Is Immersion Important to You as a Player?

[Reynard]

When playing in a TTRPG, how important is immersion -- defined vaguely as "inhabiting your character inhabiting the world" -- to your enjoyment of the game?

Do you endeavor to experience the world of the game through your character and only your character? Do the rules matter for this, or is it more about the nature of play at the table? Are you okay seeing the sets and strings as it were? Do you act, speak and even think as your character for the duration?

If immersion is important to you, how do you react to other players or the GM when it isn't as important to them?

 

[prabe]

It's not so much that immersion-in-character is unimportant to me, so much as I simply have never experienced it. I've been immersed in the narrative before--anxious to find out what was going to happen next--and I've been immersed in the game before--so busy processing rules and options and possibilities that I lost track of time; both of those are intensely pleasurable gaming experiences, but they are not immersion in the character people talk about. I do not think that type of immersion is possible for me, so I do not play in search of it.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

If I want immersion, I'll go to a swimming pool.

 

[Cadence]

When playing in a TTRPG, how important is immersion -- defined vaguely as "inhabiting your character inhabiting the world" -- to your enjoyment of the game?

I don't always need to be immersed in my character, but the most fun games I've had have been ones where I was able to.

Do you endeavor to experience the world of the game through your character and only your character?

Sometimes its trying to have a first person view of them in the game sometimes a 3rd.

Do the rules matter for this, or is it more about the nature of play at the table?

Rules that let me try what the character would want to try are important for that.

Are you okay seeing the sets and strings as it were?

I don't think that's avoidable. But I want to be able to look away and not have them shoved in my face too hard. (The costumes in the Lion King in the Broadway show really don't look like animals, but as long as they're consistent it fades into the background. If some animation showed up it would be jarring. Sub-titles fade into the background in movies in other languages for me - having the characters suddenly start being dubbed half-way through would be really odd. The scenes in Disney's Beauty and the Beast that bother me are the ones that seemed out of place - the lips coming through the tea pot on the head, the armoire changing the villagers clothing. That it was all animated and not realistic looking was fine.)

Do you act,

Never

speak

Never with an accent or trying to imitate the voice anyway.

and even think as your character for the duration?

Just for bits here and there.

If immersion is important to you, how do you react to other players or the GM when it isn't as important to them?

It's fine for it not to be important to them. I don't like it when they throw the gameist elements to the forefront of everything, or when the DM has some world staging things and they ignore them (it's a recreation of a specific place or time, or its a serious game, and they pick an anachronistic character or a comedic name).

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

My group and I sometimes have whole sessions devoted to... err... not doing anything remotely useful but acting in-character. I mean, we wandered through Xen'rik and it was a long walk... but I think the random encounter and a few interactions with native occupied roughtly a fouth of the session, with the 3/4 of it devoted to talking in character about we approached our trip to this continent and our relations with several NPCs... really thinking in character. We do monologues like your average James Bond villain when starting a fight, sometimes.

On the other hand, such sessions are interspersed with sessions where I am thrilled by "tactically fighting a BBEG and looking good doing it" which is mechanical fun and much less immersive.

So, I'd say it's very important... when everything is clicking right. It's not "a little, every session" it's "when immersion happens, it's fun, it doesn't need rules or dice, it's just that we're acting". It's caused by the game but not directly the result of the rules (on the other hand, we play mostly D&D and RQ, the rules don't really support that).

 

[Cadence]

Thinking more, I think it's being able to feel/channel/? the emotions the character would.

 

[Xamnam]

When playing in a TTRPG, how important is immersion -- defined vaguely as "inhabiting your character inhabiting the world" -- to your enjoyment of the game?

For me, the latter is much more what I'm after than necessarily the former. They certainly go together at times, and it's not like I'm avoiding the other. But I want to care, be surprised/worried/thrilled/excited/etc. by the events, locales, and situations I'm going through. This I do feel, for me, is a very separate concern from embodying my character's mind. Mechanics, sets, strings, that stuff is, as Cadence said, pretty negligible most of the time.

If immersion is important to you, how do you react to other players or the GM when it isn't as important to them?

So, the thing that does take me out of it more than any other are other players not taking dramatically substantive circumstances 'seriously'. That said, I can't think of a time where I've addressed it directly, because I'd be telling another player to change their preference, and they've not been at tables where upholding that tone was a agreed upon starting point. So, I get a little internally frustrated, and just try to re-orient scenes away from the jokes and towards the reality of them when I'm in a position to do so, but not so pointedly or immediately that it's an obvious reaction or readily noticeable implicit criticism.

Somewhat separately from your question, this is why I as a player tend to enjoy GM-authored stories/worlds over games that emphasize collaborative ownership. There, the artifice becomes a little too apparent for me, and I lose some of the wonder.

 

[Reynard]

Somewhat separately from your question, this is why I as a player tend to enjoy GM-authored stories/worlds over games that emphasize collaborative ownership. There, the artifice becomes a little too apparent for me, and I lose some of the wonder.

I have found that some games -- Forged in the Dark "play to find out" games as one example -- make immersion harder because you are working from a kind of removed "writer's room" perspective. it is fun in its own way but isn't immersive.

 

[niklinna]

I have found that some games -- Forged in the Dark "play to find out" games as one example -- make immersion harder because you are working from a kind of removed "writer's room" perspective. it is fun in its own way but isn't immersive.

Interesting. I agree that Blades in the Dark isn't immersive in the OP sense at all times, but when it is—which is most of the time, for me—I find it to be one of the more immersive games I've played. I don't mind dipping in and out, maybe that's a factor. Even what might be considered non-immersive, in the sense of being provisional devil's bargains and such that aren't taken, still fill out what the world is or could be like, which to me is highly immersive. The more I unlearn habits, and propose things about the world that the GM and other players then grab and run with, the more immersive it gets!

 

[Umbran]

When playing in a TTRPG, how important is immersion -- defined vaguely as "inhabiting your character inhabiting the world" -- to your enjoyment of the game?

It is great when you can get it.

Do you endeavor to experience the world of the game through your character and only your character?

Actually experiencing it ONLY through the character is not, in my experience, a practical goal. If nothing else, players who cannot remember that we are all, in the end, playing a game, usually become a problem - there's a certain amount of metagaming that should always be engaged, for the good of the people at the table.

Do the rules matter for this, or is it more about the nature of play at the table?

They certainly do matter, insofar as the more intrusive they are into the player's mental processes, the harder it is for the player to maintain immersion.

Are you okay seeing the sets and strings as it were?

See above - the more the player has to change mental gears to interact with rules, the harder it is to maintain immersion, in general.

Do you act, speak and even think as your character for the duration?

As for thinking, I refer to the above - a good player should always maintain some awareness that there are other people in the room, and those people matter.

Act and speak, sure.

If immersion is important to you, how do you react to other players or the GM when it isn't as important to them?

The group should have some common agreement on how immersive the table is going to attempt to be.