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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8975603" data-attributes="member: 4937">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.</blockquote>

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