On "Illusionism" (+)

[Lanefan]

The other option that I find even more distasteful, is the GM deciding the next event that occurs without a script. In that case, the GM is spooling out a plot purely in reaction to events as they play out. That has all the problems as above, but creates an even less consistent/interactive world, because there's no real relationship between the choices the players make and the resulting situation at all. I suppose it's the same principle as above, but with the illusion in "illusionism" stripped away to leave actual nothing but someone telling a story about a character you nominally control.

I'm interpreting this to be saying a GM shouldn't ever be "winging it", which IMO is kind of silly in that the players have to have the agency to make left turns and no GM anywhere is going ot have prepped for every possible eventuality.

If that's not what you're saying, please clarify.

 

[Lanefan]

Optimization is not binary. I do not judge GMs nor players by how well they optimize their characters, but I expect them both to try to create something effective. There is a lot of space between fudging a couple of numbers to avoid a TPK, and ignoring HP altogether.

I realize I didn't quote it, but I was specifically referring to OP's comment on hit points:

"For example, instead of giving the BBEG a fixed number of hit points, you can just simply decide when the BBEG goes down and then mark that down as the BBEG’s hit points retroactively."

I have seen this style of play discussed other places on the internet, as well. I don't like it. IMNSHO, it is a very extreme dive into illusionism. So extreme that it effectively nullifies many points of character building and tactics. After all, if the DM doesn't keep track of HP and the BBEG only and always falls when it is dramatically important for it to do so, what is the point of any modifier that you had to work for? Any strength increase that adds to damage, any tactic that gives a to-hit bonus, any spell buff, or any attempt at a save-or-die effect becomes pointless. Once a player realizes they're in a game that works this way, it completely changes the way the game is played.

I don't like it. IMNSHO, this is effectively punishing players for doing well. My suggestion is to reward them for doing well, then give them the option for more difficult challenges.

If the party wins the first orc battle easily, they are they are given gold, XP, etc. The party is then given an opportunity for another battle, where the number of orcs is increased, and the rewards are higher. This not only gives them positive feedback for winning, it gives them more interaction in the story/plot, and it's much more realistic for the orcs to retreat and regroup rather than just run into death like lemmings. This makes it a better option from the trinity of gamist, narrativist, and simulationist perspectives.

What this comes down to is that the GM should present encounters as a neutral arbiter with the oppositon's parameters locked in place before the combat begins, and without change based on which characters are present and-or how well/poorly they fare; concepts with which I completely agree. (though I personally lump mid-flight encounter changes under 'fudging' rather than 'illusionism')

 

[Jack Daniel]

I don't think it's possible to entirely avoid illusionism, as to do so would imply that you had accurate a priori knowledge of the entire fictional world.

Oh… I don't think I can agree with that at all.

Let's be clear here: illusionism is fundamentally a force play — it's forcing a GM-desired outcome in spite of a mechanism for choosing between multiple possible outcomes (be that mechanism a player decision, a random generator, a subsystem of the game's rules, or whatever), while pretending to defer to that mechanism for the sake of hiding from the players that the GM is the one making the decision.

A GM/referee doesn't even need partially complete knowledge of the immediate fictional surroundings or scenario to simply choose not to do that.

(That said, I'm no more interested in an argument over whether we can or cannot DM a game without some small smattering of illusionism than you are in an argument over whether illusionism is a real thing worth criticizing. These seem to be contentions of the same ilk. If a DM strives to avoid consciously employing illusionism, then to me, that is equivalent to the DM never employing illusionism. We can make the perfect the enemy of the good and treat illusionism like an unavoidable unconscious bias; or we can treat illusionism like a tool that a DM chooses to use or not use, and have an interesting, productive discussion about it.)

 

[Pedantic]

I'm interpreting this to be saying a GM shouldn't ever be "winging it", which IMO is kind of silly in that the players have to have the agency to make left turns and no GM anywhere is going ot have prepped for every possible eventuality.

If that's not what you're saying, please clarify.

Oh no, I definitely acknowledge improvisation is inevitable and necessary. I'm saying that it's slightly more offensive to player agency for the GM to improvise a series of events that are unavoidable than it is for GM to plot a series of story beats and corral players towards them.

The former denies the players the ability to even make choices that get them from point A to point B, even if their agency was always going to be limited too ending up at point B.

 

[bloodtide]

On term that I use a lot is “Illusionism”. The standard definition of “Illusionism” is GM’s offering player’s a game choice which appears to matter but which does not in fact matter because the GM uses his role as secret keeper and as narrator of the fiction to hide the player’s lack of agency from them.

I can take this definition, as I see the big part is the offering. This is a big problem a lot of DM do is that they keep offering the players choices, even more so when they don't want too. So the answer is simple enough: If the DM wants anything to happen or not happen, don't add in any player choice. Simply keep things separate from the players choice.

“Schrodinger’s Map” is one example of illusionism.

But here you cross over with Improv. A lot of DMs don't write down every tiny detail on a map. They just make up stuff as the players pick a direction. Your making it sound like Improv is Illusionism and is wrong.

Similarly, you can use something like “Schrodinger’s Stat Block”

Again, this steps on the toes of Improv. Not every DM can make a stat block in seconds. And even talking a bit of time, like ten minutes, it can be hard to fill in all the details, and more so fill in all those details perfectly. Your making it sound like Improv is Illusionism and is wrong.

Most commonly in my own game I use “Schrondinger’s Time Warps”. A lot of times in my game I know that certain events are supposed to happen at some point, but since games often proceed in ways I can’t plan for, and since I don’t always have accurate distances between X and Y or precise locations of everything that is happening off stage, I have a lot of freedom as a GM to determine when things happen and how long it takes for something to happen.

This might be going too far. There are only three choices here: the DM decides, the DM rolls at random, or the DM makes up a massive timeline. Most of the time it is simply impossible for a DM to make such a time line. There are a couple ways to do things at random, but a lot of DMs don't like giving up control of the game to the dice.

And, there is no fix for the problem that even if the DM had set the round the next force arives a year before the game or just rolls some dice at random and it happens at a time the players don't like, they will still complain.

The trouble you have in these situations and the reason the temptation to Illusionism is so insidious is that you can’t ever actually be certain you are being fair and unbiased.

I would say it is hard, but it's not impossible.

If you are making any choice as GM at run time during a game, there is always the chance that even unconsciously you are making choices that favor your desired outcome.

The bit of the flaw here is the DM simply can not have a desired outcome.

But in my experience players aren’t stupid. I play with a lot of really smart guys, and sooner or later if I’m fudging everything they are going to figure that out, and for some of them that’s going to be like winning a chess game against a superior player and then finding out he through the game to bolster your self-esteem.

I'm not sure most players would catch on. Really there are only a handfull of the hard core players that are always actively looking for things the DM is doing that they can complain about.

I don't think it's possible to entirely avoid illusionism, as to do so would imply that you had accurate a priori knowledge of the entire fictional world. But I do think that you should try to avoid illusionism and limit conscious illusionism motivated by "what you the GM think should happen" to a minimum. I believe high illusionism where the fiction exists solely in response to player actions is incompatible with both "step on up" and "play to find out what happens" play.

There is the Third Option: Randomess. If the DM leaves nearly everything up to the dice, you need no illusions.

Suppose you had a Gygaxian tactical scenario where you had some complex terrain and waves of humanoids with various tactics they'd employ.

How would you feel about scaling the number of "orcs" that attack the party to how well the party is doing? If they don't use good tactics then very few orcs attack, but if the party is using good tactics like employing cover, creating obstacles, working together in a formation, prioritizing targets, etc. then more and more orcs attack to keep it exciting?

This is a classic and very old complaint of "when" can a DM change anything. Like the day before the game the DM makes an Orc Squad. Then the next day of the game, once the combat starts, the DM sees that they made a mistake, or an error, or forgot something or such. So can they change it? Many would say "no" . Many would say the DM just has to "live with it".

Though overall, this is not a big point. The DM can just make the NEXT group of orcs tough.

Let's be clear here: illusionism is fundamentally a force play — it's forcing a GM-desired outcome in spite of a mechanism for choosing between multiple possible outcomes (be that mechanism a player decision, a random generator, a subsystem of the game's rules, or whatever), while pretending to defer to that mechanism for the sake of hiding from the players that the GM is the one making the decision.

The answer here is just for the DM to make things ahead of time that have a good chance of directing something, but not forcing it.

And even better: simply not giving the players a choice. No choice, No Illusionisum.

 

[Committed Hero]

Let's be clear here: illusionism is fundamentally a force play — it's forcing a GM-desired outcome in spite of a mechanism for choosing between multiple possible outcomes (be that mechanism a player decision, a random generator, a subsystem of the game's rules, or whatever), while pretending to defer to that mechanism for the sake of hiding from the players that the GM is the one making the decision.

Things might be happening off-stage - either too distant for the PCs to affect, or because they chose to deploy their resources elsewhere.

 

[Celebrim]

Let's be clear here: illusionism is fundamentally a force play — it's forcing a GM-desired outcome in spite of a mechanism for choosing between multiple possible outcomes (be that mechanism a player decision, a random generator, a subsystem of the game's rules, or whatever), while pretending to defer to that mechanism for the sake of hiding from the players that the GM is the one making the decision.

A GM can always do their best to be fair, but let's be honest, GM's also want their game to work out and be fun. Even if you aren't willing to use hard force to achieve your aims, you want to entertain the players. Even though you can't have a plan for every eventuality, you want your improvisation to be seamless with your planning so that everything seems real, immersive and compelling even if the party is off the rails and out in the undiscovered country. The concept of illusionism is so broad that includes every time you as a GM rule that some important coincidence happens just so the PC's will get a hook for fun and gameplay. In the perfectly simulated "real world" chances are adventures aren't popping up around every corner. If you were The Batman in the real world, no matter how many rooftops you hung out on over how many nights, chances are you wouldn't be right where you needed to be when someone was getting mugged. But in the game world, we GMs make the fun happen where the players are, sometimes even when they are running away from our understanding of where the fun is. That isn't necessarily the same as linear play. The GM doesn't have to corral the PC's back to where he thinks they are supposed to be. But it isn't the same as naturalism, realism, or pure process simulation either.

A GM/referee doesn't even need partially complete knowledge of the immediate fictional surroundings or scenario to simply choose not to do that.

You should always be choosing to give the players as much agency as you can and so you must resist the urge to get your way all the time or most of the time. I say 'most of the time' because there are times when using illusionism or GM force to protect a new player or a player new to a setting isn't a bad idea. You either do that or you do proposition filtering like "Do you really want to do that?" or "So your character would know that..." and both are equally railroading techniques.

But I don't think it's possible to completely get rid of your bias. Even in selecting between your options like giving the player the choice, rolling a random dice, playing a minigame, or whatever, the very fact that you have all those options available to you and that you are aware that each choice is likely to lead to different outcomes means that you can skew the result to what you want - what you think is good for the game. And that's not all bad. A good GM ought to be thinking about what will be good for the game. It's just that also that way can lead to the Dark Side if the GM gets too attached to their fantasies about how things should work out.

If a DM strives to avoid consciously employing illusionism, then to me, that is equivalent to the DM never employing illusionism.

I don't think it is, but where I absolutely do agree with you is that I think that's good enough. Or maybe more to the point, the GM should always be conscious of when they could be employing illusionism, thinking ahead to potentially problems so that they don't have to depend on illusionism when or if they come up, and consciously critiquing their own instincts to use GM force rather than letting the player choices and the dice tell the story.

We can make the perfect the enemy of the good and treat illusionism like an unavoidable unconscious bias; or we can treat illusionism like a tool that a DM chooses to use or not use, and have an interesting, productive discussion about it.)

I am definitely not saying that since we can't avoid having some degree of illusionism that we should just throw up our hands and use it freely. What I am saying is that you should cultivate an internal awareness at all times of what you are doing as a GM and be self-critical of your technique with the aim of getting better as a GM.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm interpreting this to be saying a GM shouldn't ever be "winging it", which IMO is kind of silly in that the players have to have the agency to make left turns and no GM anywhere is going ot have prepped for every possible eventuality.

Not all Illusionism is Improvisation. And not all Improvisation is Illusionism. But there is a very big and inevitable overlap between the two in that there are very few constraints on GM power and one of the most powerful is preestablished fiction. If a GM records something in the fiction, its generally for the purpose of creating a truth that he intends to not invalidate. The GM is essentially making a contract with himself and binding himself to certain situations and outcomes in much the same way the GM binds himself by the rules.

The GM has the authority to change the rules mid-play but generally good GMs don't except in rare circumstances. The GM could for example fudge things behind the scenes, saying that an NPC passed a saving throw or otherwise ignoring the rules. The GM is in his rights to do so, and to make rulings on the fly but doing so comes at the cost of undermining the game and eventually likely eroding player trust.

Likewise the GM has the authority to change the fiction (and in particular) since the GM is the secret keeper has the power to alter the fiction behind the scenes. But the same things start happening when you alter the fiction as when you alter or ignore the rules. You are undermining the game and eventually likely eroding player trust.

The problem with improvisation is that it is both necessary because it's impossible to prep for every situation but also puts the GM in the situation of being able to metagame by creating the fiction in response to play. Improvised fiction is inevitably less constrained than preestablished fiction. If I have established myth, then I can easily be self-critical when I'm changing that myth and be alert to what I'm doing, and evaluate my motivations, and evaluate how often I've chosen to assert fiction to get my way, and so forth. But if I have no established myth to constrain me, it's very very hard indeed to be alert to my motivations when improvising new fiction.

In my case, before starting a campaign I tend to establish in my head baseline "Demographics" that represent what the world is probably like outside of my detailing of it. I use this generic fiction as a test of any improvised fiction, to make sure that I'm not departing to far from what I've established as naturalism within the setting, and that I'm doing so for good reasons and not just to make what I want to have happen happen. In other words, even when I have no myth I have a meta-myth that I can fall back to constrain my power.

The situation gets much worse when the system explicitly encourages the GM to metagame and use illusionism heavily to achieve "what's good for the game". It's always really weird to listen to (for example) an OSR GM simultaneously talking player empowerment and at the same time employing heavily a huge amount of railroading techniques including Illusionism to "make the game more fun". Sometimes I feel like I'm being gaslighted, or that certain communities are being gaslighted because the same guy that is claiming he advocates for highly "player driven" play is also when he gets down to discussing processes of play using a lot of Endurium, Illusionism, Hand Waves, Omnipotent NPCs, and so forth to steer the play to his desired goals.

 

[Pedantic]

I don't think it is, but where I absolutely do agree with you is that I think that's good enough. Or maybe more to the point, the GM should always be conscious of when they could be employing illusionism, thinking ahead to potentially problems so that they don' definitely not saying that since we can't avoid having some degree of illusionism that we should just throw up our hands and use it freely. What I am saying is that you should cultivate an internal awareness at all times of what you are doing as a GM and be self-critical of your technique with the aim of getting better as a GM.

This helped crystalize some of my thoughts on this. You're essentially making a case for GMing as a profession, with the same slightly murky blend of professional standards/responsibilities we expected from certain experts, like doctors or lawyers. There is a set of ethics and a wide variety of available tools, but fundamentally the role rests in a person and not a system, such that an individual must inhabit the function and make decisions that best serve the table.

This aligns with a lot of how I tend to conceptualize the role of a GM. I'm often drawing lines between the various functions a GM is expected to inhabit, and suggesting that the game's guidance/advice should make it very clear that the GM is expected to inhabit these roles impartially from each other. You are supposed to function as a wordlbuilder, make decisions for the NPCs, and resolve rules ambiguities as part of the same professional function, but to provide clear lines between those roles, simulating impartiality as you go.

I think that's the distinction I've increasingly found...uncomfortable in other forms of GM advice, or even some games that have very specific procedures for GM side play, or discussions about what a GM is doing. It should be acceptable for the fundamental GMing function to be aspirational; it isn't necessary that what is asked be completely possible, so long as the underlying responsibility and the reason for it is clear. That one person can't simulate a fictional world (and that doing so already requires some compromises to be interesting) isn't a problem in the game or activity, it's the basis of the professional ethics of the role.

Illusionism run rampant is obviously bad for the integrity of the game, but deployed sparingly, with regard for the temptation it offers, and with an eye toward mitigating its effects on both your players and play, is both a tool and a necessary component of the GM's craft.

 

[tomBitonti]

On term that I use a lot is “Illusionism”. The standard definition of “Illusionism” is GM’s offering player’s a game choice which appears to matter but which does not in fact matter because the GM uses his role as secret keeper and as narrator of the fiction to hide the player’s lack of agency from them. This isn’t a bad definition, but I tend to use the term more broadly for any situation where the player believes they are playing one game but actually they are playing another. This can actually extend to situations where even the GM believes one game is being played when in fact the real game is very different – that is the GM themselves buy into the illusion.

“Illusionism” is normally used in the context of RPGs, but in fact is not limited to them. One of the best ways to explain the general theory of illusionism is to look at the classic Paul Newman and Tom Cruise movies “The Color of Money” which at its heart is a movie about “Illusionism”. In the movie, Newman plays a pool hustler Eddie who discovers a talented pool player played by Tom Cruise named Vincent who bets on the outcome of his games. Newman tells Vincent that he is playing the game wrong, and that the secret of winning is to always make it seem like his opponent can win. That is to say, the secret of getting the outcome Vincent is playing for – money – is to sucker his opponent’s into thinking that they can win by playing less well than he is able. Eddie then teaches Vincent the art of Illusionism, where the audience thinks they are playing one game but really they are playing another. The idea is to win by as little as possible and only at the last moment. Later in the movie, Eddie realizes that as he’s gotten older he’s allowed his pool game to slip. And Eddie goes back to playing as well as he is able in order to prove himself out of pride and the love of competition, and not for the money. He encounters Vincent in a major professional pool tournament, and after a dramatic game barely beats Vincent. But then Vincent tells Eddie that he in fact threw the game and offers to split the money from his hustle with Eddie. This gets Eddie furious because he discovers the game he thought he was playing was an Illusion. He thought he was playing a competitive game with Vincent, but in fact Vincent was playing for money off a bet that he would lose.

...

Which raises the question, did I just do to the players what Vincent did to Fast Eddie? Did I throw the fight in order to give the players the satisfying dramatic conclusion to the adventure that it needed? I have no way of knowing for sure. I certainly tried to make on behalf of the NPC’s the rational choices based on the information they had and the resources I had given them, and I did make the fight challenging. But the fact that some illusionism was used means I don’t have objective answers. And there is the problem with it.

...

Anyway, that's long enough for now. Interested to hearing your positive thoughts on the use of illusionism, when you are OK with it or not OK with it, how much effort you as a GM put into avoiding it, whether it bothers you, and examples of when you've used it and you thought it worked out well, or conversely examples of when it was employed that ultimately felt like failure.

I'm not sure use of the term "illusionism" helps the discussion. Why not describe what the GM is doing directly: Removing player agency.

Also, the example of "The Color of Money" is not on point. While Eddie was deceived, that was more because he misunderstands the nature of the game. Vincent played a strategic game, which includes betting results as a part of the victory conditions. Eddie played a local skills contest game.

Some points:

* In contests, one is advised to distrust any information that is provided by the opponent. One must gather their own intelligence.

* There are several possible reasons to "just barely win": To conserve resources; To not crushing the spirit of a beginner; To not give away information (about one's true skill) unnecessarily; To misdirect.

As to the main question: I've found removal of agency to be harmful to my enjoyment of game play. The more the GM adjusts what is happening the more I disbelieve my agency. My engagement lessens. Victories feel hollow.

TomB