A Good Illusionist Game

[Christoffer Lernö]

Ok, as most of you know I'm working on Ygg which I guess in the end really is an Illusionist game. No use pretending it's anything else.

So how do I make it a GOOD illusionist game? My original intent was simply making a game system so tweakable and simple that maintaining the illusion should be easy.

What I wanted to do was to identify the breakpoints where the illusion gets thin in the usual batch of (fantasy-)games and strengthen those.

Other genres I never had much problems with. There was always some game where you could maintain the illusion at the important times even though the system wasn't "perfect".

Take CoC. The focus is on exploring setting and as far as that goes the actual game mechanics never interfere. Focus on character dev also works well in games where that part of the game is well developed.

Now look at fantasy... In general we here have conflicting interests. It can be gamist, it can be narrativist, it can be simulationist. Not to mention that you can play it with focus on different things within the subgroup.

So, if I just say fantasy I really haven't dedicated myself to a specific type yet. This is partly responsible for the problems. By not deciding on a mode it has to cover all, and this naturally fails since it's obvious that any mechanic will contain breakpoints*

(*With that I'm thinking about situations where the illusionist GM needs to heavily tweak the system in order to allow a player to play according to his/her preferred mode. Basically there will be a conflict between mechanics and mode at places. Ideally these conflicts should placed "out of sight" of the players, so that the GM rarely needs to break the rules to maintain the mode)

Because these breakpoints depend on the mode. There is no way (except for in "the perfect game" tm) to keep all the the breakpoints for all GNS modes out of sight at the same time.

It seems like the first step ought to decide on 1 or more possible modes to play and then proceed to create a mechanic where the breakpoints of the mechanic are "out of sight" with respect to these modes.

I might be getting a little too abstract here, so let me pick CoC for an example. CoC has exploration of setting as main premise. You could also argue it could be played as trying to make as scary story as possible (that's how I like to play it). Ron, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that would be a Narrativist way to read the game?

Anyway, some of the breakpoints in CoC include skill development and use, combat, injury resolution.

With that I mean that CoC skill development isn't a "perfect" simulation of skill progression.  Nor are the CoC combat mechanics much about realistically dealing with combat. However, these are no worry for the illusionist GM, because they are "out of sight". If CoC would have been about character development, then the skill system might be an annoying factor because the simulation of it wouldn't be close enough.

What I mean is that neither of these weaknesses (which systems invariably has) are seen when you look at the exploration of setting thing. It doesn't INTERFER with the premise, which is the important thing. From the narrativist premise, there is no problem either because combat and skill progression has nothing to do with wether the story is scary or not.

On the other hand look at a game where the premise involves creating heroes who fight heroic battles and plug in the CoC combat system which is a fairly mechanic, "you roll, I roll" thing and the GM is gonna exhaust him/herself trying to make the combat something heroic and exciting looking. Since this might be the main focus of the game (fighting heroic battles), it's gonna be a problem again and again and again for the GM.

So obviously the message is to chose one or more angles the game can be played from and then stick with them.

All that is pretty straightforward, but what about illusionism? Well the basic thing is the GM tweak things to maintain the illusion, right?

So what can one do to help? One thing of course is recruiting the players to in some way help with maintaining the illusion (which would make it a little less of an illusionist RPG, but I think it can be done in small steps).

Another would be making the rules easy enough to ignore or tweak (two basic techniques of illusionism).

Yet another would be to provide an (to the players) invisible framework for the GM to assist in his/her "tweaks" to maintain consistency.

Any suggestions beyond this or corrections?

[Le Joueur]

So how do I make it a GOOD illusionist game?

Judging by the things you've said, I think you should start by defining what an Illusionist game is to you.  One way brought up many times recently would be to write an example of play with the system put out of your mind.  From that you might see what you think a good Illusionist system should tend towards (obviously it would have to be an example of Illusionism in action).

I can think of another philosophical conundrum you should probably answer for yourself; is it Illusionism if the players know you're doing it?  (After all, it'll be right there in the rulebook, won't it?)

If you answer these, I think you're already halfway to solving this problem.  I'm sure we'd be more than happy to help you get a perspective on the other half (right now the question is a little 'big' to be answered for you).

Fang Langford

[Christoffer Lernö]

So how do I make it a GOOD illusionist game?

Judging by the things you've said, I think you should start by defining what an Illusionist game is to you.

Ron's GNS article says this:

The play drifts toward an application of Simulationism in which the GM dominates the characters' significant actions, and the players contribute only to characterization. This is called illusionism, in which the players are unaware of or complicit with the extent to which they are manipulated.

I can think of another philosophical conundrum you should probably answer for yourself; is it Illusionism if the players know you're doing it?

From Ron's definition it seems both would be illusionism?

As for what illusionism is to me, Ron suggest out that I'm using it in my game example in the Ygg 3 thread already where I have my game example.

I guess what I'm really talking about is having a game where it's mainly the responsibility of the GM to create the illusion of a "real" world.

With a quick search I see that there's a huge amount of discussion on what illusionism actually is... Hmm.

[Walt Freitag]

In this post I recently tried to list as many forms and dimensions of illusionist practice as I could think of. That might make a good starting point. As I recall, our efforts to define Illusionism itself pretty much came to naught.

- Walt

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

I'm more optimistic than Walt about the State of Illusionism. It breaks down like this.

1) We have to be talking about role-playing in which at least person is interested in a "story" occurring (using "story" in a fairly tight, thematic sense).

2) However, the responsibility for story happening lies mainly on the GM. This mode of play requires a very traditional GM/player relationship to the role-playing. I want to emphasize that many groups desire this; Jesse has described his situation carefully, in which some players would be very disappointed if there were no story outcome, but refuse categorically to play with metagame-story as a player goal.

I consider such a group to be attempting the Impossible Thing Before Breakfast. I consider Illusionism to be one working solution to the paradox of the Impossible Thing.

3) As originally described by Paul Elliott, the GM shifts, interprets, and maybe even tweaks the events of the previous sessions, and the back-story, so that players' actions during those sessions now appear to have brought the current story into existence.

4) As described by me, the GM front-loads a planned, perhaps flexible story into play and does a lot of subtle corralling either to get the players into the proper arena of conflict and/or to have conflicts turn out in certain ways. For a while, I mistakenly thought I was paraphrasing Paul.

5) At present, I think both #3 and #4 are Illusionism, but that Paul would be justified in claiming the term only for #3. If he did, then I'd have to name #4 something else (and probably invent a third term for the inclusive category). I am waiting for Paul's judgment about that.

Best,
Ron

[Le Joueur]

I think the important point is the definition Pale Fire comes to for himself.  To be really personal, I don't think that a new designer will create anything representative of their own abilities as long as they depend on other people's ideas and definitions.  I think that only when you find that 'true vision' within yourself will a game that's 'all you' be able to emerge.

Certainly the advice of others can help facilitate and polish this, but if the unifying vision isn't there, all that you have is an amalgam of other people's ideas.  It'll lack 'heart' or maybe integrity or...something, I'm not sure what to call it.

I'm glad that Pale Fire has found support here and terminology, but as mentioned, there isn't much consensus on what Illusionism means.  This, more than anything, says that he'll have to 'find his own compass' within these definitions and stick to it.

Fang Langford

[Bankuei]

On my deep quest into researching scene framing, I have two questions that may spark thoughts on this.

1) If the players can be complicit in Illusionism, why not have the GM just outright say a goal for a given scene?  For example,"As you enter the masquerade ball, you realize not only is everyone masked, but also fully costumed...finding the Baron will be tough.  You will be talking to the Baron at the end of this...."

2) Can Illusionism be played out as a flashback?  Would this be a good method to do it in?  I'm thinking of Inspectres confessionals as the prime example, where someone is narrating far after the event, about how things went.

Chris

[Christoffer Lernö]

Maybe I simply posed this question too early. I can't really answer the questions here.

Illusionist problems are that the GM is running everything. Kind of putting on a show for the players. Sometimes the players cooperate an the GM can use stuff the players come up with to fuel his/her story, sometimes not.

Director/Author director stance is one way out of this, but it really transforms the game from an illusionist one into something else, right?

No matter how much one tries, an illusionist game seems to inevitably require a lot of GM effort. But how does one support the GM? Obviously the system itself should facilitate illusionism from the start.

And what do I mean by that? Well as a starter, not making it hard to use illusionist techniques.

Now I myself as well as some other illusionist GMs I know first of all often improvise their adventures. There's a general idea sure, but nothing more than that. This way you can be more flexible and use more player input.
This is what Walt refers to as breaking situational and setting objectivity. I think it's an extremely useful technique.

"Subverting player-character free will"... this might be especially useful for pre-written adventures where GMs have less possibility to use the former.

"Breaking causal objectivity" is useful, but one GM I had consistently ran his campaigns without falling back on this technique much. Although I personally use it, I think it's very easy to abuse and thus risk breaking the illusion.

Anyway, all these are more or less general strategies. When it comes to the details there are such things as "how do I fudge a roll without breaking the illusion?" "How do I allow the players to do this thing which is not covered in the rules?"
The more flexible the rules are in this regard the better. Rules with a lot of holes which can only be resolved with soliloquy often generates more reasonable and fun results than rules which "cover everything".

These game mechanical details are therefore also a concern. For example, if I add a detailed skill resolution system, I should be aware that I'm making it harder to fudge rolls and to break out of the skill resolution in cases where the mechanics yield ludicrous results.

I also believe you can take a little heat off the GM by actually allowing for tweaking moves and freeform within the system mechanics, as in my attempts with Ygg's combat mechanics.

So on a more micro-management level we at least have fudging rolls, tweaking mechanics on the fly and resolution by soliloquy (what more can you think of?)

I think those micro-management concerns are something which easily can be addressed by the game designer regardless of the GNS typing of the game.

Well what do you think?

[Valamir]

I'm not sure I can address your real issues because I've never really had much success with Illusionism.  Perhaps my players were too eager to point to the man behind the curtain, or perhaps I just wasn't very good at it, but there you are.

What I will address is the concept of Fudging Die rolls.  You need to make 1 very very IMO HUGE decision first:  "what do die rolls represent in your game".

Why?  Because if the GM can simply fudge a roll to get an outcome he prefers...than why bother rolling at all...you might as well go pure drama and have the GM select the outcome he prefers all the time.  

If die rolls are to actually represent some arbitrary determinate of possible out comes than you should let the dice fall where they may.  If the system consistantly generates results inconsistant with what you want...then change the system.

If on the other hand die rolls are a "tool for the illusion"...let the players THINK the dice rolls are arbitrary, but in reality they're not...then you open up a whole new way of thinking about the dice themselves.


I would like to ask a question, however, and this isn't by any means a challenge to your decision.  But I'm curious as to how you arrived at the decision to make this an "illusionist" game, and why do you feel that is the best way to present Ygg?  If we know that, we may be better able to make suggestions consistant with your intentions.

[Christoffer Lernö]

What I will address is the concept of Fudging Die rolls.  You need to make 1 very very IMO HUGE decision first:  "what do die rolls represent in your game".

Oh, that's simple. The die rolls are for when the GM doesn't want to decide on the outcome. And playing an illusionist game, that's useful. If you don't want the players to get over that chasm, then just make it wider or whatever. If, on the other hand, you think either way would be cool, give them a chance to roll. It's not so much a way to test the characters abilities as a chance for the GM to have some random input on his story.

They fall down or something other happens? Cool, the GM can use that to spin a story (which of course works best with improvised games which is mainly my way of GM-ing not surprisingly). They make it, well then they can feel proud about that for a while and you use that feeling ("they have overcome an obstacle to get closer to the goal"-feeling) to spin the story in another direction.

Now about the fudging part. As I already stated, you don't need it. BUT, it can be useful for one thing, namely letting the characters for the good of the story.

I like to put the pressure on my players and give them the feeling they only survived because they were lucky, especially in encounters. This is mainly needed in games where lethality usually doesn't run high unless enemies are overly powerful.

So sometimes I throw in an overy powerful enemy, knowing that the characters would have little chance. Then I run him efficiently without fudging the rolls until I have the characters down on their knees almost begging for mercy. That's when I start fudging the rolls to reduce the efficiency of their enemy (not much, just enough to give them a solid chance but not enough to make them notice). The result: they feel they beat the enemy against impossible odds. The players really get that adrenaline flowing you get from knowing that "yes, there is a big chance your character will bite the dust now".

So basically I fudge the dice to create a nice story :) I wanted the characters to beat the enemy against impossible odds. I got my ending and the players never knew what happened. So, it's useful in that regard. Of course you can do the same thing without fudging and hoping the characters are lucky. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. If you don't have a campaign relying on the players working with the same character from start to finish, it can work, but if you actually put the characters in your story and can't let them die, this is a useful technique.

But I'm curious as to how you arrived at the decision to make this an "illusionist" game, and why do you feel that is the best way to present Ygg?

Well, my intention from the start was to do a Fantasy RPG _I_ would want to play. Now after hanging around here, the proper statement would have been "an illusionist Fantasy RPG". I want to make an RPG in the standard vein because I like that style of play. I like other ways of playing as well, but it's like if I say "I want to eat dinner", then while candy is nice, and so is eating a little fruit or snacks, they're not dinner (contrary to what some think mind you). So I want to make this type of Fantasy RPG because, well I think it hasn't been done well yet.
There are other types of Fantasy RPGs which DO work well, but they're not of the same type. They don't have the same feeling. It's not that one is better than the other.

[AndyGuest]

1) If the players can be complicit in Illusionism, why not have the GM just outright say a goal for a given scene?  For example,"As you enter the masquerade ball, you realize not only is everyone masked, but also fully costumed...finding the Baron will be tough.  You will be talking to the Baron at the end of this...."
Chris

I'd guess that players complicity in Illusionism occurs by them not looking for holes in the illusion. The above example would strike many as railroading, what if the players come up with a clever way to detect the Baron easily and early on. They may decide to flirt with others rather than search out the baron.

Surely Illusionism comes in as a reaction to player/character actions rather than as a limitation on those actions ?

[AndyGuest]

No matter how much one tries, an illusionist game seems to inevitably require a lot of GM effort. But how does one support the GM? Obviously the system itself should facilitate illusionism from the start.

And what do I mean by that? Well as a starter, not making it hard to use illusionist techniques.

Which, from my experience anyway, would mean keeping the resolution method simple, and allow modifiers to be added more or less at a whim (which is to say, there should be no list of modifiers that you are limited to, just guidelines as to what is appropriate).

Anyway, all these are more or less general strategies. When it comes to the details there are such things as "how do I fudge a roll without breaking the illusion?" "How do I allow the players to do this thing which is not covered in the rules?"
The more flexible the rules are in this regard the better. Rules with a lot of holes which can only be resolved with soliloquy often generates more reasonable and fun results than rules which "cover everything".

These game mechanical details are therefore also a concern. For example, if I add a detailed skill resolution system, I should be aware that I'm making it harder to fudge rolls and to break out of the skill resolution in cases where the mechanics yield ludicrous results.

Detailed skill systems are definately not the way to go. It is very hard to fudge results in Rolemaster for example.

I'd think that stat+skill+dice roll or stat + skill dice pool is the most flexible for illusionism. The player will always be able to try something since they always have, at least, the stat part of the equation. Open modifiers allow the GM to ensure the character succeeds, fails or has a poor or good chance, dependant on circumstances.

Other than a simple system with open modifiers, it is hard to see what else a system needs to support illusionism. Illusionism is, mostly (and in my experience, etc, yadda yadda yadda ;-)), about shifting things around behind the scenes so that the game works out satisfyingly for all involved. (Note this doesn't necessarily mean a good story, it could be a good challenge or a good simulation, it depends on what everyone is after).

There are techniques which a GM can be given/taught which can help them with illusionism.

Planning should stick to general stuff as much as possible. The devil is in, as they say, the details. Detailing a location or character makes it harder to make changes later on to maintain the illusion.

Likewise, NPCs don't need to be given the equivalent of stat blocks, a few notes on their abilities, best given in reference to the characters, allows their abilities to be set on the fly during interactions with the characters. (Almost the same as just determining the outcome without reference to dice/rules, but maintaining the illusion is the important thing here).

[Christoffer Lernö]

Which, from my experience anyway, would mean keeping the resolution method simple, and allow modifiers to be added more or less at a whim (which is to say, there should be no list of modifiers that you are limited to, just guidelines as to what is appropriate).

That would be in line with my thinking too. Of course, as people pointed out here on the forge, the less you need to improvise rules the better and there is a possibility to remove a lot of the need for tweaking rules by simply allowing losening up some of the resolution mechanics, like I've already done for the combat system.

I don't really have that much to comment on in regards to the rest as your observations agree with mine. However I think there might be others on the Forge who disagree with parts of this stuff. Or?

[simon_hibbs]

I'd think that stat+skill+dice roll or stat + skill dice pool is the most flexible for illusionism. The player will always be able to try something since they always have, at least, the stat part of the equation. Open modifiers allow the GM to ensure the character succeeds, fails or has a poor or good chance, dependant on circumstances.quote]

I'd agree so far, but I also think that an 'opposed rolls' mechanisms is also handy. Hero Wars has the best of both worlds. An opposed rolls mechanism where the GM often rolls against the player and they compare their level of success, and mechanisms for a player to use one ability to augment another.

Hero Wars also has Hero Points though, which are a powrfull weapon in the hands of the player. Would you say that hero points (or the even more potent Force Points in WEG Star Wars, for that matter, are anti-illusionist?


Simon Hibbs

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Simon,

I tend to think that Hero Points and, really, any fairly significant metagame mechanic (certificates in Prince Valiant, Karma in The Whispering Vault, etc) are jarring to Illusionist play. They require everyone to accept, in front of God and everybody, so to speak, real-person intrusion into the events of the game-world, with no necessary in-game-world event or phenomenon that corresponds to it.

Perhaps Hero Wars without the Hero Points? Interesting ...

I think that Hero Wars without the Hero Points would be a very different game, but also that, given the enormous and customizable range of abilities and the awesome power of Augmentation, that it would indeed be a good candidate for Illusionist play. (That's not a mode I enjoy very much, by the way, so I have to squint a bit and acknowledge that I'm speculating.)

Best,
Ron