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?

Pale Fire wrote: So how do I make it a GOOD illusionist game?

Le Joueur wrote:

Pale Fire wrote: 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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.

Valamir wrote: 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".

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?

Bankuei wrote: 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

Pale Fire wrote: 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.

Pale Fire wrote:
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.

AndyGuest wrote: 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).

AndyGuest wrote:
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

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

simon_hibbs wrote: 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?