Immersion?

[AnotherGuy]

These two things are often at odds with each other though. 'Cool monster to fight' is surely a more common roadside encounter in your games than 'Oh look more wheat fields'.

I now have an urge to include wheat fields, pear tree farms and apiary meadows as part of a travel montage

 

[Thondor]

Lots of great stuff in this thread all.

I think there are (and this thread shows) different things that get classed as immersion. I see three:



1. In character immersion = I am thinking/experiencing this as this person.
2. World immersion = Verisimilitude (this is plausibly a real place – consistent with established fictional assumptions).
3. Experience immersion = Engagement.

Breaking immersion I think has a more useful and common phrase: breaks my suspension of disbelief.

Of the three above: engagement is a precursor for the other two, but I wouldn’t use the term immersion for it.

To me the reason d’etre for all RPG adjacent activities is engagement. Whether that is engagement in a tactical combat, or engagement in a story, or engagement in world creation. I see how people could use “immersion” as a synonym here, but they are different to me.

Immersion is . . . unique to a particular type of RPG.

A game of The Quiet Year is highly engaging. You are creating a fictional world together, adding details, and riffing on ideas. It is when it goes well (it always has for me) very engaging – a state of flow and collaborative consensus base story-telling/world building.
I am not immersed. I am not in that world. We switch hats too rapidly between factions and ideas. It is highly engaging experience and you can spend much time afterwards recalling what you built together.

I can be engaged with any manner of mechanics in any kind of game.

Verisimilitude (world immersion) butts against some mechanics. Games whose mechanics are heavily focused on manipulating and pursuing the story tend to butt against this. Or games that have a mechanic which seems incongruous (or in opposition) with the world.

A certain tolerance for these is normal, but for most people there seem to be tipping points. Games that are emulating a genre tend to dip me in and out of immersion.

In character immersion is the most . . . fragile. It’s also the only one that I don’t have another word for. Fundamentally, it is what I think of when I think immersion. The most things will deny you in-character immersion. There are games where you switch hats too much. By this I mean you literally you change your character or from your character to creating things about the world so often (typically GMless games) that any immersion is fleeting.

Or where some mechanic is so demanding (usually combat) that it makes you step back and engage in a different for long stretches removing the character immersion.

The most immersive game I have experienced is Amber Diceless. There’s just . . . nothing really to get in your way. You are your character (with wacky powers sure). But just you, and the mechanics fade away.

My wife runs an immersive, site-specific, historic, escape room theatre company. Performances are generally in museums and historic sites. What is immersion there for our audience?
Everything around them is real. Usually they are a person from that time. They have tasks to do or a plausible puzzle to solve.
They are stepping into someone’s shoes, surrounded by an environment as close to another time period as it could be. We avoid handing them anything that plausibly breaks that immersion. And handing them an object is very immersive.

In RPGs I think immersion is something that has a pretty high bar. But conversely can be dipped into and out of often if the player wants (given a few things going well). This amounts to wanting it – listening to a description and imagining you are there as your character, and aiming to think as your character.


Side note: I play all types of RPGs for engagement. This ties into a mini rant I have about the way folks talk about “fun” in RPGs.
Is it fun to have a character die? No it sucks.
Is if fun to lose (be it a goal, a place, something, or just a fight) and play through the consequences? This too sucks.
Is it fun to play an awful person? Debateable.
Is it fun to betray your friends or betray yourself? Probably not.
Hell is it fun when someone interprets the rules differently then you? When the GM says no?

What all of these things can be is extremely memorable and very engaging.

I suppose this is because to me, fun is pursuing something in the moment. Too often this "fun" is just being silly or getting a laugh. Engagement is more long term – it is a little more like joy.

 

[Thondor]

I prefer when players make choices that make sense for their characters to make in the given situation within the setting, rather than chasing "story".

I don't understand, when would the two ever conflict? Even if you were making choices based on wanting a good story, wouldn't those choices have to make sense? otherwise you'd get a bad story.

It can be quite common in certain types of games (we might call them story-games) for a player to make a bad choice for their character because it makes a more interesting story. Sometimes this is really good and in keeping with their character . . . sometimes they may be ignoring their character just to have something dramatic happen.
In a more traditional game this tends to go the other way, players make choices that don't fit their character because they want to make the "optimal" choice. Or the choice that the GM is prepared for.

Let's think of this another way: we've all seen a TV episode where a character does something that really doesn't fit their character just because it is convenient for -- the plot, the runtime of the show, or creates some conflict that is "dramatic."
Now we can say that this is a bad story . . . but we can also see that there is less story without that choice. We'd have to find a different story anyway.

My take is that @Micah Sweet favours gameplay that pursues verisimilitude rather than genre-emulation or story-emulation. And there are certainly players who prefer the later two.
Me, I can enjoy both kinds but I like to know which we are doing when we sit down. Some games tend to be better at one or the other.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

It’s sure a lot easier for me to run a game when the players are immersed in their characters.

It’s more likely I can anticipate their actions. And I can craft encounters that are more likely to be memorable.

Here’s to immersion!

 

[thefutilist]

It can be quite common in certain types of games (we might call them story-games) for a player to make a bad choice for their character because it makes a more interesting story. Sometimes this is really good and in keeping with their character . . . sometimes they may be ignoring their character just to have something dramatic happen.
In a more traditional game this tends to go the other way, players make choices that don't fit their character because they want to make the "optimal" choice. Or the choice that the GM is prepared for.

Let's think of this another way: we've all seen a TV episode where a character does something that really doesn't fit their character just because it is convenient for -- the plot, the runtime of the show, or creates some conflict that is "dramatic."
Now we can say that this is a bad story . . . but we can also see that there is less story without that choice. We'd have to find a different story anyway.

My take is that @Micah Sweet favours gameplay that pursues verisimilitude rather than genre-emulation or story-emulation. And there are certainly players who prefer the later two.
Me, I can enjoy both kinds but I like to know which we are doing when we sit down. Some games tend to be better at one or the other.

Ah ok I get what you’re saying and you seem to be agreeing with me to some extent.

If I sacrifice character for plot, then I’m not creating story by making character driven decisions, I’m reproducing a notion of plot, what I’d call pastiche.

On the other hand a lot of the games I play do involve the player adding dramatic or situational architecture in some fashion. Using Fantasy for Real as an example:

I meet the Prince in the swamp, he’s there to find the treasure, I state that he’s my ex-lover and I’m here to win him back.

That’s a very meta style of play but important to note is that it doesn’t require my in character decisions be based on notions of plot or story.