The particular importance of planning and preparing, or being concerned about dying easily, is system and campaign specific. It's a bit part of low-level classic D&D play. It's a typical part of Burning Wheel play, I think. It's not a big part of high level D&D play in any version of the game except (perhaps?) 3E.I prefer a game where the players are much closer to their characters. They are living in the world. They are acting as their characters and making decisions. They think like their characters in that they believe the world is a harsh place and they could die easily. They plan, they prepare, it matters. Thats just my preference.
But if we take out that particular play preference, and focus just on players being close to their PCs, and acting as their characters and making decisions, which posters on this thread do you think you're differentiating yourself from?
I GMed a session today where the players, in character, were arguing out what to do about some Death Giants geased by the Raven Queen to guard the warded entrance to an ancient temple of Orcus. The dwarf (who wields Overwhelm, a modified version of Whelm, which is an artefact Dwarven Thrower) wanted to kill the giants. The invoker and the paladin (both servants of the Raven Queen) wanted to leave the giants there burdened by the geas. This disagreement played itself out in the combat itself - it didn' come to blows between the PCs, because the social contract at the table moderates passions in that way, but harsh words were certainly used!
In the course of all this, the player of the dwarf fighter-cleric used one action point to get an extra attack, two daily powers and three encounter powers, as well as multiple uses of at-will powers. This didn't hurt his immersion. The focus of his play isn't the causal question "What exactly is my PC doing now with his weapon, and how is he doing it?" The focus of his play, in combat, is "Who am I attacking, and why, and what is at stake for me and for my allies?" And at all relevant times he was a dwarf fighting giants with a honking great two-handed warhammer. Until it got cut with him when he wouldn't use one of his limited-use powers to finish of a giant, and made him swap it out for his non-artefact +4 halberd. What, in the fiction, was going on when the PC made this choice? He wasn't fighting the giants as hard as he could - he was holding back a bit, keeping some energy in reserve for later - and Overwhelm could tell this and got angry about it.
I'm sure this is true for you. It is true for me to. I don't see what it tells us about the suitability, in general, of particular mechanics to support RPGing.If you are having fun, then you are succeeding. I "think" that in a good game of D&D (good for me) I am having fun on a level I find rarely in any other recreational activity.
This is an interesting biographical fact about you - there is a certain (in my view, somewhat vaguely defined) category of mechanics that spoils your game.I find dissociative mechanics very disruptive to my immersion. I also find myself not being willing/able to suspend my disbelief in the whole campaign.
Hit points use to be like that for me. Then I learned how to interpret them in a metagame ("dissociative"?) fashion and got over my in-principle objection, and I found a game that made more than just hit point attrition the focus of D&D-style combat (ie 4e) and got over my practical objection (that hit point attrition, on its own, is boring).
I have a friend who is a bit of a Rolemaster snob. The last time I played D&D with him was a mnth or two after 3E came out. I was GMing a few sessions to see how it played. This friend was playing a wizard, and he cast a web spell - but miscalculated on range or AoE or something, and caught another PC in the web. The player of that other PC complained, to which my friend repied "It's only D&D!" - meaning, it's not something to be taken that seriously. For him, D&D as such - with its hit points, its AC that makes you harder to hit rather than reducing the damage, its Vancian magic, its somewhat silly spells like Web - was "dissociative". (As far as I know he's never tried 4e.)
That's a biographical fact about my friend. But I wouldn't generalise from it to anything objective about D&D or 3E.