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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7094199" data-attributes="member: 42582">Further thoughts on illusionism and railroading:It's true that fictional events, unlike events in the real world, are authored. But how does this tend to show that some approach or other to RPGing is illusionism?Illusionism requires an illusion. There's no illusion in acknowledging that the fiction is authored. If anything, wouldn't it be illusionistic to somehow pretend that the elements that make up a fiction aren't authored, but rather are the result of the (purely imaginary) causal processes taking place (as authored) within the fiction?But (within the fiction) the skulker does have a motivation or goal! It's just not known yet.If the GM had already decided what it is, then (as I have talked about upthread) to the extent that the skulker becomes a focus of play at all, it is the players trying to find out what is written in the GM's notes.If the GM doesn't know - at that point - what the skulker's goal is, then if the players engage with the skulker as an element of the fiction, some sort of motivation or goal for the skulker will emerge out of play. Eg, in the 4e game, at a certain point I decide that skulker is engaged to the baron's niece. I obviously couldn't have made that decision until it was established that there was a baron, so this was months of play (more than a year, I would guess) after the first occurrencdes of the yellow-robed mage as an NPC. This established new backstory about him, which informs what his motivations are. These emerging motivations (i) provide colour and framing, and (ii) answer questions that arose from earlier play ("What exactly is the skulking wizad's plan?") In the OP game, after introducing the wastrel elf, and his possession of the mace, I introduced the dark naga, in response to a player's belief for a PC. And I establish that the dark naga is the master whom the renegade elf was serving. That established , in the fiction, the elf's reason to be opposing the PCs.I'm not seeing what the illusion is, other than the "illusion" inherent in any fiction. (Ie fiction is a type of pretence.) The GM isn't manipulating the players into believing something about the dynamics or elements of play that is false.The short answer is "yes". Qv the OP example of finding the vessel; the discussion, somewhere upthread, of the players making a Catacombs-wise check to see if their PCs successfully navigated through the Hardby catacombs to find a way into the tower where the events of the OP took place; and the example, somewhere more recently upthread, of a MHRP/Cortex Fantasy player making a check to establish a Secret Door asset.In the Adventure Burner, Luke Crane discusses the players checking Architecture to see whether their PCs discover a secret door into a citadel they wish to infiltrate. The failure of the check estalishes (among other things) that there is no secret door to be discovered.The longer answer relates back to the discussion with [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] upthread, about inclusion of "secret backstory" as part of the framing fiction in circumstances where it is meaningfully knowable by the players, in virtue of action declarations by their PCs. Having NPCs arrive during a scene via a secret door that they shut behind them, for instance, reveals the presence of the secret door and thereby makes it salient in the context of the present situation, and - especially in a game with a rigorous action economy - opens up a new option for the players to engage the fiction to get what they want ("I try to find the mechanism for the secret door").But that is quite different from "If you think to hunt for secret doors, and the GM rolls a 1 on a d6, then you'll find a new pathway to adventure."Secret doors are especially interesting in this context, and raise speciall problems, because of their connection to the framing of scenes. Even Gygax, by the time of writing his DMG, was aware that treating what is, in fact, a question of the players' access to those bits of the backstory that they are interested in, as if it were a moment of action resolution, could sometimes lead to unsatisfying results - hence he gives the following an example of disregarding the dice (p 110):You also might wish to give them [ie the players] an edge in finding a particular clue, eg a secret door that leads to a complex of monsters and treasures that will be especially entertaining.</blockquote>

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