In poking around, I came across this thread (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?t=9908) in which part of the converstation is about "old illusionism habits".

Could someone explain this, or provide a few links so I can go hunting it further?

See the Articles section, at the top of the page. You'll find an article called "The Provisional Glossary," which is more than just a list of terms. The first two pages are a short explanation of the ideas that were developed here at the Forge, with a few key terms.

After checking out those two pages, then you can look up "illusionism" in the list that follows, and see what you think.

I also recommend that you post in the Actual Play forum. Start a new thread and describe any kind of role-playing you've ever done, tell us what happened and what it was like.

You can do that now and get a lot out of it - in fact, you can even ask "is this illusionism" or something like that if you want. Or do it after checking out the article.

It's been shown over and over again, that the only way to understand the terms and ideas here is to start by talking about instances of actual play, among real people, and what really happened in their games. So I'll look forward to your next step in the process.

Best, Ron