When players make meaningful choices, there is no illusionism. A game that does not rob players of those choices does not have illusionism.
It partly depends on what counts as "meaningful". In his earlier post, Celebrim suggests that a roads-to-Rome approach (ie a certain confrontation
will take place, although prior play may affect context, difficulty etc) is illusionistic. But Robin Laws expressly suggests roads-to-Rome in the HeroQuest 2e rulebook, and Ron Edwards, in his simulationist essay, identifies non-roads-to-Rome as hardcore purist for system (with reference to the DC Heroes rulebook).
To give a concrete example: if a player puts identifies a certain conflict as crucial to his/her PC (eg one of the players in my current game is playing a Drow worshipper of Correllon whose goal is to reunite the sundered Elven family) then it is not illusionistic of me to be keeping in mind that at some stage in the game - I imagine at Epic Tier - some sort of conflict involving the Feywild and/or Lolth will take place. By putting that goal into his PC description, the player has made the meaningful choice, and is relying on me as GM to use narrative logic rather than ingame causal logic to make it happen.
Illusionsim is when players think they are making choices but in reality the outcome of those choices have been pre-determined by another player.
Right. So if the player of the Drow changes his goal, or chooses to squib at the crunch-point, then that has to be taken account of.
Did you tell the players that you only put mind flayers in the dungeon because one of them suggested it? If you didn't, then that's the heart and soul of illusionism.
I don't think this is quite right. After all, by putting in mind flayers rather than some other random thing what choice of the players was vitiated? Fifth Element hasn't told us enough about his game for that question to be answered.
In a Lewis Pulsifer-style hardcore dungeon crawl, where decisions about scouting, resource management etc are crucial, then changing room descriptions from whatevers to mind flayers vitiates player choices and renders the game illusionistic. But I'm pretty sure from his posting history that Fifth Element is not running that sort of game.
That's not to say that the decision was
not illusionistic (ie vitiating choice by creating a mere illusion of choice). We simply don't know enough about the details and context of Fifth Element's play to characterise it one way or the other.
certain kinds of scenarios are hard to run without some degree of illusionism, and a small amount of illusionism can provide alot of structure to a sandbox without significantly harming player agency (provided its being provided in fistfulls elsewhere).
If the DM reveals how the trick works, it not only loses its magic but in some cases reveals that the DM has broken an implicit social contract. The gamist at the table is playing to win. If its revealed that the DM gave him the win (or made the win harder than it should have been), that's a violation of social contract.
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If you would have no problem revealing to the player the trick and the player would not be disappointed to learn the trick, then its probably not illusionism.
These look to me like descriptions of the use of illusionism to turn a game that might otherwise be either purist-for-system (pure simulationist sandbox) or straightforward gamist (pure Pulsiferian megadungeon) into something with at least a hint of, if not a heavy does of, high concept flavour. I think that you (ie Celebrim) are right to think this is a pretty mainstream way of playing RPGs. For what it's worth, on this point you're also in agreement with Ron Edwards.
The problem with illusionism is that its always a form of deception. It doesn't work in the intended way if the players see through the deception.
Where is the deception in Fifth Element's example? Without more information about the context and details of play, I'm not seeing it. Equally, roads-to-Rome needn't involve deception. When my player of the Drow PC eventually ends up confronting Lolth on the Feywild (or however it plays out) there won't be any deception involved - he'll know that it's happening because he built it into the game from the moment his PC hit the table!
Running an adventure, the players get stuck at a point. They have analysis paralysis, or just fixate on one thing, or whatever, but, in any case wind up spending far too much time navel gazing and the game is dragging.
We've likely all run into this from time to time.
The Dm looks down, and immedietely blows something up. Not literally of course - it could be a "random" encounter, it could be an NPC popping up, it could actually be a large explosion nearby - just to get the action rolling again.
This, to me, would be hard illusionism.
That's definitely scene-framing, but why is it illusionism? Where is the deceit? The vitiating of choices?
When is the adventure set, such that any future change may be called illusionism?
I think this depends on the sort of game you're running. In a Lewis Puslifer-style game, the adventure was set as soon as the dungeon level was designed and the PCs entered it, and chose whether or not to scout ahead with Detect Evil, Wizard Eye etc. After that point, any changes are illusionistic unless some ingame rationale is applied (eg the trolls got bored and swapped houses with the ogres - in this case, the PCs should be able to pick up rumours of the ogre/troll houseswap at the local monster real-estate rumour mill).
This seems to move the definition of illusionism beyond "DM actions which invalidate or remove meaningful player choice" and closer to "anything that fulfills a player's desires". Lucking into the vorpal sword Tom always wanted doesn't appear, to me, at least, to deny Tom a meaningful choice, ergo, I wouldn't call it illusionism.
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I mean, where else should he be? He's a fictional character, after all, in a fictional world. He should be where I need him. Which is in front of the PC's, offering them a choice, a deal that sounds too good to be true. Because that's where the interesting and meaningful choice lies. It would certainly be bad form if, after introducing him, I conspired to force the players to work for Patron X. Luckily, I wouldn't do that.
Agreed. It's not illusionism to prefer narrative logic over ingame causal logic.
Most players are happy with, "Alright! The DM gave me the sword I always wanted."
However, some players will focus on, "Alright. The DM gave me the sword I always wanted."
And without more, this has nothing to do with illusionism. It's about gamism (of a sort) vs either high concept or narrativism (which of the latter two would depend on the relative power of game texts, GM, player etc in leading to the PC finding the sword).
I just recently place a magic item in my 4e game after a player sent me an email stating that the item is key to his build. I followed the encounter and reward guidelines in doing so (ie it is part of the treasure parcels appropriate to a 7th level party). That's not illusionism. There's no deceit, nor vitiation of player choice. Sure, it's not simulationist play, nor a certain sort of gamist play (mind you, the PCs still had to kill the hobgoblin to loot his boots!). But that's all orthogonal to the illusionism point.
But what is the significant difference? Scale of course, but, besides that. In both cases, you have changed the game purely out of a sense of aesthetics. You have taken upon yourself to alter the parameters under which the players operate and have not informed them of this fact.
That's called playing the game in a non-simulationist, non-gamist way. But not all metagame motivations (in this case, narrative logic over ingame physical logic) are illusionist. The GM using his/her power to frame a scene is not illusionism, assuming that the players have willingly ceded that power and the scene-framing doesn't vitiate prior choices (and in Mallus's example it doesn't).
If you go down Celebrim's path, you won't be able to describe the difference between playing the worst 2nd ed AD&D railroad, and playing No Myth style (which Mallus has given examples of - the world is only designed by the GM as the PCs move through it, and is built up on the basis of narrative logic) or playing My Life With Master (which has a guaranteed end game built into the rules) - they're just different degrees of illusion. And that way madness lies!
