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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 9450587" data-attributes="member: 75787">I think there is a strong difference between immersion and simulation. I find I like games which lean towards narrative and/or gamist styles of play, and my experience is that games aimed at simulation pull me out of immersion because they regular require me to think about how the rules work for specific cases. For me, immersion is where you spend most of your time thinking as you would expect your character would think. People who like simulation spend the time and energy to internalize the rules that embody the simulation, and then achieve immersion by being able to think in the way the simulated world works. For me, the exact same is true for a gamist style game. I internalize the rules that embody the situation and so stay immersed. Immersion is really more about how easy it is to internalize rules. It doesn’t matter if they are rules intended to simulate reality, or rules meant simply to be fun. So, for me, D&D 4E is easier to play immersively than 3.5, because the rules are more consistent and so easier to keep “at the back of my mind”. I might think “this monster is kicking our front-line fighters butts; maybe I should kick in my daily stun on it, but I’m pretty sure there’s something nastier deeper in the crypt”. The non-simulational AEDU gamist rules become part of the internal thought process. In contrast, because 3.5, like many simulationist systems, have a ton of special case rules, I often find myself considering how the rules work rather than being immersed.  Narrative games are a little bit different. When I play FATE, for example (not the most pure of narrative games, but good for this discussion),the simplicity and the aspect-based focus make immersion very easy. I almost never think about the rules, being able to think in character all the time. For narrative games, the most common way I get pulled out of thinking in character is when we need to establish a common understanding of the narrative. In a simulationist game, it’s rare not to understand what a wall is about. The GM describes its height and your internalization of the rules mean you understand the target number you need to roll on your d20. For a gamist game, even easier, as the GM directly tells you the target number so even less need to internalize. For a narrative game, most of the time the wall is simply a scene element, which you or the GM could bring into play to do something walls do. But sometimes there’s an assumption clash and the GM needs to tell you that the wall is an obstacle needing overcoming rather than just being background. Immersion, for me, is about thinking in character. It doesn’t need to be “thinking in character in simulationist terms”. In a gamist or narrative system, I am happy thinking in character in gamist or narrative terms.</blockquote>

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