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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 5181473" data-attributes="member: 22779">How so?  How is it different, other than in degree.  The player has made a choice - I want X for my character.  You deliberately provide X.  That has changed the game so that the player's choice didn't actually matter.  He could have chosen Y and he'd find Y or Z or XKCD or whatever.  No matter what he chooses, he will receive it.  Not easily hopefully, and not immediately, but, he's still going to get it.But that's the point here.  The player didn't "luck" into anything.  The DM put it there specifically to be found by THIS party.  If no one in the party used a sword, it's very unlikely that that Vorpal Sword would be in the treasure but rather some other item that the player really wants.---------Woops, just finished reading the thread so a lot of the above is already covered I think.  But, really, I think Celebrim's point works.  Take another example, which came up some time ago on the boards, but I'm misremembering the exact details:The party investigates a semi-ruined tower on a hill.  There is a main gate into the tower and a small tunnel in the hill.  Upon investigating the small tunnel, the party discovers that it dead ends.  As the adventure is originally written, this is true.  The tunnel really is just a dead end.The ... hrm, what's the opposite of illusionism? ... Un-illusionism DM lets the players futz about with the tunnel, spending as much time as they want, perhaps adding a random encounter, before giving up.An illusionism Dm takes the cues from the players that they would really like to find a secret door here that leads into the tower and takes out his Mark II Editing Pencil and quickly sketches in a small passage leading from the tunnel to another secret door in the tower.  Poof, the player's now really have no real choice.  The world has been changed to fit within a particular aesthetic.  Or, to give another example, in a Dork Tower comic in Dragon in years back, the party is faced with two doors.  Behind one is the dreaded Deadly Marmot Trap.  The DM goes nuts waiting for the players to choose the door.  When they choose the "wrong" door, he switches the rooms so that they encounter the Deadly Marmot Trap.  - Very hard illusionism.  And most likely objectionable if the players ever found out.</blockquote>

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