D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[clearstream]

Metaphysics means transcending what is physical or natural. Metagame means transcending the game. It's when you bring in things from outside of the game into the game. Player knowledge, hit points as a mechanic being spoken about by your PC, etc.

I don't think your definition about it crossing multiple games is accurate.

Do you mean that you don't think something that operated across games beyond this game would count as transcending that particular instance of play?

By italicising this game I hoped to indicate I meant one instance of play, e.g. this game of Monopoly. This session of Monopoly. The Monopoly metagame transcends that session to take into consideration other sessions.

Although I think across games captures a good set of cases I agree with that it could go beyond that so I like your proposed transcends.

As to the consequences of transcends, it is not transcending if the effect is contained to this game. Such as a meta-currency used in this game, or meta-mechanics that have their effects just in this game. (The representation of those things in the game text transcends this game, but then every element in the text could be called a metagame element if that is the intended sense... which of course it isn't when folk talk about those cases.)

 

[Pedantic]

Do you mean that you don't think something that operated across games beyond this game would count as transcending that particular instance of play?

By italicising this game I hoped to indicate I meant one instance of play, e.g. this game of Monopoly. This session of Monopoly. The Monopoly metagame transcends that session to take into consideration other sessions.

Although I think across games captures a good set of cases I agree with that it could go beyond that so I like your proposed transcends.

As to the consequences of transcends, it is not transcending if the effect is contained to this game. Such as a meta-currency used in this game, or meta-mechanics that have their effects just in this game. (The representation of those things in the game text transcends this game, but then every element in the text could be called a metagame element if that is the intended sense... which of course it isn't when folk talk about those cases.)

"Meta" is a complicated prefix for RPGs. Because it's used in both the "meta game" sense you explained above, but also metatextual or metafictional, to indicate an awareness of the game fiction as fiction. When I discuss the local meta game of Netrunner, I do not mean the same thing most people do when they discuss metagaming in their D&D game.

As I mentioned earlier with gamism standing in for enjoyment of game as game and "the presence of mechanized play" simultaneously, we must be careful to avoid devotional overlap or drift to talk about it clearly.

 

[bloodtide]

I think you've hit the button; illusionism has a negative connotation because its often used to violate expectations. The cases where its sometimes expected instead are the difference between a con game and stage magic. No one likes to be conned, but some people really like stage magic.

As an illusionist, the big part about the illusion in an RPG is how bad it makes the players feel. Most players are fine with typical things and love surprises or twists. But there is a thin line between something fun and the "HAHA fooled you!".

Illusionism is not any form of Railroading. The illusion has no force, so how can it be a railroad? Just as players fall for the illusion, does not make it forced.

Dms should go for the Stage Magic Style: The players go "wow what an amazing game that was", not the Con Man where the DM laughs at the players "haha, guess you guys never thought there would be a dragon in that room...hahah"

I'm not even sure what other word we would use. If the player is using knowledge their character doesn't have, that's perfectly normal at some tables and not others.

For example, in my game a player is free to use any setting information they know for any character.

 

[Thomas Shey]

As an illusionist, the big part about the illusion in an RPG is how bad it makes the players feel. Most players are fine with typical things and love surprises or twists. But there is a thin line between something fun and the "HAHA fooled you!".

Illusionism is not any form of Railroading. The illusion has no force, so how can it be a railroad? Just as players fall for the illusion, does not make it forced.

Deception is force. Its just a subtle form of it, and that's true of a lot of forms of force. If you provide false information to people so they make different decisions than they otherwise would, its fundamentally indistinguishable from force (and perhaps worse, since with compulsion someone can always decided they're not going to do it anyway, even if that blows up a game. With false information they think they're making a decision when they're either not really doing so, or making a different one than they think).

Dms should go for the Stage Magic Style: The players go "wow what an amazing game that was", not the Con Man where the DM laughs at the players "haha, guess you guys never thought there would be a dragon in that room...hahah"

Even without rubbing people's nose in it, if they haven't signed off for illusionism, there's always going to be the risk that they find out because a GM missteps and then react badly. Possibly very badly. And there's no reason they shouldn't.

 

[Deset Gled]

Illusionism is a form of railroading and in the rare circumstances that the players agree to being railroaded, it's not a bad thing.

OTOH, one could also posit that illusionism is the wall at the edge of every sandbox.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That seems reasonable to me. From the point of view of "let's pretend, with rules" the second part cannot be engaged with in a gameful fashion if it is concealed and misrepresented. What happens when the focus of play isn't engaging with it in a gameful fashion, but rather playful? I'm thinking of the difference between Caillois' paidia and ludus. Another axis to consider is the difference between prioritising engagement with story in engagement in game. I suppose these would be some of the sorts of motives players might have for choosing as @FrogReaver proposes.

Note they have blocked me so I can't engage with anything they've said, and won't mention them again beyond this sentence.

My references to the story part seem just as relevant for this "paidia"? That is, even in maximally unstructured play, how can you express, how can you understand in order to express, if you are being subjected to a sustained misrepresentation of the fictional space?

While I agree that there are moral concerns around deception, my interest is in specifically how it affects play.

Play, particularly "paidia" if I am understanding the term correctly, is the ideal place to experience the moral practice that is so useful for making moral decisions IRL. That might take the form of negative practice (thinking through how the immoral might think or behave so you won't, or can prepare for it) or catharsis (exorcising natural but problematic desires in a safe and acceptable way), but still, I think it's a mistake to utterly exclude morality elements from "play" just as much as I think it's a mistake to exclude them from literature, even that read purely for entertainment.

To properly misquote Chesterton, "Fairy tales don't tell children dragons exist. They already know that. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be beaten."

One feature of the "magic circle" is the suspension of normal morality, from the distance of let's pretend. This is not a perfect safety -- not a shield against bleed into normal life -- especially as I picture player as having one foot in and one not-in the circle at all times. However, it must accomodate complex intentions such as irony, parody, and investigation.

My problem is that the deception involved is in creating and sustaining the magic circle. Even if we allowed that the magic circle really was an absolute shield against any criticism of what occurs purely inside it, it can't excuse what occurs outside it. It's own creation and sustaining is clearly not inside itself, and thus can't be excused even if we ratchet up that consideration dramatically.

Is that the direction of your worry here? That what is done in play or for the sake of play would have moral ramifications outside it?

It is a small part of it, but a part nonetheless.

The major part is that building and maintaining play is an act we perform on, with, and around the other players. Hence, moral concerns apply, not to what we are playing about, but how we conduct our play with others (and, indeed, even how we conduct play with ourselves!) These concerns should consider context (like always!) and thus some things that are unacceptable in other contexts may be acceptable here or vice versa. But I should think that "be honest to others" would very much apply in how we build and maintain the magic circle itself.

We expect poker players to deceive one another about what is in their hands. We do not expect (indeed, we very much oppose!) that poker players will carry an ace in their sleeve. Both are forms of deception. One is deception contained entirely within the gameplay itself and performed in an entirely rule-abiding manner. The other is deception in a way that breaks the rules.

I am of the opinion that even "paidia" contains rule elements, they're just often (much to my frustration) unspoken and enforced by social disapproval/reputation cost/inclusion vs exclusion/etc. Cheating with these things is often much, much worse than lesser forms of cheating in "ludus", in my experience. A player who bumps a dice tower hoping to avoid a 1 is cheating, but likely to get no more than a scolding if it isn't a serious or repeat offense. A player who finds a way to "cheat" in "paidia" type play? They're liable to get ejected from the group entirely for a single offense, because the rules are so fundamental.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That's one if the reasons I always roll in the open. I don't want the players to think I'm cheating when the monster crits their character yet again.

And I respect this choice. As noted, I think such a thing is perfectly compatible with achieving all of the ends that a GM who fudges wants to achieve, without any of the negatives of fudging. It requires some mixture of meaningful preparation and/or willingness to improvise new setting information to address the times when randomness generates an undesirable result that needs to be corrected. But the correction can occur without it being illusionism.

But if you think the DM is the only one who judges dice or rules, I've got news for you.

I do not think that.

I've caught players flat out cheating by misrepresenting rules in ways that could not reasonably been misreading a rule.

And a player who is outright cheating is clearly not participating in good faith. I certainly don't have any more sympathy for a player who cheats than a GM that does.

Fortunately these players are rare in my experience as are DMs that do something similar. What I've seen is that it's more common with players because they outnumber the DM by 5 to 1 on average.

I agree that such players are rare, but if one considers fudging to be GM cheating, and I very much do, then "cheating GMs" actually have a much higher likelihood than cheating players. That also isn't the only form of GM cheating, and I'm not separating "fudging by ignoring a die" vs "fudging by inventing modifiers/rewriting stats so as to control the result", since those are identical in effect, they simply change different variables in the equation. Other types include quantum ogres and intentionally obtuse probability setting (hence my lamentable need to always specify that players need a reasonable chance to learn learnable things, not "you must roll three consecutive 20s" or the like).

GMs can, and IMO sometimes should, keep secrets and present situations that look different from what they are within the world. That is deceiving the characters, which is perfectly acceptable and possibly even necessary. IMO, they should not ever do anything which deceives the players as to what kind of game they're playing.

As a narrator, I may sometimes give misleading or even false descriptions, but rooted in actual character perceptions. As a GM, meaning my role in coordinating play, I absolutely refuse to ever deceive my players, full stop.

 

[Thomas Shey]

OTOH, one could also posit that illusionism is the wall at the edge of every sandbox.

"Every" is doing some lifting there. Some people are willing to generate it as they go, even in a sandbox if need be.

 

[AlViking]

And I respect this choice. As noted, I think such a thing is perfectly compatible with achieving all of the ends that a GM who fudges wants to achieve, without any of the negatives of fudging. It requires some mixture of meaningful preparation and/or willingness to improvise new setting information to address the times when randomness generates an undesirable result that needs to be corrected. But the correction can occur without it being illusionism.


I do not think that.


And a player who is outright cheating is clearly not participating in good faith. I certainly don't have any more sympathy for a player who cheats than a GM that does.


I agree that such players are rare, but if one considers fudging to be GM cheating, and I very much do, then "cheating GMs" actually have a much higher likelihood than cheating players. That also isn't the only form of GM cheating, and I'm not separating "fudging by ignoring a die" vs "fudging by inventing modifiers/rewriting stats so as to control the result", since those are identical in effect, they simply change different variables in the equation. Other types include quantum ogres and intentionally obtuse probability setting (hence my lamentable need to always specify that players need a reasonable chance to learn learnable things, not "you must roll three consecutive 20s" or the like).

GMs can, and IMO sometimes should, keep secrets and present situations that look different from what they are within the world. That is deceiving the characters, which is perfectly acceptable and possibly even necessary. IMO, they should not ever do anything which deceives the players as to what kind of game they're playing.

As a narrator, I may sometimes give misleading or even false descriptions, but rooted in actual character perceptions. As a GM, meaning my role in coordinating play, I absolutely refuse to ever deceive my players, full stop.

I disagree that DMs cheat more, except perhaps to not kill off a character without meaning to do so. There's no more motivation for them to cheat than players.

I don't consider giving misleading info if they are relaying what the character would think was true. Withholding info is the same. I present what the character would know. I also modify monsters now and then but I do it ahead of time, I don't care if the characters run roughshod over my encounter there's always next time.

Of course there's no way of knowing how much either side fudges, even if they're doing by accident.

 

[Emerikol]

Okay.

Now consider this in the light of my response above to AlViking.

I consider it to be discourteous for anyone at the table to demand perfection of their vision. Anyone. Full stop.

That is where we disagree. I do think the DM's vision for the campaign setting is absolute. Player character have freedom but that freedom is limited by the campaign world. Again all of this is upfront and agreed to in advance. The player controls the character he has made and has his character do things that his character could do.

I really feel like you are that player that people of my persuasion talk about at the DM water cooler.