Thanks, Opa.

About illusionism, it's pretty old jargon, actually. The Forge attempted a slight redefinition but even there once you did all the unpacking, it came out to pretty much the same thing.

Fundamentally: negating the significance of player actions or mechanical results, while hiding it.

Quote from: Opaopajr;736392That would be Bill's "Improv versus Prep" tag. You're just too fast with the topic-fu for your own good. Caught in the crossfire!


edit: Adric, to spare us all a conflagration, I'll note that illusionism has become a well established jargon, on this site at least, and similar elsewhere. Someone will come along and define it for you according to our specialized community usage. Needless to say you're not wrong per se, but we all know once you're on a board like this (fans, for fanatic!) everyday vernacular is going to eventually be redefined into jargon.

Yeah I think I introduced illusionism into the thread.

Illusioninsm is a form of railroading. You build a great encounter in the woods where the PCs meet an old witch. You then use that encounter no matter in which direction or where the PCs go or what they do.

It happens with premade railroads "at some point the PCs must meet Sir Peter and he will give them the puzzle box to deliver to the castle" but it's really easy to fall into it with improv. You have to make sure the player choices have an impact. You must be willing to drop stuff you just thought of, even if it has fantastic adventure potential if the PCs don't take that fork in the road.

So yeah that is illusionism the illusion of choice but leading to the same final set of encounters.

Oh and Shawn improv'ed dungeons can totally have maps of course they do don't talk crazy.

Quote from: Sommerjon;736303Which I explained was me being rpgsite pc to soothe egos here.  Evidently yours has been bruised regardless.

You got challenged for making a blanket assertion and tried to pass that off as being sensitive to some mythical PCness here.  It's not PC to recognize that different people have different aesthetics or did you really wander into cuckooland and start thinking everyone shares your aesthetics?

Quote from: Arminius;736335However this is something I wouldn't care for as a player, unless it was explicitly stated we were in a collaborative storytelling game. In many situations, players are speculating about the unknown because they're trying to find a course of action or simply because speculation is an enjoyable pastime. In both cases part of the "payoff" is finding out whether you guessed right, which is quite different from finding out whether the GM liked your idea. Using the latter as a criterion while allowing the players to think they're speculating about established reality is illusionistic. (And that's on a different level from letting players think they're trapping with established reality while you improvise based on pure extrapolation.)

I'd say that if you were noticing it and I wasn't being obvious on purpose then I was having a bad night.  I've certainly had bad nights, but in the 30+ years I've gamed, I've never heard a complaint about it from an actual player in one of my games (and I ask for explicit feedback, good or bad).

That said, roleplaying, even if it is just rollplaying, is a collaborative event.  I don't think it wanders into a storytelling game because the GM has no more idea of what happens next than the players or if the GM discards their ideas for better ideas from the players.

In my experience the players toss out tons of ideas and it's seldom just one idea I'm stealing and even if I steal just one idea from a player who notices (I don't recall this EVER happening, but I could have forgotten), I'm putting my twist on it with the details.

However, if you know I'm doing it and it bugs you, you probably aren't a prime candidate for being a player in my games.  I'm not saying I'm the best GM there is or that everyone else should improv, but I do end up GMing a LOT more than I prefer*, so even if most of that is just being willing,  I'm probably not horrible at it either.


*I have ended up as the GM or a co-GM for most every long term game I've ever tried to play in and end up being the usual GM for most groups I play with.

Quote from: Sommerjon;736303I think you are cheating the players if you are merely bullshitting your way through a session

I disagree. Firstly I have has players at cons congratulate me for great prep where all I had done was print off PC character sheets and made up the rest. My job is to create a real vibrate and immersive world that makes the players feel like they are characters on a fantastic adventure. I can do that from improv .

QuoteWhy I have dungeon tiles, 20 minutes, done.

Yeah I get fed up with square rooms and reguation 10 foot corridors designed by someone who has have been in a cave or a castle or dungeon.

QuoteAnd you don't think the people sitting on the other side of the screen has those same imaginations and experiences?

Oh course they do and unleasing their imagiantion is much more powerful prep or no prep is irrelevant

QuoteWhy I said most people don't give a shit, they want to play so they accept that you have a standard set of npcs.

My NPCs are never standard
 
I can come up with 20 different characters all unique  in 5 minutes.
Backstory, motivation, hangups, fears, dreams all that you just have to image a person and there they are fully formed
Generally each NPC has a unique vocal queues, a fair few have accents but its more about body language, tone and vocabulary than accent. I have been running a murder mystery company for years where I speak like a Southafrican/New Yorker/Irishman/Scote/eetc etc for 3 days straight so I can manage a few NPCS.
Why do you think thinkign of an NPC last tuesday is superior to thinking of him now?

QuoteAnd you think you are far better at this spur of the moment then taking some time and triple checking that your environments are distinct?

Yes, yes I am.

QuoteHitting as many of the senses as you can heightens the experience particularly for 'jaded' or experienced players.

Perhaps, so I won;t knock your method. However, if I describe a thing, say a book covered in human skin, that thing is easy to describe, to make it feel real, its fucking difficult to actually make ....

Quoteymmv.

Indeed but personally I try not to judge things until I have tried them at least once.

Quote from: Arminius;736335I had a GM once who deliberately avoided listening to player planning sessions in order to avoid being influenced in her creation of the opposition. This allowed all parties to be genuinely surprised by the results.

Yeah, I do this all the time.  Actually makes it easier to GM when I am riffing off what they are doing in the action; if I hear the planning then I start overthinking things.  

"Y'all spend a few minutes to figure out what you are gonna do.  I'm taking a smoke break."

Quote from: Sommerjon;736241On average 10 a week for a couple months.  It never ends up that way I usually get done before that, but I always use a 2 month lead time for a new campaign.

If I am gaming at my house, I use FX recordings to help set the stage.  Wind, rain, thunderstorms, dripping water, crowds, spell effects, animal sounds, etc.
Handouts are prettily done up,
Maps made.
Game tiles laid out
Miniatures bought and painted(if needed)
I place every settlement on the main map and detail* them out.
I create 95% of the creatures I use in D&D.  Too many players metagame creatures, so I don't use standard creatures anymore.
And finally timelines.

Hell back in the day I had a tactile box.  A box player would put their hand into to feel various textures(think Dune Movie).  I had quite a collection of real and synthetic skins and other textiles.

* meaning everything I can think of over the course of those two months.  Plots, Schemes, Secret Societies, Plans, etc. etc.

How do you effectively manage all of this at the table?  When I used to detail a lot of things out, and then at the actual game PCs go to Podunkville where I have several paragraphs written months before, the game ground to a halt as I had to stop and read my scrawl.  

I purposefully only write about one line on any town or whatever now so the game can keep flowing.  Just enough to glace at and have very high level idea of what is going on.

So how do you keep it about the players playing the game rather than GM reading months old notes?

Quote from: jibbajibba;736408Yeah I think I introduced illusionism into the thread.

Illusioninsm is a form of railroading. You build a great encounter in the woods where the PCs meet an old witch. You then use that encounter no matter in which direction or where the PCs go or what they do.

It happens with premade railroads "at some point the PCs must meet Sir Peter and he will give them the puzzle box to deliver to the castle" but it's really easy to fall into it with improv. You have to make sure the player choices have an impact. You must be willing to drop stuff you just thought of, even if it has fantastic adventure potential if the PCs don't take that fork in the road.

So yeah that is illusionism the illusion of choice but leading to the same final set of encounters.

Oh and Shawn improv'ed dungeons can totally have maps of course they do don't talk crazy.

It's an interesting approach to prep, improv, and gaming, and perhaps draws lines in the sand I don't necessarily prefer for myself. If a GM were to say to me "I had this great idea for an encounter in the east of the forest, but you all went west so it didn't happen." and we had no hints what lay to the east or west, I would have wondered why they didn't either telegraph the choice better, or just move the encounter.

I approach the game world in a schroedinger's cat kind of mindset. Everything that has been explicitly stated to the players (including maps and handouts etc) is true, and everything else, including prep, is in flux. Prep or an idea may influence what the players experience with varying effects or hints, but no idea or concept is sacred or fact until the players know about it explicitly. Causes for interesting details can be refined or redefined in play.

As such, what happens next in an improv game I run is always influenced by what the players interpret and do. I have only one goal at the table, to have fun and make sure everyone else is having fun. Plans, preparation, and ideas are only there to facilitate that and can be changed when they conflict with the group's fun. The players' choices always matter because they always influence what happens next, whether that's good or bad for the characters.

Communicating with your players to make sure that when they make a choice they can understand the likely outcomes is still incredibly important, but that's the case with both prepped play and improv play.

Quote from: Old One EyeHow do you effectively manage all of this at the table? When I used to detail a lot of things out, and then at the actual game PCs go to Podunkville where I have several paragraphs written months before, the game ground to a halt as I had to stop and read my scrawl.

I purposefully only write about one line on any town or whatever now so the game can keep flowing. Just enough to glace at and have very high level idea of what is going on.

So how do you keep it about the players playing the game rather than GM reading months old notes?

I have a similar approach to Sommerjon in terms of being exhaustive (handouts, soundtracks, copious notes), and speaking for myself what I do is:

(1) Use word documents, a laptop, and liberal use of ctrl+F to facilitate note-retrieval as quickly and efficiently as possible.

(2) Establish several layers of detail.  In the case of towns/cities, I have the overview-level similar to your "one line per town," the slightly-more detailed level (districts, landmarks, major NPCs) and the hyper-detailed level when required (streets, individual buildings like taverns and temples, minor NPCs).  This means I can get a good idea of the broad strokes at a glance and then "zoom in" as needed.

(3) Review where the players are likely to go before any given session so that details are fresh in my mind.

(4) Casually browse my notes while players speak amongst themselves.

(5) Improvise to fill in gaps as required.

(BTW I don't know I meant to type which came out as "trapping." Probably an autocorrect goof.)

Quote from: Brander;736413I'd say that if you were noticing it and I wasn't being obvious on purpose then I was having a bad night.  I've certainly had bad nights, but in the 30+ years I've gamed, I've never heard a complaint about it from an actual player in one of my games (and I ask for explicit feedback, good or bad).

That said, roleplaying, even if it is just rollplaying, is a collaborative event.  I don't think it wanders into a storytelling game because the GM has no more idea of what happens next than the players or if the GM discards their ideas for better ideas from the players.

In my experience the players toss out tons of ideas and it's seldom just one idea I'm stealing and even if I steal just one idea from a player who notices (I don't recall this EVER happening, but I could have forgotten), I'm putting my twist on it with the details.

However, if you know I'm doing it and it bugs you, you probably aren't a prime candidate for being a player in my games.  I'm not saying I'm the best GM there is or that everyone else should improv, but I do end up GMing a LOT more than I prefer*, so even if most of that is just being willing,  I'm probably not horrible at it either.

Yeah, if I had no idea, I wouldn't have a chance to complain, but if I noticed then it'd bug me just as other types of (pardon the term) deception do.

It reminds me of the poor fans of the X-Files who spent so much effort trying to solve the puzzles and mysteries of the show only to find that the writers were faking it and had painted themselves into a corner by the end.

It might depend on the nature of the campaign and the type of action, too. Again if something is presented as a mystery it ought to have a real answer behind the clues; if there's an opportunity for strategizing then there ought to be a real opposition to outwit.

It's not that I'm against improv or even incorporating player ideas about things which the GM hasn't yet determined--I would just have trouble with the GM presenting a mystery and then cobbling the answer out of player speculation.

Quote from: Arminius;736433(BTW I don't know I meant to type which came out as "trapping." Probably an autocorrect goof.)

Yeah, if I had no idea, I wouldn't have a chance to complain, but if I noticed then it'd bug me just as other types of (pardon the term) deception do.

It reminds me of the poor fans of the X-Files who spent so much effort trying to solve the puzzles and mysteries of the show only to find that the writers were faking it and had painted themselves into a corner by the end.

It might depend on the nature of the campaign and the type of action, too. Again if something is presented as a mystery it ought to have a real answer behind the clues; if there's an opportunity for strategizing then there ought to be a real opposition to outwit.

It's not that I'm against improv or even incorporating player ideas about things which the GM hasn't yet determined--I would just have trouble with the GM presenting a mystery and then cobbling the answer out of player speculation.

I agree which is why I first raised it as a thing to be avoided. Sometimes you can't help it becuase it's just so sweet.

Because I drive at realism where I can, the sad truth is most mysteries have a fairly mundane solution obsfucated by layers of other actions. This is something the Murder business has taught me very specificially.

Murder mystery solutions are worth a look as well actually. When I run a MM I know who will carry out the murder from the beginning and I know the justification etc. The murderer probably knows unless its a crime of passion they will commit on day 2. No other actors know.
Sometimes however somethign happens. One day the murderer got food poisoning on the first day and was out for the rest of the weekend, one day the murderer had a car accident (not major but enough not to make day 2) and one day 2 actors got drunk and got into a fight and one refused to come back the next day. When these things happen I have to change the plot. This has to be entirely transparent, IT IS PARAMOUNT, no guest can ever know that Reginal's absence is due to a car crash, they have to think the drunken brawl is part of the plot etc. For this reason I never write the solution until the Sunday morning at 6am (when you have been up to 2am drinking this can be a challenge ). I then have 45 mins to 1 hour to write an annotated 1,000 - 1,500 word "presentation" in the style of the detective doing their Poirot reveal. In this I cover all the stuff that was always in the plot but I add all the other stuff that clever guests observed or the actors fucked up. In 17 years I have never been caught out.

The very best Improv I have even done was in  Murder mystery (where obviously all dialogue and big chunks of backstory are always ad libbed). Set in Edwardian London as the meeting of a Secret Esoteric Society at the start of the 20th century  the plot involved some convoluted activity around the society crowning the new Estara, a young virgin who would be the embodiment of the goddess for the next year and the vessel through whom the elders of the sect would try to ensure the birth of the future King of the Morning (yes that is as sleazy as it sounds) anyway I had sourced some nice props long hooded robes and sun masks for a few of the main actors. I thought it would be great to run a ritual ceremony with all the guests, candle light us in the robes. Now I could have scripted that and relied on my actors learning lines and stage movements or I could improv the whole thing and minimise risk. So of course I improvised the whole thing.
I gave 3 other actors 1 line each to learn (5 minutes before the start of the evenign and scribbled on bits of paper cos I had just made them up) and told them when I touch you on the shoulder Do this one thing and say this one line. Then, between the main course and dessert, I ran the entire ritual with a section where the guests have to chant after me repeating my words, for 15 minutes in a suprisingly good Scottish Burr (kind of West Lothian I guess). Now if I can do that in front of 60 guests paying $250 a head most of whom have been to a few of these and 4 of whom turned out to actually be members of a real Esoteric Order, and only get compliments about how well rehersed it all was .... I reckon I can handle 4 geeks sitting round my dining table

I must give you props, jibbajabba, that is impressive to do at a professional level and with a far larger audience.

Reminds me of reading the how on sleight of hand tricks and listening to incredulous people trying to puzzle it out. You could explain it in all its simplicity only to have people insist it cannot be so simple and effective. But then reading up on magic tricks there's those with a lot of prep work, too.

So, what's your favorite brainstorm tactic? Your favorite content generator and or selector? And your favorite delaying tactic to mask behind? Either at table or MM will do, as I assume there'll be usable overlap.

I find brainstorming is one of those things I have to slip into the zone. Music, art, inner NPC dialogue, mimic NPC personality to get in the head, that type of stuff. I love dice equations and tables to generate % and select. Masking is hard, but I found acting out NPC bickering dialogue gives me cover with mental space to brainstorm oddly enough. Must be my inner cattiness as a second nature trait...

Quote from: Opaopajr;736392That would be Bill's "Improv versus Prep" tag. You're just too fast with the topic-fu for your own good. Caught in the crossfire!


edit: Adric, to spare us all a conflagration, I'll note that illusionism has become a well established jargon, on this site at least, and similar elsewhere. Someone will come along and define it for you according to our specialized community usage. Needless to say you're not wrong per se, but we all know once you're on a board like this (fans, for fanatic!) everyday vernacular is going to eventually be redefined into jargon.

I should clarify that the gist of my post is that prep and improv are best used together, even if my title line might suggest opposition.

Quote from: Old One Eye;736422How do you effectively manage all of this at the table?  When I used to detail a lot of things out, and then at the actual game PCs go to Podunkville where I have several paragraphs written months before, the game ground to a halt as I had to stop and read my scrawl.  

I purposefully only write about one line on any town or whatever now so the game can keep flowing.  Just enough to glace at and have very high level idea of what is going on.

So how do you keep it about the players playing the game rather than GM reading months old notes?

I take that a step further, the name itself gives me a lot of information.

For a 'Podunkville' on my master map could be:
po'duncton: "po'd" = hillbilly town very deliverance-y  
Pudochnk:  = town where the population has an exaggerated sense of self importance. Mr/Mrs. Fussypants. "chnk" = secret group involved.
Actually the "po'd" doesn't mean anything, I tell the players the name is Duncton, it's shorthand for me to at a glance know what the town is about.
Players aren't given 'Pudochnk'  it's Pudoch  the 'nk' tells me it's actually a Podunkville type place that has hidden agendas involved the actual spelling tells me they are trying to be more important then they are.

"Zero" planning or prep?  Never.  Never never never.  The only times it comes close to happening is when a party's come back to home base after a long, long plot arc, and they will burn up most of a run with figuring out what they want to use their XP for, dealing with training, dealing with a few game-months of downtime, spending their loot, catching up with friends and rumors, and lots of shopping.

But even with that, I know they'll only suck up a few hours with that.  By hour four at the absolute max, they need some notion as to what they might be doing next ... if only to start to do the things they need to do to set that up.  So, obviously, I need some ideas in place.