Immersion/Being in character

[Umbran]

Immersion is not digital - on or off. There's a sliding scale of immersion.

The greatest immersion I've ever felt was in a live-action game at a local convention. This was not folks running around in the woods with foam swords, throwing beanbags and yelling "lightning bolt!". Nobody actually hitting each other, no airsoft or nerf guns. Only props.

The scene was the opening day at a new museum exhibit, in the contemporary USA. A robbery goes bad, and turns into a hostage situation.

I was playing an off-duty cop, just trying to get a little culture in his otherwise lame and too-work-heavy life. A bunch of the characters were "tied up" (no actual ties used) by the robbers (other PCs), and left to sit. I'm across the room from a pregnant lady threatening to go into labor, and the mayor's wife, and the robbers are *really* not seeming to be in control of themselves. I overhear them on the phone with the authorities outside, including the mayor, and negotiations are *not* going well.

I learn after the game that the Mayor and his wife had been trying for years to have a child, and have failed. And here the mayor's wife is beside a woman going into labor.... the Mayor's wife starts to go into hysterics...

I *need* to do something. I ask one of the GMs what I have on me. Nope, no gun. I've got my wallet and badge in my back pocket...

Can I use the edge of that badge to cut apart my bonds? The GM quietly tells me yes. If I cam mime the motions of trying to cut bonds behind my back for 10 minutes without having the hostage-taking players notice, I can be free....

So I'm there, scraping away at my wrists. I, personally, start to get nervous - if they see me, and find my badge, I'm dead. They keep on pacing the room, never taking eyes off me for too long. My own heart starts to physically race...

And the woman playing the mayor's wife actually breaks into tears. Literally. Actual tears, flushed face, histrionic crying. While the hostage-takers are dealing with that mess, I am free, and start trying to actually physically move out of the room such that these real people don't notice me....

That, folks, was immersion.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

For me being in character is making game decisions from the character's POV - whether it be do personality or information.

Immersion is when I am so in the moment, I feel what the character is feeling - fear, joy, nervousness etc. For those brief moments when the mind and emotions of the character and the player are completely in tune. And that feeling is the reason I do RPGs.

 

[dd.stevenson]

It was recently pointed out to me that I have misunderstood what people say when they talk about immersion RPGs. One of them mentioned it being the same thing as being in character.

I am curious how immersion or being in character works for others. For me being in character has nothing to do with the rules or what other around me are doing. I pop in and out of character at-will and it doesn't really require any effort. Here is an example of how I play (assume I am playing Bob the Rogue).

(snip)

So that is a typical session for me. How do things work for you? Do you say in character for the entire session? If so how does it work when you roll dice or reference a rule? Do those things bring you out of character? How immersive do you get?

For me, immersion ebbs and flows. Sometimes we'll be all over the board with our chit chat and "your mom" jokes and people wandering off to grab another slice of pizza.

Other times we'll be totally absorbed in the unfolding drama. Like a lot of good things in life, it sort of comes and goes and there's no use in trying to force it. Also like a lot of good things in life, I happen to resent it when intrusions (pizza delivery, naked game mechanics, etc) butt in and destroy the immersion when it's happening for us.

Here's an example of how gameplay might go when we're immersed in the game. (Scroll down for the example play.) There are still references to game mechanics, but they're incorporated into the player's step-by-step interaction with the setting.

But in no way does this mean that any of us have lost track of the fact that we're gamers, playing a game. We might say that we've "forgotten that we're playing a game because it's so intense" but that's just a figurative sense of the word "forgot". If anyone at the table did forget, I would probably call the game then and there, and additionally notify the player's family/the police.

Additional thought: I think it's interesting that neither your example nor mine pointed to combat. That's something I've been thinking about lately, as I was recently re-reading the 2E PHB example play section and it occurred to me that they don't even include combat in the example. It's all exploration, and the combat element gets hand-waved at the end. Is exploration the only time (or even the main time) when people experience immersion? I don't think so, but I'm sort of leaning towards the idea that different pillars are able to support immersion in different ways.

Immersion might not have been the best word choice to have start the other thread with - and maybe in character or something else is a better word.

"Immersion" is the same word that computer game reviewers use when they talk about being heavily absorbed with the characters and setting of the game world. If that's what you mean, I think it fits fine. However, I also think the key point as it relates to fjw70's question is that there are several kinds of immersion that one might experience in a TTRPG and so the term is not very specific in that respect.

 

[GrahamWills]

Is exploration the only time (or even the main time) when people experience immersion? I don't think so, but I'm sort of leaning towards the idea that different pillars are able to support immersion in different ways.

One thing that harms immersion is the need for meta thinking; when you need to do math, when you have to think about what your character knows, when you have to translate natural thoughts to rule-specific thoughts -- they break immersion. So immersion is strongly influenced (negatively) by how many rules you have to think about and (positively) by how well you know the rules.

In D&D, combat is very rules-heavy, which means that to have an immersive experience, you need to (a) know the rules instinctively, or (b) mostly ignore rules. Contrast that to exploration, where the only real thing you have to do is roll versus a DC, and everything that modifies that DC is either simple (+2 from help) or is in natural immersive language (I use the magnifying glass I found last week to look carefully at the box -- get a +2 bonus). Often rules are simply ignored (Yep, careful searching finds the woojit).

For me, I can roleplay in 4e, because I am very familiar with the rules, and so I can happily teleport to the middle of the battlefield (move action), dominate the mind flayer (roll 14 on the dice and know that's enough so I don't need to bother checking math), action point, dominate the slaad using my mirror of opposition (again rolling 7 which is enough because 4e is way too generous for charisma casters against will), throw my cloud of darkness 10 squares away onto the throne of Cyric as a minor (using two drow-related feats) and teleport into it as a free action and yell out "Now ALL SERVE ME! Fight, fools, for your queen!" That is 100% natural to me and I don't need to think about it. I don't need to look at my sheet, wait for the GM to confirm hits or anything. I can roll two dice, narrate and role-play my bitchy drow bard/thief/assassin.

I also play with people who cannot role-play in combat because their brain is absorbed with working out the math, squares, counting -- all that. And in a year, that'll be me if I play 4e again.

To be clear, it's not combat -- it's the rule density. I play FATE, and find it much easier to role-play in combat than to do social encounters, because I only have a few weapons and the defenses are all similar. But in social situations, I find it harder to rememberer which skill opposes which attack, so it slows me down and takes me out of the immersive state.

So I think he fact that people do not role-play as much in combat is because of the relative rule density of combat in D&D.