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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7098268" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think you may have misunderstood.The skulker's motivation is concrete in the fiction. It's just not yet been authored, and so - at the table - no one (not GM, not players) knows what it is - although all may have some conjectures.I am insisting on a very strong distinction between the fiction and the real world here, because I find without that distinction being clearly drawn we get strange claims that seem to imply that the fiction writes itself, or exercises causal power over people in the real world.But nothing is being changed. To author some bit of the fiction is not to change some bit of the fiction. It is to establish it.And I still don't see what the illusion is. On whom has it been perpetrated? I mean, I as GM had some conjecture as to whom the skulker might be. When the big reveal comes out it turns out that my initial conjecture was false - the skulker is someone else. Who has been deceived? What's the illusion? All I can see is authorship.First, what is the meaning of "in place"? If you mean the fiction is already established, then that is not what I am talking about and has no bearing on the example of the skulker. If you mean the GM has a conjecture about some bit of the fiction then what does it mean to say that the idea is "in place"?Assuming the second understanding - which is what I have been talking about, and is the example I provided - who is being tricked? Not the GM. Not the players. Not any of the fictional inhabitants of the gameworld.How is finding a secret door by way of a successful Architecture check less dramatic than (say) casting a Passwall spell? Or, for that matter, how is bumping into your cousin and smoothing things over less dramatic than casting a Charm Person spell?You're clearly seeing some distinction here, but I'm missing what it is.</blockquote>

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