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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[jgsugden]

...I'll refer us all back to the definition of roleplaying as explained by rules of D&D 5e: "it's you as a player determining how your character thinks, acts, and talks."

The full quote: 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.You decide how your character thinks, acts and talks to playing out that role. That role is defined. You build the definition, under the rules, during character creation. Not playing that role is not playing this role playing game, as described by the books. It can still be fun, but ignoring the character limitations you built into the PC during character creation - well it is just as fair as having your 6 Strength PC life a boulder weighing 300 lbs.

....Brings me back to this point which ties back to the OP: If a DM finds themselves saying: "Your character wouldn't know/do/say that", immersion is broken.

The DM does not spontaneously say that sentence. They feel the need to do so when immersion has been broken by a PC not playing their character. It might be the DM feeling it by themself, or it may be the entire table.

Again - if you don't want to play a character as it is defined by the rules, and the people at your table don't care - you can have a lot of fun ignoring what the rules say about your PC. However, if your 6 intelligence PC is allowed to exhibit abnormally high levels of intelligence, it is very similar to a 6 strength PC lifting that boulder - you didn't "buy" the capability during character creation - but you're using it anyways. Many players and DM object to it just as much as they object to a player lying about die rolls.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

The full quote: 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.You decide how your character thinks, acts and talks to playing out that role. That role is defined. You build the definition, under the rules, during character creation. Not playing that role is not playing this role playing game, as described by the books. It can still be fun, but ignoring the character limitations you built into the PC during character creation - well it is just as fair as having your 6 Strength PC life a boulder weighing 300 lbs.
The DM does not spontaneously say that sentence. They feel the need to do so when immersion has been broken by a PC not playing their character. It might be the DM feeling it by themself, or it may be the entire table.

Again - if you don't want to play a character as it is defined by the rules, and the people at your table don't care - you can have a lot of fun ignoring what the rules say about your PC. However, if your 6 intelligence PC is allowed to exhibit abnormally high levels of intelligence, it is very similar to a 6 strength PC lifting that boulder - you didn't "buy" the capability during character creation - but you're using it anyways. Many players and DM object to it just as much as they object to a player lying about die rolls.

Thanks for providing the full quote (which I had also provided further upthread). Your interpretation of that is... interesting. As if the character creation prescribes how one must play their character. Again, nothing wrong with house-ruling if you're having fun with it.

Now, please quote the rule(s) in 5e where it says the players must play their characters according to some strict definition of their stats.
(Hint: check out p14 of the 5e PHB, the "Your Character's Abilities" part of the Describe Your Character section... you'll find a lot of "might be"s and "usually"s and "probably"s. Nothing is written in stone of how someone must describe or play their character. Of course, most people will play along with those ideas because it is fun to do so, but a DM needn't get themselves worked up if a player has a different interpretation of how they want to portray the stats of their PC.)

 

[Thomas Shey]

My personal stance is that the character sheet is not the character. That if there is dissonance between our shared understanding of the fiction and what's on the sheet it's usually the sheet that is wrong.

I think that's an argument for having the mechanical parts of the sheet more in player control than most incarnations of D&D let you do, rather than an argument to ignore them when inconvenient.

 

[prabe]

Not arguing, but do you mind unpacking what you intend

having the mechanical parts of the sheet more in player control than most incarnations of D&D let you do

to mean? Genuinely looking for clarity.

 

[billd91]

Trolls v fire is an old chestnut! All it takes is one troll that heals from, or is otherwise boosted by, fire and the players learn not to make metagame assumptions about trolls.

Meh, then the game devolves down into a game of "Gotcha!" if a DM is spending too much time policing metagaming by switching things up. If that's the alternative, I'd rather the players all bring in their knowledge about troll regeneration being foiled by fire. Then I don't have to spend as much time farting around just to trip them up.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Not arguing, but do you mind unpacking what you intend

to mean? Genuinely looking for clarity.

D&D has, at best, tended to bin resources for acquiring attributes, skills and other abilities in separate pools, when they've given you a choice at all. These means ending up with all the things that are important to concept of a character can range from difficult, heavily counter-incentived (because you only have so many points to go around, and the attribute you want for characterization may not be one of the ones actually relevant to your class and operating procedure), to outright impossible (in the case of various OSR roll-and-keep systems).
In addition, D&D isn't exactly near the top of the list of games that are big into retrofitting.

As such, if someone is not prone to internalizing the numbers on the sheet in their internal character model, its not exactly the tool of choice for doing it the other way around.

 

[Maxperson]

I really don't know what else to say when someone says they're roleplaying but are, as best I can tell from what you've said, ignoring part of the established traits of the character. If that's not what you're doing, and I've misunderstood, then I both withdraw what I said and apologize. If it is what you're doing, then I stand by it.

Your One True Way is still not the only way to roleplay. It's one way to roleplay, but then so is ignoring the stats and traits and just roleplaying a fighter swinging at stuff.

 

[Maxperson]

What do you think a given Intelligence score establishes about a character other than its modifier on attacks, checks, and saves that use Intelligence and, if the character is a wizard, its spell save DC?

Since we know that average is 10-11 average, we know that below that is below average intelligence and above that is above average intelligence. We can use our real world knowledge of what that means to figure out approximately how our characters should act according to that intelligence score.

 

[Hussar]

Are you implying you prefer a game where the DM polices stats? To me, that sounds onerous and arbitrary as to whether a DM determines “your character wouldn’t know/say/do that” based on an ability score of 5 vs 7 vs 9 vs... The DM has enough on their plate without having to tell players how to run their characters.

I'm implying that the people I prefer to play with would never need to be policed by anyone. The notion of ignoring the character sheet is just seen as bad play. The same way you play up flaws and whatnot, you play up EVERYTHING on your character sheet. It's all important in deciding on just who that character is.

If your low Int character never makes mistakes, never forgets anything, never gets a name wrong, never chooses poor tactics, well, I don't want to play with that character at my table. It's all about choosing what you enjoy right? To me, a player like that just sucks all the air out of the room and makes me not want to sit at that table.

 

[jgsugden]

Thanks for providing the full quote (which I had also provided further upthread). Your interpretation of that is... interesting. As if the character creation prescribes how one must play their character. Again, nothing wrong with house-ruling if you're having fun with it.

I agreed with that above - if people want to ignore their stats and house-rule that you can play your super low intelligence PC as if they had a high intelligence except when making rolls, nothing is stopping you and it can be a lot of fun.

Now, please quote the rule(s) in 5e where it says the players must play their characters according to some strict definition of their stats.

Pg 175-179. Without any hedging language, they tell you what your stats represent. This has all been discussed upthread - a few times.

(Hint: check out p14 of the 5e PHB, the "Your Character's Abilities" part of the Describe Your Character section... you'll find a lot of "might be"s and "usually"s and "probably"s. Nothing is written in stone of how someone must describe or play their character.

The hedging language here is used to indicate that you may have alternative representations of the way the high ability score may manifest. It is saying, "Hey, here are some mainstream interpretations of high ability scores." It is not saying, "Feel free to just ignore your scores and have a low intelligence PC know every fact about every monster, spell, and magic item in the books, while having the full force of Google helping them solve riddles."

Of course, most people will play along with those ideas because it is fun to do so, but a DM needn't get themselves worked up if a player has a different interpretation of how they want to portray the stats of their PC.)

A DM runs a game for two players. Characters are generated using point buy, both are non-Variant humans. One PC ends up with 16s in the physical stats and 9 in the mental stats, while the other has 9s in the physical stats and 16s in the mental stats. One is a fighter, the other a Wizard.

The PCs go out and start adventuring. They come to a bridge over a chasm. The high ability score PC navigates it easily. The low attribute PC struggles to get across. They realize that some monsters are nearby and hide - the fighter has no trouble, the wizard is spotted.

Then they reach the dungeon. There is a riddle to open the dungeon door. Both players listen and the fighter player solves it before it finishes. They enter and the fighter player realizes that the far side of the main chamber is the perfect spot for a trap, halting the duo from advancing. After avoiding the ambush, they encounter the hag and try to persuade her to help them. The fighter player realizes that she is trapped in the cave and they can free her in exchange for her help.

The fighter steal the spotlight from the things where the wizard's stats say they should excel. Further, this dumb, foolish, awkward fighter is coming off like a smart, wise and savvy negotiator. Is that something that should be addressed? Or, as the fighter do you just want to tell the wizard he was an idiot for worrying about mental stats?

And yes, I do recognize there are times rolls are called for - and yes that is a balancing component to the abilities. That is my main point, actually - that you should be using those ability scores to determine success for the mental challenges PCs face. You should not have PCs ignore these ability scores when they do 'mental things', and if their mental stats are low enough they should struggle with some things most of us take for granted that people are expected to be able to do that are not so easy for everyone.

People in 5E call intelligence a dump stat for almost every PC at the same time they're failing to respect how the books describe it being used. If any player can just recall what they know from the books, or use their potentially vast real world knowledge to their aid, then there is no point in having mental scores - but we do. We always have. I bet D&D always will as a sacred cow.