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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BryonD" data-source="post: 5874112" data-attributes="member: 957">Right there is the heart and core of the difference.  When I play D&D it would be a massive disservice to call it "a game (period)".Yes, game elements are key and central.  But the narrative immersion elements are actually MORE than equal to the simple "game" part of the fun. This is a fundamental disconnect in what various groups want from the experience.When I read a novel I'm not "playing" along with the characters.  And yet I'm massively engaged if the novel is good.  That concept of being "engaged in a novel" is met and exceeded in a great RPG session.  So, for me, that contradicts and overrides this concern you have expressed in two independent ways.First, even if I am off-screen, I'm highly engaged in the activities of the other players and characters because not only is all the greatness of an excellent novel there as a minimum, but my character's past actions and future possibilities are closely entwined in the current activity.The thought of someone being not engaged because their character is down is, frankly, just really sad to me.  I've been told that people will start playing video games or browsing the internet while they wait for their character to come back "into" the game.  To me that is no less than saying that someone has broken out a laptop in the theater during a movie or that they start completely skipping over chapters in a novel they are reading.  The only possible justification is if the movie or book just really sucks.  And because to me the RPG experience is superior to books and novels, then the comment on the game in question is even worse.Second, if I was reading a great novel and a character was hurt in a battle but the author just declared that they got better though simply because the next piece of action was the next day and they needed to be better, then I'd set aside that book as crap.  If it is wrong in a novel then it is wrong in a great RPG *as I can and do experience it*.When you start calling the experience "a game (period)" and using that to justify hand waving away narrative continuity then you are tossing aside what is the greatness of the experience to me.  And when you say that engagement requires personal activity at every moment then you are describing a circumstance that falls short of the greatness of the experience to me.And the "to me" parts are important there.  I completely accept that you may have zero interest in the parts that are so awesome to me.  In the end only a tiny fraction of society is truly interested in TTRPGs in the first place.  So I certainly can't even try to claim right or wrong or some kind of preponderance of opinion.But I do think that other media can provide what you want but RPGs are pretty much unique in their ability to provide what I want.</blockquote>

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