D&D 5E What are the Roles now?

BryonD said:

Seriously, look at this post. It is nothing but an attempt at word-play "gotcha" completelydivorced from the point.

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What is your point? You are the one who said that others who say they experience character immersion are really experiencing story immersion. Is that word-play "gotcha"? You are the one who said that the mechanics of my preferred game systems mean, ipso facto, that I cannot experience character immersion. How do you know? Did you secretly scan my brain while I was playing?

BryonD said:

I'll be over here having a great time playing games that are actually popular and trying to understand new perspectives so that I can better steal the good parts from other games.

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What does the popularity of a game have to do with whether or not my players and I have a certain psychological experience?

pemerton said:

Are you intending to imply that 4e is a board game rather than an RPG? If so, come out and say it. If not, what is the point of the reference to chess?

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No. I've made it abundantly clear that I have no interest in discussing 4E. I believe we're discussing player authorship and whether or not it "breaks immersion." In response to my post, Neonchameleon made a cogent argument (bank scenario: telling what you imagine in your mind's eye is far less jarring than interrogating the DM for details) illustrating a case where player authorship does not break immersion. (It's also a fantastic illustration of how dissociated mechanics and player authorship are distinct concepts; in the bank scenario, the only mechanics are associated ones; player authorship simply fleshes out incidental details of the scene. The analogy to vision/hearing is very cogent.)

I think Neonchameleon is mistaken about there being an equivalence between "associated mechanics" and "flow", but that doesn't alter the fact that he makes a compelling case for some kinds of player authorship enhancing flow.

pemerton said:

What is your point? You are the one who said that others who say they experience character immersion are really experiencing story immersion. Is that word-play "gotcha"? You are the one who said that the mechanics of my preferred game systems mean, ipso facto, that I cannot experience character immersion. How do you know? Did you secretly scan my brain while I was playing?

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No, I said that you can't be immersed in something you actively reject doing. You have said, in roughly as many words, that you actively reject doing the things I'm celebrating.

What does the popularity of a game have to do with whether or not my players and I have a certain psychological experience?

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Nothing. What does randomly mixing and matching words from my comments have to do with anything whatsoever?

pemerton said:

While that article is largely speculative, there are a couple of things that struck me as interesting:

[P]layers do a lot of the work toward immersion themselves. People more prone to fantasising and daydreaming – i.e. more absorptive personalities – are able to become more immersed in game worlds. . . .

t's not rocket science to suggest that we take a lot of ourselves and our own behaviours into games, but it's interesting to consider the extent to which our own imagination shapes what we do and feel.​

Imaging and daydreaming are modes of authorship - creating fictional content.

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I'm not sure I see the connection. I'm sure that if I'm playing a 3rd person shooter, my imagination is probably passively filling in all sorts of blanks almost automatically. I guess that by some loose definition, that is like a degree of player authorship. If that's the case, it's like the DM says "You walk into a tavern", and someone not prone to fantasizing might not imagine much, but someone with an active imagination might imagine all sorts of details about the tavern and its patrons. I guess that's a type of player authorship, and I guess that contributes to immersion. Surprisingly, I still don't equate daydreaming as a mode of authorship. For me, daydreaming is a passive activity. I don't feel I'm authoring anything. The process is too passive for me to call it authoring, even if it technically is authoring fictional content.

BryonD said:

Your rebuttal is noted. I simply think this defeats the entire claim of immersion.

I'm happy. A lot of other people are happy.

There are people unhappy that 4E did not maintain a central place in the market and, as I see in the vocal community those people present their view of how the game works (such as your rejection of immersion here)

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I am not rejecting immersion - just the opposite. I am saying that what you call immersion is a good thing. Flow is a good thing. It just has a mainstream name and using the term "character immersion" for flow is needlessly confusing. What I am rejecting is the idea that your form of immersion is special to roleplaying. I've felt it roleplaying - and also playing competitive chess. What I haven't felt playing chess or wargaming is bleed or the form of immersion that leads to bleed.

and build their position upon the presumption that everyone else must first share this mode of experience.

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This is literally the opposite of what I've said. I've said that people outside the tabletop RPG community share your mode of experience. And flow is a good thing. What I call character immersion on the other hand is tightly restricted to tabletop RPGers, LARPers, and Method and some Improv Actors. It is also in tension with the flow/fiero combination you are looking for (it's not opposed to it - you can have everything at once but it's trickier). Your case - that you can't find what you call Character Immersion with authoring powers, is based upon the presumption that your mode of experience is universal. Mine, that there are multiple ways and multiple ends is based on the opposite.

You go on to say I miss the point. But the thing is, it is my point. I am not missing it. I may be rejecting your rebuttals as moot to my personal game experience. But I completely accept them as relevant to your own game experience.

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The problem is that you also cut the limits solipsistically. I can have a fiero/flow combination while having authoring power. Because there are implicit limits to the way I use player authoring (I've tried to explain them earlier in the thread - how it's power to describe that which you see as being there rather than power to create solutions). The limit case game here is, of course, Leverage with its flashback scenes where you can retroactively change the past as long as that which has been seen so far in the present remains unchanged and the changes you make are changes you would have had the ability to do (it's a game about a team of con artists and the flashback scenes give you the "Here's what's really going on" moments).

What I reject isn't your experience, it's where you seek to post hard limits on your experience. When you say you have experience of something you are telling the truth. When you say that something can only work a certain way then one single counter-example (which my experience provides) is sufficient to show you are wrong. You personally can not find flow in an RPG when you have player-authorship powers and responsibilities. This I accept. That because BryonD can not personally find flow when he has player authorship powers means that no human being that is, was, or ever will be is able to do so is something I dismiss as ridiculous. Especially because I personally can. It's not the authorship powers that are the problem. It's that they conflict with the way you (and many others) have obtained mastery. And there's nothing wrong with that until you start saying that there aren't other ways outside the one you've identified.

BryonD said:

I don't really accept this. I mean, I guess it is true during play. But the sense of fun for being that character and achieving (or the sense of fun for failing) over various obstacles persists completely outside the moments of playing.

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And if computer games weren't fun when you weren't experiencing flow almost no one would ever play them. Flow takes mastery. This I find an utterly un-compelling argument.

Edit: @emdw45 I don't see an equivalence between associated mechanics and flow. I see flow as contingent on mastery. I see mastery as in part a function of experience - and most D&D players have most of their experience with largely what people would call associated mechanics.

pemerton said:

While that article is largely speculative, there are a couple of things that struck me as interesting:

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What struck me as interesting was this one:
"Gard also warns against the use of 'arbitrary spaces': environmental features that are obviously included for gameplay challenge and serve no purpose in the 'reality' of the setting:

"When a player enters a temple that has no space for worship, or a tomb with no burial chamber nor rhyme nor reason behind its layout, he or she will not be convinced that they are exploring a real place."

Are roles the same as "arbitrary spaces" that "serve no purpose in the 'reality' of the setting" and "he or she will not be convinced that they are exploring a real place"? I just came in 80+ pages in, but is that how this whole discussion started?

Neonchameleon said:

I am not rejecting immersion - just the opposite. I am saying that what you call immersion is a good thing. Flow is a good thing. It just has a mainstream name and using the term "character immersion" for flow is needlessly confusing.

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This is just my perception, but I believe you are mistaken when you equate "Flow" with BryonD's concept of "character immersion." I believe he is talking about associated mechanics, which are distinct from flow. So when you try to disprove his statement by pointing out that you've felt flow while playing chess, to you this seems like a clincher while to Bryon it is irrelevant--he's not talking about flow in the first place.

emdw45 said:

This is just my perception, but I believe you are mistaken when you equate "Flow" with BryonD's concept of "character immersion." I believe he is talking about associated mechanics, which are distinct from flow. So when you try to disprove his statement by pointing out that you've felt flow while playing chess, to you this seems like a clincher while to Bryon it is irrelevant--he's not talking about flow in the first place.

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Yeah I know this "flow" he's talking about isn't what I was thinking @BryonD meant when he said "character immersion". but then I don't think @Neonchameleon is really looking to understand other views and/or playstyles only to disparage and insult them on the sly... the one style is treating players like adults comment earlier (of course it's his style )... the claim that the form of immersion he's arguing against can be experienced in chess (but let someone make a comparison between chess and 4e and it's edition war time) and so on...

Because immersion is so subjective it can be frustrating to discuss, as what immerses one player may be neutral or detrimental to another's immersion.

I don't value immersion as much as I used to as I'm usually a referee nowadays and immersion is a luxury, one that's arguably bad for referee impartiality. I still need to portray a large cast of NPCs as believably as possible, and work out their complex interactions with the PCs and each other. I have much more tolerance of distraction now than previously.

In my case I know "the gameworld functioning in a way that makes sense to me with perceptible cause and effect chains actually using the nominal mechanics" aids my immersion as a player. I experience cognitive dissonance when the game seems capricious or random, and my PCs intended actions don't seem to map to their results. I prefer referees who pick appropriate rules systems for their intended game and actually use the rules systems they say they are using.

I don't expect my personal mental model to be relevant to other people in general.

emdw45 said:

No. I've made it abundantly clear that I have no interest in discussing 4E. I believe we're discussing player authorship and whether or not it "breaks immersion." In response to my post, Neonchameleon made a cogent argument (bank scenario: telling what you imagine in your mind's eye is far less jarring than interrogating the DM for details) illustrating a case where player authorship does not break immersion. (It's also a fantastic illustration of how dissociated mechanics and player authorship are distinct concepts; in the bank scenario, the only mechanics are associated ones; player authorship simply fleshes out incidental details of the scene. The analogy to vision/hearing is very cogent.)

I think Neonchameleon is mistaken about there being an equivalence between "associated mechanics" and "flow", but that doesn't alter the fact that he makes a compelling case for some kinds of player authorship enhancing flow.

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Actually this deserves a full reply. There is a huge difference between disassociated mechanics and a disassociated character, and this is one thing that most critics of disassociated mechanics miss. (And some people don't care).

To use the classic example of a game with disassociated mechanics we're going to take Fate in which Fate Points are an abstract currency. Now the thing about Fate Points is that they are spent through the medium of aspects. If you care about disassociated mechanics (not everyone does) then it is perfectly possible to create associated characters in which Fate Points are directly meaningful.

You can have The Determinator whose Fate Points are Willpower, who has a Trouble Aspect of "Dependent Family" (which are what they fight for), a high concept of "I don't know how to quit" and three other determination related aspects. In which case Fate Points for that character are points of Willpower. For another character their Fate Points can be physical endurance (with a negative aspect of "Eats like a horse" and positive ones like "One Big Push"). This character has Fate Points that are entirely associated - but associated in a different way. You can even have a Mage: the Ascension Mage for whom Fate Points are points of Quintessence. (Or pick your WoD splatbook; a Vampire using Blood for Fate Points also works and the trouble aspect should be easy...). The rules are disassociated but each individual character can be associated if that's what the player cares about.

4e works similarly for that matter. That if you worry about association of recharge times, for a mage they prepare spells in short and long rests - while the martial characters need to catch their breath. And the one armed diving catch is an argument by someone who doesn't understand the system. The 4e AEDU abilities are effectively narrative pacing - watch an action TV series, and some tricks are only pulled 1/episode and others all the time.

All this means that supposedly disassociated systems using abstract resource currencies can have a much much wider range of associated characters. If you care about that level of association then you have the tools to handle that. But an associated system limits itself to one worldview - the associations made by the game designers. Arguably this is incomplete design, arguably it's flexible design creating a toolkit.