In this thread we have (at least) @reelo, @innerdude and @Campbell contrasting immersion in setting (as narrated by the GM) with immersion in, or inhabitation of, character.
Is Immersion Important to You as a Player?
payn
He'll flip ya...Flip ya for real...
I, for one, am glad the OP started this thread. I enjoy hearing about what immersion means to other folks and the various levels of difference between them. Terms can express levels of experience and definition, and don't have to be pin pointed to be useful.
I wouldn't have drawn a line prior to this thread, but that's obviously just a personal perspective thing on my part. Probably due to the fact that I don't find immersion especially important myself, but it nice surprise when it does happen.
Immersion in the setting as a player as a distinct experience from immersion in your character is an interesting idea.
pointofyou
Hero
It might be useful to break down what different people mean by "immersion" and how different people experience what they call "immersion" but I do not see how anything good or positive can come from trying to say one type of immersion is better than another or denying that something some people call "immersion" is something else.
gamerprinter
Mapper/Publisher
Yes, but having been the DM for most of the last 30 years, I know immersion is important for me as a DM, and though it was important for me as a player, long ago, I haven't been a player in like forever, so cannot claim to know what players prefer - to be honest.
Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
Oh, I think it’s an interesting discussion topic. I’m not trying to shut it down or say it’s fruitless to talk about it. I’m just saying that I think people need to be really clear what they mean by it, or it will be like an American saying “I love watching football” and a European saying, “I do, too!”
So, how about I get into the first time I realized I'd experienced what I'd now call deep immersion in character...
It was in a live action game, rather than tabletop. It was on Sunday morning of a larp convention, and the con ran a sort of project each year, with a game written during the convention.
The scenario was set in an art museum, during an attempted robbery gone wrong, turned into a hostage situation. I was playing an unarmed, off-duty cop who just happened to be at the museum that night.
My character, like the rest of the hostages, got hands tied behind his back (simulated by my holding my hands behind my back). And I'm sitting there wondering what to do. One of the GMs made rounds among the hostages, and when he came around to me, after a couple of questions I determined that the only item I can reach this way was my police badge, which is in my back pocket. I asked if I could use the metal edge of the badge to wear away at my bonds. The GM thought this was reasonable, but I had to keep wiggling my wrists behind my back, as if I were trying to do this, for 10 minutes. If the thieves noticed, well, they noticed.
That was a long ten minutes. While I was doing this, the pregnant character across from me started going into labor. And the Mayor's wife (also a hostage) who had always wanted but couldn't have kids, went into an emotional crisis over that, so the thieves had to come right next to me while I was still trying to free myself.
And my real-world heart rate became elevated. And I had to pay attention to my real-world breathing pattern, to keep it normal so I would not be noticed....
That real-world physiological impact was a sign of solid immersion into the emotional state of the character.
pointofyou
Hero
That does sound really intense. More intense than I'd prefer if I'm honest. LARPing isn't a thing I have any first-hand knowledge of but isn't that kind of experience at least in the expected range?
For me, the first is at its core passive - it's about receiving information and being absorbed in that.
The second is different. I'm not sure that active is necessarily the right contrast, but it's about "experiencing" (I use scare quotes because in some sense the experiences are imaginary) things and then giving voice to them in choosing for one's character.
I've cried - as in, shed tears - in the playing of my character. The approach I used to inhabit my character was - in my imagination - to connect elements of the character's experience to a few real-world individuals whom I knew well. My relationship with them, and ability to empathise with their experiences, underpinned my generation of the appropriate emotional state and response for my character.
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