefer to not conceal much of anything. But yes, I do consider many of these things concealed, and generally I strongly dislike such concealment--it is a constant, tiresome, wearying grind to have to remember what I should and should not say, to "keep up appearances," etc. I vastly prefer to be fully candid and forthright with everyone, and have since I was a very small child. I actually got in huge trouble as a kid because, at the time, I couldn't understand why anyone would conceal presents they'd bought for someone else. If you bought a gift for someone, why would you hide it? Give it to them so they will be happy! I eventually learned that there is value in revealing what is concealed at a particularly symbolic or opportune moment, of course: I learned that such forthrightness requires tact. But that overall pattern of "you should not conceal things, you should be candid and forthright about most things" has remained.Not at all. To use the oh-so-commonly invoked example: does not the magician performing a card trick conceal how the trick works from the audience purely by not telling them how the trick works?Since I must apparently repeat this every time: The players can discover the map. They might fail to uncover all of it, by choice or by happenstance--that's fine, plenty of concealed stuff never gets discovered. But it is, in principle, always possible for them to learn all the information relevant to their interests about that. Likewise, BBEG plans. My players know there are bad guys and that they have plans. They take actions to learn what those plans are, and in principle it is always possible for them to learn the full extent of those plans. There is never a situation where I, as the DM, attempt to prevent them from discovering that information.You have, absolutely, shown that there are things DMs conceal. The concealment alone is not the issue. Concealment and preventing the players from knowing about it is the issue.Like, this ties into another, related issue I have with D&D stuff: the way perception rolls are handled. Specifically, that failed perception rolls are stinky rotten garbage. It's either necessarily concealed rolls, fostering player distrust of the information provided to them, or open rolls, where players are now forced into the crappy metagame decision of "I-as-a-player know this information is false, but I-as-a-character do not." Which is why, should I ever run proper D&D as opposed to DW, I'll always roll my perception checks in the open...but make sure that the results of a failed perception check are not "you don't notice anything," but rather you notice something bad. That, as noted above, eliminates the issue with illusory danger. The danger becomes "real" (within the fiction) because the players can trust the result of the roll.See above. Those things are concealed but learnable. Fudging, by definition and by explicit request from most people who DO tolerate/like it, is not learnable. And that is where the active part comes into play. You must do it, and yet prevent the player from knowing that you do it: for those who like it, you do so because they (almost always) want you to conceal it; for those who dislike it, because you know it will upset them if they find out. Either way, actively working to ensure players cannot learn about it.</blockquote>

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