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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7099207" data-attributes="member: 42582">Both these claims are just false. As in, refuted by the actual experience of people running RPGs.I can narrate a NPC doing something without knowing what that NPC's motivation is, and without even having an idea as to what it might be. Here is a concrete example: the Gynarch of Hardby is engaged to marry Jabal of the Cabal. Why? No one at the table knows. It's a mystery. I introduced this mystery into the game because I thought that it would spur one or more of the PCs to action, given their dispositions and concerns. And I was right about that - it did.When, in play (possibly our next session) a reason emerges, it won't be an "overwriting" of any earlier fiction, because there was no earlier fiction.Likewise in the skulker case. Subsequent episodes of play established that one of his motivations for supporting the hobgoblin army was to wield power in the city where he was an advisor to the baron (because a hobgboblin army created a state of siege which empowered the baron and hence his advisor). But that was not known to me, or anyone, when I first narrated him flying out of the hobgoblin fortress on a flying carpet. At that point the baron hadn't even been established as an element of the shared fiction, nor any sort of hobgoblin operations against the city.Establishing this later stuff is not rewriting. It is simply writing. Had the game unfolded differently, the fiction would have been different. The city might never beecome anything more to play than a dot on a map; its form of government might have remained undiscovered; and it might have turned out that the yellow-robed skulker was not an advisor to anyone, and had no motivations connected to the baron or the city.I understand that you don't yourself GM in this fashion. But I don't get why it is so hard to see what's going on: that these bits of the fiction are authored by the GM when needed to establish framing or consequences, and not beforehand.As I see it, the key feature of Illusionism is not that it is GM narration.The key feature of Illusionism is that it is GM narration that covertly nullifies the significance or consequences of player action declarations for their PCs. The illusion is that these action declarations, and their resolution, matter to the outcomes of the game.A classic example of advocacy for Illusionism is "Don't let a single dice roll ruin a good story".In the skulker example there is GM narration. This narration fills in something unknown to the players (and, hitherto, unknown to the GM) - it can't but do that, because if the relevant fiction was already known to the players then the GM would be bound by it and hence would have no authority to narrate over the top of it.But that's the only resemblance to Illusionism that I can see. Narration.And I would query your claim that "the GM decides what is best for the game". That is not a very precise description. The GM frames a situation. Or the GM narrates a consequence of a check. And does these things in accordance with certain principle, primarily "go where the action is" ie follow dramatic need.The GM doesn't have any at-large power to narrate stuff on the basis that it is "best for the game". I'm not really sure that "best for the game" is even a meaningful concept in this context."Alter" and "establish" are not synonyms, though.And there is another thing going on here. The idea of the left fork in a tunnel suggests that we already have a whole lot of backstory established but unknown to the players (eg the classic dungeon map). In which case we already seem to be positing an approach to play where part of what is involved is the players learning what is in the GM's notes (in this case, the map). In which case it would be something like cheating for the GM to just change things around on the fly.But in the sort of approach I am describing, there is no map of the tunnels prepared in advance in that classic fashion. (I will sometimes use a map as an element in framing - especially in 4e - but that is something different.) So that the PCs went left rather than right is mere colour. The initial choice of a direction to go has no significance for resolution (though it may establish fictional positioning that comes to be of significance down the track).</blockquote>

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