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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5181896" data-attributes="member: 4937">I assume its a Forgeism.  I heard it four or five years ago.No, but it looks like that is the way everyone is responding to it.  Personally, if you know me, I'm not even one that accuses railroading of a being bad.  I'm not a 'there is only one way to do it' sort of player or DM.  I admire skillfully done railroads and skillfully done sandboxes.  I admire well done high illusionism and well done high simulation.  I admire well done power gaming, well done hack n' slash, and well done low melodrama.  I like sim play, nar play, and competive gamist play.  If anything, I'm the sort that would suggest that far from there being only one way to do it, the skillful DM and the player ought to be sampling from all of these things.I'm not sure that there is a term for that.You don't give me enough details to comment.  Generally in that situation my advice would be to throw out both hooks and see which one they want to bite.Well, that is definately not illusionism, and is in fact participationism.  The DM sets the goals and the players willingly agree to play whatever the DM provides for them.Not enough information to go on.  The timing of the event is unimportant.  Ok, so long as you are completely serious about 'no matter what they do', that is both hard illusionism and railroad.  This is similar in concept to God ordering Jonah to go to Ninevah (in modern Iraq), Jonah heading in the opposite direction (to Spain), and God insuring that Jonah (by way of storms and giant groupers) ends up in Ninevah anyway.  If you mean however, "The NPC will meet the party if they are at a time and place were the event reasonably could happen given the resources, habits, and knowledge of the NPC", then that is (at most) soft illusionism.  A soft illusionism example would be the PC's happening to be near the scene of a crime in progress that provides the PC's the first clue about a larger conspiracy, or a close associate of the PC's being a victim of a larger conspiracy.   That's a standard trope of the heroic genera and occurs across all fictional mediums.  It's such a basic assumption of fiction (heroes are always at the right place at the right time) that its not usually questioned.  Batman always happens to be near the scene of any random crime.  But of course, in reality, you've probably never been near a mugging in progress, and probably couldn't find one if you tried and Batman would do no better at it.  A simulation example (no illusionism) would be picking 4 or 5 places that the NPC frequents on a regular basis and deciding the rules for how the NPC is found or finds the players ahead of time in a way that you feel best approximates how a real person would behave in the NPC's situation.  Of course, in the simulation route, you are risking that the NPC doesn't actually find the players which means you better have other oppurtunities for fun in the event that doesn't happen.Not enough information to go on.  The timing of the event is unimportant. Illusionism.Probably illusionism.  If you hit upon a new more effective tactic for the monster mid-combat and decide that the monster would fight that way because its got a high intelligence, then that's not illusionism.  That's simply you RPing the NPC effectively.  If you change tactics to achieve some meta-game goal (keeping the players alive, making the fight more exciting), rather than because the NPC is fighting for his life, that is illusionism.Why?You realize I'm an ardent supporter of Rule 0, right?  In other threads, I'm frequently accused of being that abusive DM because I strongly support GM empowering system designs.   I'm not going to argue with the any assertion of the rights of the DM.  So you are in fact not 'countering' me at all, as I fully agree with pretty much any assertion of the right of the DM to control his game.  I'll go even further.  Not only can the DM alter the setting, the DM has a right to alter the rules of the game in mid-play as far as I'm concerned.  The only question is whether doing so represents skillful play by a DM.  My initial focus was simply to define the term - not condemn it.  My interest isn't in 'dumb' questions like 'isn't that badwrongfun', but rather in questions like, 'What are examples of skillful illusionist techniques, and what are examples of ones that should be used more sparingly or perhaps not even at all?' or 'How much illusionism is too much?'</blockquote>

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