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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7104436" data-attributes="member: 42582">Notice that the Forge definition - which is the one that      [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] expressly has in mind - doesn't define Illusionism as the "illusion of choice". The illusion in illusionism is that the resulotion outcomes that appear to result from player-character decisions in fact result from the covert GM exertion of force.The illusion is an illusion about the process of authorship, namely, how were the new elements of the shared fiction (ie the "resolution outcomes") established?If the GM exercise authorial power overtly then there is no illusion and hence no illusionism. Here are two examples of overt GM exercise of authorial power:(1) The group is playing the Keep on the Borderlands. The GM reads some introductory text, and then tells the players "You have taken lodgins at the Keep, and following the directions given to you by the good worthies of that place you now stand at the entrance to the valley. Before you stretches the wooded valley floor, while to either side of you rise the valley walls. Caves dot the hillsides like grim eyes looking down at you. What do you do?" (2) From the OP game. The players have both just failed in a contest Speed check against the assassin. I, as GM, tell them "As you race to the room where Joachim is resting unconscious, you see that Halika has beaten you there. She calmly raises the ritual sword inlaid with the evil eye that she took from the orc captain in the Bright Desert, and then brings it down in a swift strike <rolls some dice - note that all dice rolls are seen by all participants - for the NPC to see if her decapitation succeeds: it does> and Joachim's head is lopped off, falling to the floor." One of the players adds "And rolls across the floor to lie next to the body of the unconscious elf" (another PC, the tower mage's bodyguard, who had been blasted unconscious by the wizard-assassin Halika).The first is pretty classic - the GM presents the starting situation of the module to the players. No illusionism.The second is pretty standard for "story now" or "standard narrativistic model" RPGing - the players failed a check, and the consequence ensues, in this case being that the NPC has a chance to decapitate the unconscious mage, which she does. No illusionism.A classic example of illusionism is quite common in "event-style" modules: the module presents a chance for the PCs to acquire a clue. If the PCs don't acquire the clue, then the module has some fall-back advice for the GM whereby a friendly NPC provides the clue instead.This is illusionism because it appears that the resolution outcome - ie do the players get the information or not - turns upon a player decision (eg whether or not to search a room, or interrogate a prisoner) but in fact it does not. Another example would be where a GM uses some sort of deus-ex-machina device to save an NPC who is losing in combat: this is illusionism because it appears that the resolution outcome (the NPC's life or death) depends up on the player decisions (eg in declaring attack actions) but in fact it doesn't.In illusionistic play the players' decisions about such matters as whether to search, or whether to atack, provide colour (eg the PCs acquired the clue through their own efforts rather than needing to be told) but don't determine outcomes.Here are some: ignoring or fudging dice rolls; manipulating the fiction "behind the screen" to eg introduce deus-ex-machina story elements (the example above, of the NPC who supplies the "missed" clue, is an instance of this); exerting various sorts of social pressure to ensure that the players don't declare "problematic" or "disruptive" actions.      [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] has especially emphasised the last of those in this thread. An example - which, judging both from GMing advice I've read and ENworld threads I've participated in, is fairly common - is the following: the players and their PCs know that a certain NPC (say, the vizier) is a villain, and want to declare an attack action against said NPC, but the GM - by way of social pressure and soft authority - "blocks" that action declaration (eg "You can't do that in front of the emperor!") - thereby making the outcome of the situation a result of GM force rather than players' decisions for their PCs.Until we know what the players think will be the consequence of this choice, we can't know whether or not any illusionism is involved, becaus illusionism is about the covert exertion of influence over the content of the shared fiction.This also goes to the claims by      [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION],      [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] and      [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] that "story now" RPGing can involve illusionism. In "story now" RPGing, either (i) the players already know what is at stake in the choice, in which case if the GM then overrides that the use of force is overt, not illusionistic; or (ii) the players don't know what is at stake in the choice, in which case the GM is failing to do his/her job properly (ie to frame scenes that engage player-authored dramatic needs and thereby provoke PC choices) and that failure is overt.This is why the concept of "illusionism" is simply not apposite in relation to "story now"/"narravitistic" RPGing.Huh? This is just false. Here's one (of myriad) counterexamples:In my 4e game, at a certain point the PCs were travelling through the Underdark on their quest to find Torog's Soul Abattoir. This was being resolved as skill challenge. A check (either Nature, Dungeoneering or Perception - I don't recall anymore) was made and failed, and hence the skill challenge failed - which is to say that the PCs' desire to successfully navigate the Underdark was thwarted. I narrated the PC fighter falling through a thin sheet of stone in the floor into an uderground river that carried him away.There was no pre-determining of results. The final check occurred in the context of exploring an abandoned duergar fungus farm - and the existence of that farm, the existence of the thin bit of stone, the fact that the thin bit of stone was over a river that might carry a PC away - was all authored in the course of the session, as elements of framing and resolution.This also highlights why your "fork in the road" example doesn't have any real bearing upon "story now" play: as you present it, there is nothing of dramatic significance at stake in the choice, and so the player decision to go left or to go right, or to go to the forest or to go to the swamp, is mere colour. It's not the resolution of a scene. It's the players' participation in framing a scene. Once it is established whether the PCs are in a forest or in a swamp, and the GM tells them that they are confronted by an ogre, well then we have a scene that might speak to dramatic need and provke a choice. (At which point the colour might become more than mere colour, because the fictional positioning is different in a forest - "We climb into trees where the ogre can't reach us!" - compared to a swamp - "We lead the ogre into muddy ground where its great weight means it gets bogged".)EDIT: I saw this, which says the same thing I'm saying:</blockquote>

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