I’m going to mention that your example of the worm in Labyrinth really underscores the problem with the concept you espouse. After all, “If she had gone that way, she’d have gone straight to that castle”–which is, of course, exactly where she wanted to go, but the worm did not grasp that that was what she meant by “the way through this maze”. The referee can put pointers for the players to follow, but how do the players know where they are being led, or whether they wish to go there?

I’d also like to make the distinction (which I have made many times over at The Forge) between “Illusionism” and “Illusionist Techniques”. An illusionist technique is one that nullifies a specific choice or outcome or prevents a player from taking a specific course of action without revealing that this has been prevented. Fudging dice rolls is an illusionist technique (although that’s never occurred to me until this moment). It prevents a player from winning or losing at this moment, without letting him know that the referee made a decision to override the dice. As a technique, it’s in the lowest level of Edwards’ Big Model, one of the tools that can be used to support play. As a technique, it can be used, if used in the correct way, to support any creative agenda.

Before I address illusionism, let me observe that there is no difference, at the fundamental level, between Edwards’ Moving Clue and my Moving Encounter. It is in the application that these are different. One could in theory take Edwards’ approach to placing the one essential clue wherever the players happen to seek it, and expand that to a dozen essential clues, scattered among a score of potential witnesses. The players start questioning witnesses, and witness one has the first, witness three has the second, witness four has the third and fourth, witness six and the fifth, and so on–not based on who they are, but based on the order in which they are questioned. This, then, eliminates the possibility that the players will miss one of the clues for not asking the right person the right question.

I’ll also note that, if I understand the game correctly, this is inherent in Dark Omen Games’ latest release Dirty Little Secrets. Although in that case no one knows whodunit until the game board reveals this, the system is designed such that the clues arise gradually through play in a controlled sequence. It prevents players from accidentally leaping to the end of the mystery, but also prevents them from missing critical information along the way.

In the same way, the moving encounter prevents players from leaping to the final encounter, and so prevents them from accidentally winning or losing the game immediately.

As to Illusionism, well, I’ve got other articles on that, but briefly illusionism is a referee approach in which none of the players’ decisions actually matter, that the referee is telling his story and taking them along for the ride. I’ve likened it to the little girl sitting on her grandfather’s knee as he tells a story:

“Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess….”

“And the princess’s name was Alyna, right Grandfather?”

“That’s right, Alyna, the princess’ name was Alyna.”

She feels like she’s part of the story, but she has no more impact on the outcome of the story than she would watching a movie.

That can be fun–fun enough that we also recognize Participationism as a valid and functional referee style, in which the players know that nothing they do adds more than color but they play anyway because they enjoy having the referee incorporate their color into the story they are fully aware he fully controls.

Now, whether the moving encounter is appropriate to narrativist play depends on more questions than we can answer here, but consider this: if the story is framed on some sort of adventure that moves the characters from one situation to another, having those situations pre-planned might be the best way to support the narrativist side of the story. Die Hard 3: Die Hard with a Vengeance is in some ways a particularly gamist sort of story, but the relationship between McLean and his logsmith partner is a strong narrativist element, and with a bit of tweaking that could be the story: how the white cop and the black locksmith had to overcome their differences to work together to recover the stolen gold. As referee of such a game, I could lay out point for point the encounters in the order in which they are going to occur and move the player characters through them, while they do the really important work of telling the human (narrativist) story over the backdrop of the adventure.

I hope this helps. Again, welcome to the discussion. By the way, in addition to the comments section here, there is also a discussion board (linked from the top of the page) where topics like this are always welcome and will draw more voices.

Thanks again for your comment.

–M. J. Young
referee@mjyoung.net
Books by the author: http://www.mjyoung.net/publish/

On one hand, it’s arguable that this is classic Illusionism (as folks at the Forge call it), in that the players are given, well, the *illusion* that they’re making a significant choice. Honestly, it would make more sense to ignore the hollow “choice” altogether, and have something like the little blue worm in the movie “Labyrinth” be there to tell you “Don’t go that way! I said, don’t go that way.” Why not just plug a little information in, and let the players go for it? Of course, most mainstream RPGs attempt to have the same kind of scripting and railroading (more or less) as video games, and that sounds like what you’re advocating here.

On the other hand, if the game you want to play happens to be very big on “gauging” challenges for the players (such as D&D’s “encounter levels”), then you might not have many other options than this kind of situation. And, well, if it’s more of a Gamist situation, in which meaningful choices are more tactical, strategic, or otherwise winning-related, then yeah, maybe this isn’t so bad. But if it’s more Narrativist, and the players are supposed to be controlling the heroes of the tale, then a) this is definitely not good advice and b) the GM taking said advice is probably playing the wrong game for Narrativist enjoyment.