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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5186671" data-attributes="member: 42582">@CelebrimI don't think there's any need for a line-by-line response to your post because I think I agree with most of what you have to say. My "you all start in a tavern" was intended as a generic placeholder for a fairly typical fantasy RPG - it's my general experience that the GM rather than the players has a bigger say in the starting situation (ie most mainstream fantasy RPGs don't use a Sorcerer-like "kicker" mechanic), but I agree that this is obviously up for negotiation with the players.I agree with your reading of 2nd ed play as presenting someone else's game experience as material for play - and I think that is pretty consistent with the Forge reading. I still think that a lot of people like it, though. For example, Planescape seems to receive a lot of love around here, although for my money it's a classic example of presenting the author's epic story as material for someone else's play. (I started the Glorantha-fication thread because I think the 4e authors have worked this out and started to present D&D mythology in a way that makes it more useful for play.)I'm still not entirely sold on the utility of the notion of "soft illusionism" - I think other notions like "situational authority", "scene framing" etc can be more profitably used to analyse what's going on here. But I'm not wanting to be excessively precious about terminology.I don't fully agree with your comments about railroad burnout - I think I'm closer to the Forge line than you are, in seeing it as a product of the inability of the 2nd ed AD&D rules, as written and presented in the rulebooks, to deliver an epic story, and the resultant encouragement to GMs to use a lot of force, both overt (railroading) and covert (illusionism). This encouragement is found both in rulebooks (dont' let the rules spoil the game, WW's golden rule) and also arises out of play - the GM is sitting at the table with a TPK about to derail the game and decides to ignore or reroll a dice roll in order to keep the story that everyone is enjoying on track.I also think there are peculiar elements of AD&D (both editions), many of which also made the transition to 3E, that encourage the GM to exercise force - alignment is the main one, but paladin's codes of honour, racial preference charts, the general lack of a discussion in the rules about how to build a coherent party (not mechanically coherent, but motivationally coherent). Also notions like the use of ingame techniques (rust monsters, ear seekers etc) to resolve issues that are fundamentally social contract problems (Monty Haul, excessive and annoying caution by players, etc). (To an extent, these couple of paragraphs are consistent, I think, with Ron Edwards notorious brain damage comments, although I'm focussing more on AD&D, especially 2nd ed, than on WoD/Storyteller.)In my view, all of the above lead to the loss of trust - both with individual GMs, and with the game system as a whole - that leads to the hostility to any sort of GM activity or storybuilding that you have described in your post. Obviously, in the absence of anything like a scientific survey, the view that I have described here is influenced by my own experiences as a player and GM, as well as my best attempt to make sense of experiences that others have reported. It's natural that others with different experiences might see the causal mechanisms as being different - and, in particular, might lay less blame at the foot of particular AD&D mechanics. But if I've understood you rightly (and I'm trying here to take account not only of your post, but eg of your comments in another recent thread on the lack of memorable 2nd ed modules) we agree about the problems with trust of GMs, even if we don't agree entirely on its cause.A final paragraph in our duelling walls of text! - it's polite, generous even, of you to suggest that my game is coherent, for which I thank you - I try to make it so, although I suspect in Forge terms there is an element of incoherence with respect to creative agenda, which is compensated for by a lot of mutual enjoyment of particular techniques (especially 4e combat and the colour and theme that accompany it - my group has definitely not encountered any grind issues) and socialisation at the game table. I think there is a tendency at the Forge to disregard the degree to which a small amount of incoherence, and hence technical dysfunctionality, need not be any sort of ultimate problem in a social passtime among friends. I differ from you, though, in finding the analysis in terms of ideal types helpful even if they're rarely realised in the actual world (I'm also a fan of Weber's historical sociology).And a post-final paragraph - I don't entirely accept the description of my TPK-avoidance as "fudging". I see it as applying the rules of the game after talking to my players about how they wanted things to go. It's just that (at least as I read them) the rules of the game at that point give a lot of latitude, because they suspend the standard action resolution mechanics. But this is probably another case of "what's in a name" - but if it's fudging, it's not illusionist fudging because there is no illusion.</blockquote>

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