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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Professor Phobos" data-source="post: 2441790" data-attributes="member: 18883">Immersion is a thing that players do. It basically assumes that the player attempts to act as much like the character as possible; this in and of itself is nothing bad. However, it approaches the problem from the wrong direction. A player should not be viewing the interests of their character as the same as the interests of the player. A character probably wants to save the village, get some money, survive the zombie apocalypse, whatever. A player wants to get an interesting story out of the game, which can (and often does) mean sacrificing the self-interest of the character. Since my games tend to involve a great deal of behind the scenes engineering, it is extremely helpful to keep this level of distance between the player and the character. Otherwise, none of my players would ever come up with ideas like "Say, could I get trapped in hell for a while?", or "Hey, you know my Tragic Flaw? Can that come up next session?"One way to look at it is this: Immersion is acting as if you *are* the character, while what I find superior is acting as if you are the character's head writer, for, say, a TV show. A good writer, mind, with attention to consistant and logical (or, at least, entertaining) character development. It makes it easier for when it is time to kill the character off, or retire them, or replace them with a newer, hipper version more in tune with today's modern audiences...(My metaphor might be getting stretched a bit...)It also helps with a game that varies in tone; I run Buffy, so some episodes (i. scenarios, adventures, whatever), are humorous, some are completely serious, some are action-packed, others somber, etc. As you'll see with many TV shows, different aspects of a given character are emphasized at different times. Immersion kind of implies a character played completely straight, all the time. Your Noble-to-a-fault Paladin can be played for laughs and sometimes should, for instance...EDIT: GMs, for instance, can't be bothered to immerse themselves in the multitude of  characters they need to play, so each NPC is best viewed as a tool to achieve ends. "This is a horrible villain who makes everyone hate him", "This is a kindly old sensei whose death will really be tragic", and so on. I find it useful, as a player and as a GM with players who do this, to view PC's the same way.</blockquote>

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