D&D General The History of 'Immersion' in RPGs

D&D historian Jon Peterson has taken a look at the concept of 'immersion' as it related to tabletop roleplaying games, with references to the concept going back to The Wild Hunt (1977), D&D modules like In Search of the Unknown, games like Boot Hill, and Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood speaking in Dragon Magazine.

Immersion and Role Playing in the 1970s

The idea that role playing involved a property called "immersion" occurred to the early adopters of the 1970s fairly early. The earliest e...

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[Thomas Shey]

Honestly, all he can really say here is that it isn't a technique that works for him. I've played immersively in other contexts (I don't think it works all that way for face to face gaming but that's neither here nor there) and I had no trouble keeping in mind my characters traits while immersing in them.

As I said, there's nothing wrong with deciding that keeping such things in mind is problematic with your ability to immerse--and if the latter is a priority for you, that's as it is. But I think at that point its perverse to play in a system that uses them and doesn't allow you to set them in such a way that you don't have to either ignore them or have them get in your way.

 

[jgsugden]

You can have that opinion, but that doesn't mean that someone who doesn't share your opinion is ignoring their character's established traits.

However, when they say they just ignore their character's intelligence score when the PC uses their memory, deductive reasoning, knowledge, mental acuity, reasoning, and recall ... THAT means someone is ignoring their character's established traits.

 

[Campbell]

I think we should take our characters ability scores into account when we play them, but I am not a fan of policing that at the table. Mostly I think there is a tendency to oversell penalties and undersell bonuses when it comes to the impact they should have on a character's decision making process. GMs often do not provide nearly enough of the sort of insights and intuition a character with a high Intelligence or Wisdom should have.

In more modern takes on D&D scores below 8 are pretty rare. An Intelligence of 8 is only slightly below the human baseline. A character with an Intelligence of 8 just has a slightly reduced processing speed or might not be well read. More importantly it's not fun for me to see flaws overrepresented like that. It tends to turn the game into a farce and makes characters feel incompetent.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

5e PHB p185:
Roleplaying is, literally, the act of playing out a role. In this case, it's you as a player determining how your character thinks, acts, and talks.

In 5e, I've found that the sooner a DM lets the players handle their character according to this definition, the sooner they find themselves running a smooth session. Please note: what a PC knows and what a PC thinks they know can be two very different things. The former can only be confirmed by testing assumptions through gameplay, the latter can be anything the player wants.

 

[Lanefan]

I think we should take our characters ability scores into account when we play them, but I am not a fan of policing that at the table. Mostly I think there is a tendency to oversell penalties and undersell bonuses when it comes to the impact they should have on a character's decision making process.

Could any of that be in reaction to the modern game's tendency to over-promote benefits and remove or mitigate penalties in general, perhaps?

GMs often do not provide nearly enough of the sort of insights and intuition a character with a high Intelligence or Wisdom should have.

Quite likely, yes; perhaps simply due to not wanting to "give away the answer", so to speak. It's a fine line, and I don't necessarily blame GMs for erring on the side of caution here unless it's extreme.

In more modern takes on D&D scores below 8 are pretty rare. An Intelligence of 8 is only slightly below the human baseline. A character with an Intelligence of 8 just has a slightly reduced processing speed or might not be well read. More importantly it's not fun for me to see flaws overrepresented like that. It tends to turn the game into a farce and makes characters feel incompetent.

I have no issue at all with making characters feel incompetent now and then. Nobody's perfect in reality, and nobody's perfect in the fiction.

 

[Hriston]

I gotta say, I don't get this.

Part of what informs the immersive roleplaying you're embarking on, be it a character on a stage or a character in an RPG, are the stated or pre-set attributes of the character you're about to play.

In a stage-acting situation the script notes often have some guidelines as to what (in theory) makes a character tick, and if they don't the director sure as hell will. Maybe it's noted in the script that your character walks with a pronounced limp, for example; or that he's 95 years old and hard of hearing. You-as-actor are then more or less expected to use these guidelines - perhaps among other things - to inform how you approach portraying the character.

Same thing goes in an RPG, only here those informing guidelines don't come from a script or a director but instead are provided by some numbers on a page.

I think the two media are very different in this respect, at least potentially. In stage/screen acting, unless we're talking about a total improv, the decisions about what happens, how the story goes, and what actions the character will take within that story have all already been made before the actor plays the role of the character. The decisions left for the actor to make (perhaps, as you say, in collaboration with a writer and/or director) are those regarding characterization and portrayal, mechanical things like how the limp will be executed or how the character's age and deafness will be communicated to the audience, and most importantly, at least to me anyways in the way I approach acting, decisions about the character's inner life, answering questions about what motivates the character to take the actions that the writer has decided for it to take. By becoming immersed in the character's inner life, the actor can achieve what is referred to as being "in-character".

Improv, with which I have very little experience or aptitude, works a bit differently and might be comparable to playing an RPG where the resolution mechanic is nothing more than "Yes, and..."

To me (and this is where the potentially in my first sentence above comes in), the heart of roleplaying in a roleplaying game is not characterization and portrayal. It is deciding what actions my character takes in response to situations in the game. In this way, a player in an RPG is more analogous to the writer of a play. The resolution mechanic alternates whose authorial decisions prevail over the resulting fiction, replacing the sole-author of a play with the game's participants. I don't see any clear distinction between roleplaying my character and authoring my character, so just as an author can be said to write a character from an in-character perspective, feeling-out and exploring the motivations and inner-workings of the character as the story develops, I find it most immersive to roleplay my character, as in decide my character's actions, from that perspective in the moment of play.

An actor in a play is not deciding what actions the character takes in the moment. This is what learning your lines is all about. You memorize the text of the play so it becomes internalized and can be motivated and actualized during the performance. This is not roleplaying in the sense of playing an RPG.

A roleplaying game, for me, is not a performance. It can be, but that isn't the primary activity of roleplaying. The primary activity of roleplaying is an exercise in authorship in the form of a game. I, the player, get to make up the actions my character takes. Treating the numbers on my PC's character sheet as a sort of pre-authored script to be performed that limits the actions my character can take would be abdicating my responsibility as a player to play my character and having my character just play itself. For me, that wouldn't be immersive roleplaying because then I'm not inhabiting my character. No one is.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

Vincent Baker posted something that might be of interest:

 

[Lanefan]

I think the two media are very different in this respect, at least potentially. In stage/screen acting, unless we're talking about a total improv, the decisions about what happens, how the story goes, and what actions the character will take within that story have all already been made before the actor plays the role of the character. The decisions left for the actor to make (perhaps, as you say, in collaboration with a writer and/or director) are those regarding characterization and portrayal, mechanical things like how the limp will be executed or how the character's age and deafness will be communicated to the audience, and most importantly, at least to me anyways in the way I approach acting, decisions about the character's inner life, answering questions about what motivates the character to take the actions that the writer has decided for it to take. By becoming immersed in the character's inner life, the actor can achieve what is referred to as being "in-character".

Other than some trivialities which for these purposes don't matter, I agree with this.

Improv, with which I have very little experience or aptitude, works a bit differently and might be comparable to playing an RPG where the resolution mechanic is nothing more than "Yes, and..."

To me (and this is where the potentially in my first sentence above comes in), the heart of roleplaying in a roleplaying game is not characterization and portrayal. It is deciding what actions my character takes in response to situations in the game.

Ah - here we get to it: I see the heart of roleplaying in an RPG to in fact be that characterization and portrayal piece; as the developed characterization and personality is then going to (ideally!) directly inform or even outright dictate my decisions on what my character tries to do in a given situation, with game mechanics often determining whether that attempt succeeds or not.

In other words, the characterization is what drives the decisions; not the other way round.

In this way, a player in an RPG is more analogous to the writer of a play. The resolution mechanic alternates whose authorial decisions prevail over the resulting fiction, replacing the sole-author of a play with the game's participants. I don't see any clear distinction between roleplaying my character and authoring my character, so just as an author can be said to write a character from an in-character perspective, feeling-out and exploring the motivations and inner-workings of the character as the story develops, I find it most immersive to roleplay my character, as in decide my character's actions, from that perspective in the moment of play.

That an RPG gives more latitude than a scripted play isn't in doubt; and reading this it's possible we're trying to say much the same thing in almost-opposite ways.

An actor in a play is not deciding what actions the character takes in the moment. This is what learning your lines is all about. You memorize the text of the play so it becomes internalized and can be motivated and actualized during the performance. This is not roleplaying in the sense of playing an RPG.

I think there's a lot of parallels, particularly once a stage actor does any ad-libbing. But yes, actors are in some ways robots doing what they're told; the best ones overcome this and make the role their own.

A roleplaying game, for me, is not a performance. It can be, but that isn't the primary activity of roleplaying. The primary activity of roleplaying is an exercise in authorship in the form of a game.

Authorship is to me a side effect of play rather than a specific meta-goal. In the moment my main meta-goal is usually to entertain those at the table, much like an actor's main goal is (usually) to entertain those in the audience; with the differnce of course being that an actor can't often expect the audience to provide entertainment in return where an RPGer, one hopes, can.

I, the player, get to make up the actions my character takes. Treating the numbers on my PC's character sheet as a sort of pre-authored script to be performed that limits the actions my character can take would be abdicating my responsibility as a player to play my character and having my character just play itself. For me, that wouldn't be immersive roleplaying because then I'm not inhabiting my character. No one is.

I suppose I see it that while I, the player, get to make up the actions my character takes,* I also have to accept that there's some built-in limitations that go with it that are sometimes going to get in the way whether I want them to or not; and some of those limitations are represented by the numbers (and other things) on my character sheet.

* - the last word in that quote really should be "attempts", in that while many things can quite reasonably stop an action from succeeding nothing can stop it from being tried.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I suppose I see it that while I, the player, get to make up the actions my character takes,* I also have to accept that there's some built-in limitations that go with it that are sometimes going to get in the way whether I want them to or not; and some of those limitations are represented by the numbers (and other things) on my character sheet.

Yes, and those limitations in D&D 5e, represented by low numbers on the character sheet, come into play when the DM determines that a roll is necessary to resolve an action the PC is attempting. Low numbers naturally = less of a chance of success. Most often, therefore, it is not a smart play to attempt things that involve your PC's weaknesses if it can be avoided. I would add that it is not my job, as a 5e DM, to mandate how the player chooses to portray the numbers on their character sheet. In 5e, what the PC thinks, attempts, and says is the squarely the domain of the player. Nothing, IME, breaks immersion more that a DM telling a player: "your character wouldn't know/do/say that".

* - the last word in that quote really should be "attempts", in that while many things can quite reasonably stop an action from succeeding nothing can stop it from being tried.

Very true.

 

[jgsugden]

Yes, and those limitations in D&D 5e, represented by low numbers on the character sheet, come into play when the DM determines that a roll is necessary to resolve an action the PC is attempting. Low numbers naturally = less of a chance of success. Most often, therefore, it is not a smart play to attempt things that involve your PC's weaknesses if it can be avoided...

This inherently ignores something - if your low score is wisdom, and in some instances intelligence, then making this assessment is something your PC should generally lack the wisdom (or in those rarer circumstances - intelligence) to realize and follow. A wise cleric might realize it isn't a good idea for him to try to solve the puzzle of naught evil death, but a fighter with a wisdom of 8 might very well think that relying upon luck is a perfectly reasonable thing to do when trying to solve that puzzle.