Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
I guess this doesn't normally apply in any games I've run. The first thing I do is send the PCs to some location they've never been before. They have no connection or knowledge of the people in town unless they have a class feature, feat, background trait or something declared in their written background that would give them it. I would allow skill checks to learn a little bit, but I prefer all the PCs knowledge come from somewhere that is rules based or I've established. Making stuff up needs a discussion that is too long to happen at the table.For me this is where issues with immersion kick in. If I was really a badass rogue I would know the town, know its people, know where to go and who to meet.
But if I'm relying on the GM to dribble all this out to me, it breaks my sense of immersion pretty badly.
Your badass rogue can be just as badass because he has amazing skill at stealth and combat and can easily fast talk his way out of any unexpected situation rather than because he knows the people in the area.
In fact, that's pretty much the entire point of being an adventurer in my eyes. You go into unexplored territory(cities, dungeons, caves, forests, ruins, planes) that are dangerous and unknown. You explore, you attempt to solve mysteries and defeat obstacles standing in your way(be that literal or figurative). 99% of the job is reacting to the unexpected/unknown.
When I go into a game, it's pretty much with the assumption that my character doesn't know anything at all about what's going on and try to figure it out based on the clues the DM gives me. That's kind of the fun. To be in situations I can't predict or control and try to find my way out of them.
Do you really spend your time in the real world thinking like this? I certainly don't. I don't walk into a room and say "I bet that my brother is standing in the corner of the room when I walk in. Oh, look, he IS!"And in my experience it does not, as an empirical matter, break immersion when I narrate something that fits in with my expectations that I have as my character. Just as, in the real world, it doesn't break my immersion when I reach my hand out to greet someone, expecting him/her to shake it, and s/he does.
I expect absolutely nothing before I see it for myself. I walk into a room and look around and see what is there rather than coming up with expectations in advance of seeing.
Besides, there's NO way that the thought process behind narrating things you EXPECT to be there doesn't involve out of character thinking.
In character your character is thinking "I walk into the room, I look around. What do I see?"
Inserting "I see the friend of mine from the thieves guild who is waiting for me because we agreed to meet yesterday." is assuming you have control over your friend to make him be there on time and that he actually agreed to show up at all. You don't have that power. Only your friend can decide if he showed up or not. And your friend is controlled by the DM.
On top of that it likely involves the thought, "I'd like my friend to be there because it allows me to better show off my character and make him seem more real to the rest of the table. Plus, it'll allow me to establish my storyline into the game so that the game will involve my background more directly. This will establish it as one of the plot threads that needs to be followed by the DM in the future."
This sort of thinking is the thinking that goes into writing a story or when you are doing improv acting. It is entirely appropriate for that setting. In improv, especially, the goal is for each member of the cast to create and establish aspects of the story and for every other member of the cast to accept them as true and go with it.
In storytelling games(which generally follow the paradigm of improv theatre), this is also generally accepted as best practice. In RPGs, the generally accepted paradigm is that the DM gets to control scene framing, the actions of the NPCs and the results of your actions. You roleplay your character reacting to these elements. Some games agree to play the games in a much more "improv" style where the DM is more of a story moderator than a DM. That's fine, but it is definitely not the common style.
Just like in real life when I reach out my hand to someone and I expect them to shake it, my "immersion" is not hurt if the person shakes it or DOESN'T shake it. I knew both of those things were a possibility when I reached out my hand. I thought one was more likely, but both are things that are possible. But the world doesn't always conform to my expectations.
Wait. You have control over your environment in real life? You can just close your eyes and say "I expect my long lost friend that I haven't seen in 20 years to be waiting for me when I get home" and it happens? No one has that power. It isn't a "loss of control" when you never had that control in the first place.(in part because it tends to reduce all expectations and increase uncertainty and a quite unimmersive sense of loss of control over one's immediate environment).
Exactly like real life, you have no idea what will happen at all. You can only guess and see if your guess is correct.
Yeah, I definitely see you coming at the game from an improv theatre mindset. You don't plan too far in the future because the other players at the table have the ability to redefine the story at any time and take it in a different direction than you expected. No use planning if your plans are extremely unlikely to come to fruition.Whereas I tend not to know who is for what, and where s/he came from, and how exactly s/he relates to the PCs, until this comes out through play. I'm expecting to be flexible and responsive to the players' action declarations, and also to their hopes/expectations for where the story is going.
Heck, I've even seen the frustration when an improv actor really wants the story to involve them more but people keep failing to pick up on their plot threads and their character never becomes an important enough part of the story.
There's a group of people who do a show called The D&D Improv show here. They basically play D&D on stage in costume using the methods you've described. They have a "Dungeon Master" but his job is only really to keep the actors on track, to periodically remind them about the "main story", to throw in plot twists they need to react to, and to make sure everyone gets enough "screen time". Their show is great for being a hilarious random group of things that happen with a plot that normally falls apart after their first show(they normally do 10 shows over 10 days, each show continuing from the last). It's awesome and funny. But I certainly wouldn't want it to be my actual D&D game. Too many cooks mean the story meanders around without any real focus. This normally involves me saying "So...does anyone remember they are searching for the Crown in order to become the ruler of the kingdom? No? Completely forgotten about, eh?"