I've looked through the forum and found few discussions about this kind of play. The topics found were either old, or opinions expressed were of a recognizable kind. It looks like followers of this approach are not many here. I wonder if I'm wrong, anyway I have a bunch of things to discuss, those hardly appropriate to other kinds of games, like:

- hard in-game tasks and staying in character - dividing the brain and who wins

- with resolution objective enough, how can players think about the story at all?

- prediction is appropriate, not control or force

- Is playing characters of different psychological type possible?

...

Ivan, you might want to read this article, by M. J. Young. He goes into illusionism and participationism, and I think it might address the broader issue of preferring illusionist play, though not your specific points. I just thought it might be good background material.

I've read it, Andrew, thanks for the link. The four things described there are really too Platonic :)

If you want to start a discussion, go ahead. Take one of the talking points you've outlined, explain your viewpoint, and ask some questions.

Be prepared to field criticism, however. I suspect you've seen few threads on illusionism here because many folks feel like it's inherently problematic, if not outright dysfunctional.

Time for a bit of history, the term Illusionism was coined in response to this thread here: http://www.gamingoutpost.com/discussions/index.php?showtopic=28594

(They've changed the format over there again at GO, so I had to search it up again, and it's good to post the original link where people can get to it)

Paul Elliot noted that he used tricks reminiscent of a modern day magician, illusions, to force plot to happen as he'd pre-determined it, but in such a way as that the players felt as though their decisions were causing the events of the game to occur as they were.

I quibble with MJ's article in that I'd say that by his definitions almost all Illusionism is somewhat participationism. That is, I think there's a spectrum of visibility between the two. Effectively players understand that it's likely at least that the GM is forcing plot, they just can't tell where or how particularly. Basically, like someone who goes to see a magic show, nobody is fooled into thinking that there's actual magic going on. We all know it's an illusion. But the fact that we can't tell how it's done makes it feel "magical enough." The idea with functional illusionism is that the players want the GM to enforce an interesting plot, but they want to not know when it was them, and when it was the GM that caused it to happen.

And I'd disagree that completely covert illusionism is dysfunctional automatically, it's just that it likely is, because the break in the social contract is likely to become visible at some point. I don't advocate anyone trying to "get away" with illusionism against their player's will. But I think it illustrates the point about illusionism to point out that, with perfectly indetectable illusions, nobody would be dissapointed.

The main criticism leveled at functional illusionism to the extent that it exists is that it's hard. You have to, like a magician, have an ability to deliver lies deadpan. And not many people can do that well. You have to know all of the various tricks. Worse, you're going to mess up from time to time, and that can lead to all sorts of problems when you do (especially if the illusionism contract is, as I think it almost always is, not overtly created).

This is why many of us see allowing players to actually have control of plot is better. Its likely that illusionism developed as a response to problems of conflicting agendas from earlier play (in both specific cases, and as a gamer phenomenon). That is, the GM noting that the system in question, likely supporting gamism, was not prompting the players to do anything remotely like creating a plot, decides that it has to be his sole duty to do so. But not wanting to appear to be railroading, he inserts the illusion that the players still have some semblance of control.

When, in fact, if you have an agenda shared by all of the players, this is largely unneccessary. That is, if you have a gamism agenda, or a sim agenda not aimed at producing plot, or if you have a narrativism agenda, then you can hand over power to the players, and they'll create something satisfiying. If you want plot, however, and you want sim play from players, then you have to use either illusionism or participationism or somesuch. Pretty much by definition of these things.

Mike

I'll concur with Mike.  Illusionism isn't necessarily broken or dysfunctional, but it is indirect.  I'll try and diagram in ASCII:

Illusionism goes like this:
Player Desires --> GM Understanding --> GM Fiat --> Events in the Game

That is, the Players will want X (more likely they'll want X, Y, Z, and Q).  The GM somehow has to figure out what that X is.  Then the GM needs to figure ways to make X happen by his fiat.  Then he has to do his legerdemain to make his fiats look like they were the results of player actions.  If everything works out, the Events in the Game match Player Desires.  Each one of those arrows in the diagram is problematic to some extent -- the GM is often called upon to use his psychic powers to know what the players want, the GM is rarely given explicit tools on what things he can do to produce given effects, and the GM has to be very good at his legerdemain to make it look like he's not forcing things.  The situation is fraught with potential screwups.

(Not to mention that a lot of Illusionist GMs don't understand that Illusionism doesn't start with "the story I want to tell" like they think it does.  Illusionism will only work (ie, satisfy the players) if "the story I want to tell" also happens to be a story that the players want to hear.)

Non-Illusionist games that empower the players, on the other hand, go like this:
Player Desires --> Events in the Game

The GM step is not necessary (I mean, look at Capes!).  The players can directly steer the game to address what they're interested in.  This is not without its own consequences, of course.  The players have to know what they want, and this requires a lot more effort on the part of the players.  This is not a passive experience by any stretch of the imagination, while playing in an Illusionist game can be profoundly passive.

I happen to think that the 'streamlined' nature of non-Illusionism is one of the reasons the gamebooks turn out so short -- there's fewer rules because there's less happening from a procedural point of view.

Also, I've got to say that the vast bulk of the Illusionism threads are sincerely hampered by posters who haven't ever played outside of that style of play.  If you possibly can, gather round some friends and play Capes Lite or something (it's free) to at least get a taste of what playing outside the box is like.  Maybe you won't like it, maybe you will.  But it will give you a much better perspective on the thing that you've been doing for the past ten or twenty years.

There is a little sense in discussing things I mentioned in the first post, if the approach itself is questionable.

I see it like this:
players play sim, 100%. GM exerts no control on their actions or outcomes, everything GM does is done through NPCs or changes to game world virtually unnoticeable by player characters. GM prepares 'story' elements - preplanned only those that cannot be influenced by the PCs (very few, in fact), other preparations are all used in beginning or are themselves getting ready game world to react to PC actions. If nothing happens or game ends early (like everybody dies or something) or is somewhat unsatisfying - it is discussed and changes to system are made after the session is finished and before another one, no metagame is acceptable during play.

It is not dysfunctional if characters are prepared and generally "fit" prepared story, outcomes are objective enough, and system rewards players for good sim play. These are all parts of social contract and details are discussed before each game. It quite hard to meet all these conditions, but I guess it's worth it.

jmac wrote:
I see it like this:
players play sim, 100%. GM exerts no control on their actions or outcomes, everything GM does is done through NPCs or changes to game world virtually unnoticeable by player characters. GM prepares 'story' elements - preplanned only those that cannot be influenced by the PCs (very few, in fact), other preparations are all used in beginning or are themselves getting ready game world to react to PC actions. If nothing happens or game ends early (like everybody dies or something) or is somewhat unsatisfying - it is discussed and changes to system are made after the session is finished and before another one, no metagame is acceptable during play.

It is not dysfunctional if characters are prepared and generally "fit" prepared story, outcomes are objective enough, and system rewards players for good sim play. These are all parts of social contract and details are discussed before each game. It quite hard to meet all these conditions, but I guess it's worth it.

jmac wrote:
players play sim, 100%. GM exerts no control on their actions or outcomes, everything GM does is done through NPCs or changes to game world virtually unnoticeable by player characters. GM prepares 'story' elements - preplanned only those that cannot be influenced by the PCs (very few, in fact), other preparations are all used in beginning or are themselves getting ready game world to react to PC actions. If nothing happens or game ends early (like everybody dies or something) or is somewhat unsatisfying - it is discussed and changes to system are made after the session is finished and before another one, no metagame is acceptable during play.

Yeah, what these guys are saying jmac. That is, what you describe sounds like "open simulationism" to me, which is identified distinct from illusionism. If the players control events such that, for example, the game might fall apart from disinterest, then it's highly unlikely that illusionism is going on.

Here's a practical illusionism example. The GM needs the PCs to find a bit of information so that they know how to get to the dungeon. So they've been lead to the library, and make some skill rolls to find the information. The GM looks at the rolls sees what the highest roll is, and retroactively sets the difficulty of the roll to make it so just that one PC got the information in question. He doesn't let on that he's doing this, he just does it in his head (he might just look for the highest total roll, for instance). So he announces that the PC in question found the information in question. This illusion makes it seem that character ability matters to where the plot goes next, when, in fact, it's irrellevant.

Another example, the PCs come to a fork in the road, and to give the players a sense of control in decision making, he allows them to chose which way to go. But whichever way they choose to go, the GM describes it as leading to the next scene he needs the players to go to in order for his interesting pre-designed story to come off right.

In another circumstance, the players are in a fight that they must lose, so that the very dramatic jail scene that comes next in the GM's plot will happen. The players come up with a clever way to avoid the fight, however, so the GM has them fall into a pit trap instead so that they still get captured.

See what we're getting at? Illusionism is the GM using his authority to manipulate things so that his vision of what's interesting in terms of plot happens. But it's done in such a way that the players may feel that they're actually causing the plot to come out the way that it's coming out. Now, whether or not the plot is written down by the GM, or he happens to be making it up as he goes along but is making dramatic decisions as to where it should go is irrelevant, actually. The only question is whether or not the GM is controlling the plot.

If, in fact, the player decisions can change the course of events, then it's either open simulationism, or narrativism, or many kinds of gamism. But not illusionism driven sim.

Now, also pretty obviously, a GM can switch back and forth between these methods. That is, he might only use illusionism on certain occasions, and perhaps, play open the rest of the time. In fact, this is generally automatically true on the micro scale. That is, GMs don't usually use illusionism to control the micro-details of play. It is possible using some of these techniques to, for instance, even get players to say near precisely the dialog you want them to say. But that's not usually the level at which things are controlled. Most often its only practicable and usefull to control events at the "plot" level. That is "what are we going to do next" sort of stuff.

Now, when this is seen as railroading, and when it's seen as functional illusionism can vary between people. For instance, there's a very bad illusion that GMs use all the time called Hobson's Choice. This is where the GM gives a plot lead, and the other choice seems to be "Or we don't play." No player "falls" for this illusion, it's always accepted by convention, and often it's allowed only once per session right at the beginning. As my player Dave always used to say at this point, "Aha, tonights adventure." In theory the player can say, "Nope, my character's not interested" and walk away. But in practice since there's nothing else interesting to do, this is not done. Or, if it is, you have dysfunctional incoherence. That is, the player is basically saying that this is, for him, railroading, and the GM is taking away control of his character at a level that the player is not comfortable with, despite the supposed illusion.

Illusionism isn't automatically dysfunctional, at least not in theory. It usually ends up being dysfunctional because it becomes the GM's style of play to avoid certain problems. That is, the players have not actually joined into making a contract with the GM to play this way. The only way that Illusionism is functional is if the players have actually agreed. Often after playing this way a long time, without knowing the details on the level we're discussing them here, players come to understand the incohrence, and acceed to the "neccessities" of this style of play. Like my friend Dave who would allow this one very unsubtle illusion once per game understanding that it was a neccesity of the play style.

Again, however, other methods pioneered by people like Gareth Michael Skarka with his Intuitive Continuity idea have since lead to other methods of play that don't have the potential troubles that illusionism has. Basically these are either GMs "Following" the player leads and making their input into interesting stuff after the fact, or players and GMs collaborating together to create plot.

Now, the theoretical problem with the latter, though it sounds good, is that some players apparently don't want to be saddled with helping to create the plot, resorting to "I just want to play my character" as their role in the game. So, for these players, perhaps illusionism (or IntCon) is the only way to go. But the question is how much have players been trained to expect this level of interaction. Because it does seem that if you merely expect a more equal participation that most players are quite up to the task (and, indeed, this can mostly be done by simply controling the characters reactions).

So it's not a done deal that illusionism is a bad thing. For those who seem to like it, they point out that the potential problems are worth the benefits. And that other styles have their own problems. So I at least am not denying this - just pointing out what I see as the problems and why the benefits can be had with other styles of play.

Mike

Mike wrote:
Now, also pretty obviously, a GM can switch back and forth between these methods. That is, he might only use illusionism on certain occasions, and perhaps, play open the rest of the time... Illusionism isn't automatically dysfunctional, at least not in theory.

Joshua wrote:
Illusionism goes like this:
Player Desires --> GM Understanding --> GM Fiat --> Events in the Game

Non-Illusionist games that empower the players, on the other hand, go like this:
Player Desires --> Events in the Game

timfire wrote:
[T]he play-style, Illusionism, is defined by the GM hiding the fact he's using illusionist techniques to maintain control over the game. Illusionism is usually considered to be inherently dysfunctional.

Oh my goodness, I wonder if I would got rid of those terms if I were you :)

So lie is really a distinction between using ill.techniques and ill.style? hmm...
(But what is lie?)

WhiteRat wrote:
Does the system ask the GM to interpret dice rolls? Does the system ask him to set difficulty levels, or apply circumstance modifiers? Does the system ask the GM to call for dice rolls when he thinks it's appropriate? All of these are a means for the GM to exert control on the PCs' actions and outcomes.

I just want to make sure -- you're not saying "Illusionism" when you really mean to talk about "Immersion," are you?

Mike wrote:
Another example, the PCs come to a fork in the road, and to give the players a sense of control in decision making, he allows them to chose which way to go. But whichever way they choose to go, the GM describes it as leading to the next scene he needs the players to go to in order for his interesting pre-designed story to come off right.

Now, the theoretical problem with the latter, though it sounds good, is that some players apparently don't want to be saddled with helping to create the plot, resorting to "I just want to play my character" as their role in the game.

Tim, I think that's generally accurate, but I'd like to clarify that:
A) While illusionist techniques can theoretically be used in any CA, that's not to say that they're used in all play. I don't think you mean to imply that, but just to be clear, a lot of play occurs sans any illusion at all. And

B) The question of whether or not play is illusionism as a subset of simulationism is a matter of identifying an overall creative agenda. Which means that the use of techniques is part of that identification, but not the whole of it, of course.

Hal, to extend your metaphor, the theoretical functional illusionism is where your wife says, "Go ahead and sleep with other women, just don't let me find out about it." Does that make it more clear? All this talk about "lies" is confusing the issue because the term is being bandied about without context. Again, again, again, it's about having a social contract that allows for illusionism. I'd agree that in many cases you don't have a contract at all, in which case, yes, if/when you get caught cheating, you're going to have a problem. Note that all my theorizing about such dishonest play being functional is not condoning it. I'm merely saying that, for understanding's sake, that you should note that illusionism is functional even when not a valid part of the social contract up until the point where it's discovered. Which I think is almost certain to happen. So no, don't ever do this, despite the possible temptation.

The second condition is where the social contract becomes forged sorta "accidentally" or at least tacitly. That is, the GM starts using illusionist techniques a little here, a little there, and the players are aware that it's going on, if not precisely where it's going on. And over time they don't complain about this, and eventually come to accept it as part of the contract. This would be like a wife noticing her husband's dalliances growing in intensity, but simply deciding not to complain about it. This situation is of dubious merit, but not automatically dysfunctional at any particular point.

What I'd advocate, if one really wants to have illusionism, is that it be negotiated up front. "I'm going to use these tricks, and when those occasions occur that you guys see what's really going on, you promise to ignore it."

All RPG play is, in some ways, a lie. So I don't have a problem if everyone agrees to be lying to each other this way. I think it can be quite functional (if, as I've said repeatedly, also problematic) in theory. That is, it's just another creative agenda, all of which are functional to the extent that people are making an informed choice as to what they're agreeing to do together.

Uh, consenting adults and all. :-)

Ivan,

You seem like you're making a lot of judgment calls in your post. Which sounds like you're talking about your prefered way to play. That's fine, but it doesn't mean that other people can't have fun playing other ways. I'd drop talking about "Immersion" here, since that's a largely undefined term that tends to take on whatever meaning is assigned to it by the person using it. If you have to use it, please define it as you use it. In any case, I think that almost any meaning for the term doesn't have anything to do with anything we're discussing here.

The lie in the case of the "Magician's Force" example of the fork in the road is not that the destination lies down one road or another. As you say, that's a fiction in any case. The lie here is that you're implying that the player's decision has an impact. You're saying, "If you go one way, you'll get to one destination, if you go the other way, you'll get to a different destination." When in fact, no matter which way they go, they'll get to the same destination.

wait, I thought, simulationism (ill. is kind of it, right?) is not about plot, its about simulation and Exploration?

I should thank you, Mike, your post is irrefragable.

I have no intent to discuss Immersion, not least of all reasons being the uncertainty in my own understanding of it :)

I was writing down stuff I understood :) ,  trying to make something consistent of my own experience, and a question came up: the point in social contract that GM should not use those tricks is well-founded necessity or a simulationist tradition?

I don't think there is too strict dependence of (impression) of causality on the absence of illusionist techniques. It's really dependent on player expectations - what do they think causality (or what do they want to get) is like.

I can't make myself believe in possibility of objective cause-and-effect and character (player) decisions impact in imagined world.
Isn't it just another case of illusion?

jmac wrote:
I should thank you, Mike, your post is irrefragable.

the point in social contract that GM should not use those tricks is well-founded necessity or a simulationist tradition?

One sentense of my responce fell in another thread. I don't want to litter that one anymore, so I apologize here :)

Really, some feeling is there, Mike.
maybe we even mean something similiar :)

I don't even know how to step up on describing or considering it...

Anyway, discussion seem to show what do we mean about Illusionism, lie and ignoring subjective etc. So, I will consider those things I mentioned in the first post again and create topics to discuss them, if..

I'm just popping in here to say that I do not think all illusionism is simulationist, nor do I think the judicious use of illusionist techniques is inimical to gamism or narrativism.

On the first point, in that crazy long-running illusionist game in which I played, there were many highly gamist sessions. The illusion was always maintained that our victories were due to our own strategic decisions and use of skills, but ultimately the truth of the matter was that we won because the referee had decided we were not going to lose.

A few of the hints I spotted along the way clued me to this.

• On more than one occasion when we were in combat, the referee was carefully tracking our hit points. He was making no effort to track the amount of damage we had inflicted against the opponents. Then, I was reaching the point at which I seriously doubted whether we would survive this fight, a large number of our opponents suddenly had taken enough damage to die and the rest fled. The players cheered the victory, as if it were something they had accomplished, but the cracks were beginning to show to me.• On one specific occasion one of the persons aligned against us in the fight was described as a half-orc. When the member of our party fighting him dealt him a particularly devastating blow after a series of solid hits, the referee explained that the creature was still alive because we had misidentified him; he was a much tougher half-ogre.• Later, my character went on a venture that I knew was way over his head, because the referee had created a situation he could not honorably refuse. I comforted my own fears with the knowledge that he had a single-use magic device which could at need bring powerful aid to our side, so if we got into serious trouble I would use that. Just as soon as we were too far along to turn back, we got into a battle that pretty much exhausted our resources, and then just as we'd won their reinforcements--a force several times what we had just defeated--appeared. I played my hole card, calling my own reinforcements, and the enemy immediately retreated. As I stood there watching the retreat, I realized that the entire battle had been staged to deprive me of my security blanket, so I would be afraid.

It was all illusionism, but it was entirely gamist. We were given the feeling that we were winning, but it was entirely playing out the way the referee intended.

Illusionism is independent of agenda, and it is equally "dysfunctional" regardless of the agendum.  I will agree that it is quite functional as long as you can get away with it, but once the cracks start to show you're on a very slippery slope and may wind up with some very bitter players, if they don't shift to participationism.

I've got a question rising out of some of Mike's other comments, but I'm going to raise it in a new thread, Clarifying Participationism.

--M. J. Young

I neglected the second point I wanted to make; mea culpa, I had diverted my attention to writing the other thread so I could post the link to it, and so forgot that I had another point here.

Although illusionist techniques are not used in every game, they can be used to support gamist and I daresay narrativist play. I happen to be running a very gamist scenario right now in which a very strong illusionist technique is in play. I've described the scenario here before, so I'll keep it brief.

It's based on the typical terrorists-have-a-bomb-in-the-building scenario; inspirations for it come from True Lies, Die Hard, Under Seige, and probably several others that slip my mind. It also springs from an old Gaming Outpost thread in which someone complained that their player characters had gone right to the bomb, attempted to defuse it, failed the roll, and blew up the building right at the beginning. This scenario is designed so that that can't happen.

Illusionist techniques take from the players the impact of their choices. Illusionism, in any agendum, involves taking away so much of that that the players cannot truly contribute in accordance with their agendum but feel that they are doing so. Used properly, though, illusionist techniques should take from players the ability to get outcomes that would derail their enjoyment without interfering with what they really want to do.

In this case, my technique involves scene ordering.  I have a fifty-story building and a group of characters who can go anywhere in it that they want. It would take a mammoth effort to detail the entire building, and the result would be either that the number of terrorists was so overwhelming that the players would have little hope of success, or that most of the building was empty and they would spend forever just hunting through it. Thus the building consists of a few generic reusable floorplans, and notes about the entrances. The scenario then describes the specific encounter scenes the players will find, in the order in which they are to occur. They will meet the lone terrorist walking through the halls, the civilian hiding in one of the offices, the group of terrorists relaxing somewhere, the situation where the terrorists have position and cover, and ultimately find the boss and then the bomb. I have some flexibility to move these events around, but mainly my job is to find a place for the next encounter to occur as the player character group walks toward it, or sometimes to bring the next encounter to them if they're holding position.

The illusion, of course, is that they're searching the building for the bomb, and that their choices of direction will make a difference in this. It doesn't matter that those choices are immaterial, because the fun of the game is to face and defeat the terrorists; the bomb is primarily the motivation for having the player do so. In fact, although the bomb is said to be on a timer, the time remaining on the timer is not known until the characters find the bomb--at which point it's always enough time for them to defuse it, if they manage to do so, but not enough to bring in someone from the outside.

It thus creates the tensions of the challenges and leaves the challenges intact, while using a heavy illusionist hand in terms of bringing those challenges into a cohesive framework. Every gamist player who has ever done this scenario loves it. It works, because they feel like they're exploring the building and taking out terrorists, and ultimately the decisions they make in the midst of the challenges are the ones that do count, while the mundane decisions that carry them from one challenge to another don't.

I've somewhere described it as a single-path dungeon crawl in which the order of the encounters is fixed but the spatial relationships are wide open.

So that's the other side of the coin: illusionist techniques can be used to support non-simulationist play quite effectively.

--M. J. Young

This is participationism play if the players abdicate their right to create plot then, or narrativism if they take up the obvious reins of power that this shows them. 

Yeah, I agree with the general point about illusionist technique being useful in all sorts of play at times. Sometimes I just don't want to explain how something got to be using long metagame discussion, so I dissemble in order to get past it.

I do think that Illusionism as it's been defined is itself a subset of simulationism, however. And not automatically dysfunctional. But I'll probably deal with that in the refered to thread.

Mike