To me, it seems that some RPGers use immersion not to describe a psychological state, but a logical one. For instance, here:
For me, "immersion" describes a mental state: Oxford Languages, vis Google, gives me "deep mental involvement in something" and that seems about right.
I very often get deeply mentally involved in RPGing, as with any other game: we're having fun, time passes, before you know it it's dark outside.
Immersion in the fiction of the game is a different matter. As GM, that doesn't happen very often: I'm busy making decisions about what scene to frame, how to adjudicate a declared action, etc. I think the game that I find the most immersive, GMing, is Prince Valiant, because it's system is very simple, and resolution and decisions about resolution flow so naturally from the fiction.
As a player, it depends. To become immersed, the actual activity of playing the game has to bring me into the fiction, not sit at right-angles to it (or cross-purposes). For me, the game that I have found most immersive in play is Burning Wheel. I don't have to think in any meta-sort of way, for instance about what adventure the GM has in mind or how should I ration my character's abilities. I can just inhabit my character, and declare actions that flow from who they are and what matters to them.
That's not a description of a mental state. It's a characterisation of a similarity relationship between processes taking place in the real world and imagined events occurring in the imagined world of the game.
For me, "immersion" describes a mental state: Oxford Languages, vis Google, gives me "deep mental involvement in something" and that seems about right.
I very often get deeply mentally involved in RPGing, as with any other game: we're having fun, time passes, before you know it it's dark outside.
Immersion in the fiction of the game is a different matter. As GM, that doesn't happen very often: I'm busy making decisions about what scene to frame, how to adjudicate a declared action, etc. I think the game that I find the most immersive, GMing, is Prince Valiant, because it's system is very simple, and resolution and decisions about resolution flow so naturally from the fiction.
As a player, it depends. To become immersed, the actual activity of playing the game has to bring me into the fiction, not sit at right-angles to it (or cross-purposes). For me, the game that I have found most immersive in play is Burning Wheel. I don't have to think in any meta-sort of way, for instance about what adventure the GM has in mind or how should I ration my character's abilities. I can just inhabit my character, and declare actions that flow from who they are and what matters to them.
