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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6585687" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think  [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] is right when he says you should be taking umbrage - although perhaps you should just be saying that you don't care about the same things that anti-illusionist RPGers care about.Illusionism means that changes in the fiction are determined primarily not by player choices, but by covert GM decisions - either mechanical (@Manbearcat gave an example upthread, of a GM rolling the % dice on the "wilderness shelter" table but then ignoring the result) or via manipulation of backstory.The former is debated a lot on these boards - there's a current fudging thread in one of the other sub-forums.The latter is debated less often, but in many ways is more fundamental (in my view, at least). If the GM is free to introduce any old stuff by reference to secret or covertly-authored backstory - if there is no duty of integrity, owed by the GM towards the outcome of action resolution procedures - then the game is not under the players' control. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is a matter of preference.A simple example would be the PCs killing the bad guy, so a lieutenant takes over and the plot rolls on. Another would be the PCs charm the chamberlain, and so courtly MUs detect their charm and take action against them. This is why systems like Burning Wheel are so insistent that the stakes of action resolution be clarified in advance, and then state that the GM is obliged to honour those stakes. Conversely, when there is no metagaming of that sort and everything is done in ingame terms by reference to a "living, breathing world" that only the GM has perfect knowledge of, the scope for this sort of manipulation of the fiction becomes rife!I agree with this.I don't agree. Over the Edge was innovative in 1992, and 4e was clearly designed and written by people who had encountered Over the Edge (and other, subsequent, indie games - Robin Laws' HeroWars/Quest is another obvious one, I think).</blockquote>

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