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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7103056" data-attributes="member: 16814">I'm glad you've learned a new term, but if you go back, you'll see that fisking is the line by line dissection of a post.  Putting in breaks at the concrete thoughts/questions isn't fisking.  And you asked some very discrete, if related, questions there.  As you have here.  Clearly, if you go back through the thread, I haven't complained about breaks between points, nor have I been shy about using that technique myself.  It's when it goes to the line by line breaking up of a post into pieces smaller than an coherent argument that I begin to have issues.And I was making the point that if you've looked to the means, and don't have a problem with them, then you've vetted and approved those means.  Having multiple means that you approve of doesn't mean they don't matter, especially since you not caring doesn't mean the next person doesn't care.The result of this is that the ends do not justify the means.  Means matter."The means matter" does not mean that you cannot ever consider the ends and do a cost/benefit analysis.  If you have to kill yourself to prep to avoid Illusionism, that's not a better outcome for the game -- there may rapidly be no game.  "The means matter" means that how you do it still matters, even if you make that choice.  If you choose Illusionism, you own that choice; it will reflect in the integrity of the game and may anger your players if they discover it.  "A better game" is not a reason to do anything to achieve it.  Heck, you could say that your game would be better with more minis, but you can't afford them, so you rob a liquor store to buy some more minis.  If means don't matter, this is okay.  Since that's clearly counter-factual, what we're actually discussing here is personal evaluations of the cost/benefit equations for gaming.  And, as such, I do not hold that Illusionism (which is not playing with integrity) is always an evil.  And, yes, that also would mean that not playing with integrity isn't always an evil.  If playing with integrity ends up being something that you do not enjoy or actively causes you mental or emotional anguish, I'm fine with you not.  This is something we do for fun, not a morality exercise.Yes, it is, because you've offered a meaningless choice.  The players make a choice (East or West) and believe it to be meaningful.  It is not -- the same destination is at the end of both choices.  You've subverted the player's intent to make a meaningful choice.  That the destination they find is one they wanted to find is outside the bounds of the East/West choice mattering.Now, if you gave them a choice of East or West, but they knew that both curve to the North to the City, but one path is through the Very Dangerous (We Mean It!) Swamps of Very Danger and the other is through the Darkgrim Forest of Grim Darkness, and the dangers of the journey vary based on path, then it's not Illusionism.  This is because the choice offered to the players of which road to take has a meaningful outcome, even if the final destination is the same.</blockquote>

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