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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 6269791" data-attributes="member: 75787">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.</blockquote>

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