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

[AnotherGuy]

If they have buy-in from the players and everyone is having fun, there is no need for the "who don't know any better" suffix. If everyone is on board, there is nothing inherently wrong with illusionism.

You're right, two thoughts in one sentence.
I'll amend it to say what I meant.

It's not my thing these days (and I stopped using it when I realised it made the game feel hollow for me), but there have been some cultures of play where it's been openly and vigorously advocated for. GM Law for Rolemaster Standard System has a whole section extolling the virtues of illusionism. While I happen to feel like it's very bad GM advice, for some people, it just works, perhaps in the same way you know a magician is lying to you, but it's still OK (conversely, my sister in law hates magic being done on her, because she knows it's a lie and feels like she is being made a fool of).

I agree with this.
And the hollowness you speak of is what set me down the path of incorporating other techniques.

 

[SableWyvern]

And the hollowness you speak of is what set me down the path of incorporating other techniques.

For me, it was a moment when my players were being all awed by my awesomeness, and I pulled the curtain back and said, "This is how I did it."

I'm not sure if they even cared. But as soon as I spoke, their adulation immediately meant nothing to me, because I could see how it was built on nothing worth being proud of. And that, for me, was the death of illusionism in my games. Even if my players were still OK with it, I was not.

 

[Kromanjon]

Is it spoken aloud? Or is it all soft-touch implication, presumed details, and unstated expectations?

The second one. The social contract is that way so that we won’t need to write rules for everything. I would make the bold claim that the social contract is more important than written laws to allow society to function.

I would also claim that manipulation goes against the core concept of the social contract. Breaking or ignoring this for personal gain would be considered anti-social at best and psychopathic at worst.

I try to remain polite and honest, not because any written rules tell me so, but because it’s the right thing, in my opinion of course.

 

[Enrahim]

It's the narrativists who seem to me to be most prone to rejecting any attempt to find common ground and arguing at every step that their processes are unique and special and not like anything anyone else does.

We are all playing pretend games where most participants are responsible for the actions of a single fictional character. In the big sea of possible activities a human can engage in, this is already strikingly spesific. Of course there are tons of similarity. But claiming that two games with different rules or even different people are exactly the same is missing something.

Even seemingly minor changes like introducing fate points into a system that do not originally include it can have profound impact on the experience. And I think it is valuable and interesting to be talking about what makes each experience unique. Just as it is sometimes important and valuable to talk about all the cool things we have in common.

If a group of people talk and half thinks the point of the conversation is the first, and the other half thinks it is the second it would be no surprise if chaos ensues

 

[AnotherGuy]

For me, it was a moment when my players were being all awed by my awesomeness, and I pulled the curtain back and said, "This is how I did it."

I'm not sure if they even cared. But as soon as I spoke, their adulation immediately meant nothing to me, because I could see how it was built on nothing worth being proud of. And that, for me, was the death of illusionism in my games. Even if my players were still OK with it, I was not.

How have you overcome illusionism for your table?
Did you become more structured/constrained in your biases - i.e. GM Decides?

I found that injecting some player-facing mechanisms here and there helped to constrain my hollowness feeling. I needed that extra step away, and elevate the gaming aspects.
And I wasn't shy about asking assistance at times for player input - for very specific situations.

 

[SableWyvern]

We are all playing pretend games where most participants are responsible for the action of a single fictional characters. In the big sea of possible activities a human can engage in, this is already quite strongly spesific already. Of course there are tons of similarity. But claiming that two games with different rules or even different people are exactly the same is missing something.

Even minor seemingly minor changes like introducing fate points into a system that do not originally include it can have profound impact on the experience. And I think it is valuable and interesting to be talkkng about what makes each experience unique. Just as it is sometimes important and valuable to tqlk about all the cool things we have in common.

If a group of people talk and half thinks the point of the conversation is the first, and the other half thinks it is the second it would be no surprise if chaos ensues

I am 100% sure that no one in this thread thinks or is claiming that Blades in the Dark and The Majestic Wilderlands are "exactly the same".

That's why I stated only that I felt there was "common ground" or some "similarities" between the two sides, and that the commonality was with respect to specific aspects, not the whole things. And, which, I note, was specifically in response to someone claiming my "side" was only focused on claiming a lack of similarity.

 

[SableWyvern]

How have you overcome illusionism for your table?
Did you become more structured/constrained in your biases - i.e. GM Decides?

I found that injecting some player-facing mechanisms here and there helped to constrain my hollowness feeling.

I just stopped, pretty much. I was already running a very low prep, high improv style of game at the time (I had a large group of players, dominated by drama students, who were quite capable of running wild with anything dropped in front of them, with very little effort required from me), so I mostly just eliminated the fixed encounters that I might previously have quantum ogred into the game.

I don't think I ever relied heavily on illusionism, it was just one tool of many, so dropping it wasn't a huge overhaul of what I was doing.

 

[pemerton]

It seems impossible to have a casual conversation around here about game design.

It's easy to have a casual conversation about game design that assumes all designs are variants on AD&D c 1984.

If you want to have a conversation about game design that departs from those norms, in my experience you are likely to have to defend such a departure against extremely hostile fire!

 

[pemerton]

Explain to me how we're supposed to have a conversation without someone making assumptions about a baseline?

You could explain what you do.

 

[Enrahim]

I am 100% sure that no one in this thread thinks or is claiming that Blades in the Dark and The Majestic Wilderlands are "exactly the same".

That's why I stated only that I felt there was "common ground" or some "similarities" between the two sides, and that the commonality was with respect to specific aspects, not the whole things. And, which, I note, was specifically in response to someone claiming my "side" was only focused on claiming a lack of similarity.

Ok. I now see better the context. Yes I agree claiming those stating prefering sandbox play have exclusively focused on differences is false. But there has been a lot of posts in this thread where someone with sandbox preference have tried to highlight things they think that their prefered style of play does differently. This to the extent that while I believe the hyperbole of "only" is factually false, it still seem expressive of something the one writing it really felt.

I think the same can be said for those who have stated a preference for blades in the dark or BW in this thread. It is long.