thefutilist
Adventurer
Great post. I'll offer an alternative explanation although it's more convoluted than yours and I'm not sure it's more true.
The reward of roleplaying is either in challenge or in expression, and it's a social reward. A lot of people who claim to be immersionists are really interested in challenge and not expression. They react to a lot of narrative techniques the way they do because those techniques would in fact destroy the point of play for them.
There are also people who are interested in expression but claim they're interested in immersion instead. I propose the following reasons as to why and they're mostly rooted in how deeply dysfunctional most role-playing is.
Authority: The traditional set up of play is that the 'only' thing the player has control over is the internal mental state of the character, their attempted actions and what they say. This would and can be functional but so much role-playing is filled with nonsense that these avenues are often negated, effectively shutting down any means of artistic expression. Usually in the form of 'roll to have authority' rather than the roll leading to a form of reincorporation. Or in some cases the GM just flat out usurping authority. 'you feel scared' 'you feel happy' and so on.
(example: `Something like the steel test in Burning Wheel is being used to say 'well your characters priorities are actually those of a coward.' Rather than the more functional version where fear is allowed to dictate action in spite of expression. Although this would still be rejected because of other reasons listed below)
Social contract: Games as railroad lead to games where the social contract of play is based around stuff other than expression. A popular lament in role-play culture is there's the selfish git who says 'it's what my character would do.' But what your character would do IS you addressing premise and making an artistic statement. This whole social contract to get along or keep the party together is often a bit like telling a rock star they have to make meaningless pop. People often accept the terms of this contract via social pressure and the form of the game (railroads) but at this point they've massively hamstrung their expression. Any other mechanic that potentially does so is a step too far,
Most social mechanics are sociopathic: Task based social mechanics that rely on stuff like charm/deceive/persuade are sociopathic. They treat the means as instrumental and the result is either 'they're moved or they're not.' They actually work fairly well in challenge based play but are basically a form of poison for the expressionist. And because most role-play design is lazy slop. These mechanics have basically been ported from game to game for forty years.
Misinterpreting author stance: Author stance is often held up as being different to 'what your character would do' but what your character would do is how you create, well character driven stories. Our poor immersionist has already accepted a social contract that means they're playing in author stance (must follow the railroad or stick with the party and so on). Then they're told they must do things for the good of the story, which really can only amount to inane pastiche rather than genuine expression.
Anyway as someone who used to identify immersion as a goal of play the above seems to give some explanation of why I did so. When I play now the primary (maybe the only way) of choosing what my character would so is because the priorities and current situation seem to demand it. As if I am my character or my character is speaking to me or whatever. I'm just happy using a load of other mechanics that I would previously think were 'immersion destroying' because I'm not being hamstrung by the above.
