Is Immersion Important to You as a Player?

[Thomas Shey]

That's reasonable. It would just be nice if we could find effectively language to talk about these things that provided clarity.

Yeah, this is a problem that crops up with all these related discussion.s

I would probably cite the problem there as "suspension of disbelief" or a failure of the game's magic circle or something. The ultimate effect, the inability to stay in the setting and/or in character, and a loss of engagement with the game might be the same, but we're talking about different causes with different solutions and different design cases.

Sounds right.

Honestly, the LARP examples earlier make a strong case that perhaps that kind of "submersion of self" into character has a better claim to the word "immersion" than the mechanistic separation of character/player decision making I'm talking about, but we're definitely discussing different design goals with different impacts on the final game that both have merit.

Well, that's like my issue with doing it FTF at all. Its always possible, but I'm always having to work around the fact that the face and voice of the person involved are, from lack of a better term, not right. I had no problem doing it when I was working purely through text, because, face it, readers are used to projecting what they read in text, that's the whole reason fiction works. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some number of potential immersives never do it for my reasons but don't even understand why.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That's an interesting point. I'm tempted to say it's a design flaw to have such options in your game, but I think that's actually violating a design goal of balance, or fairness or equal contribution or something, not actually immersion.

It usually isn't, because its usually punishing things you aren't really supposed to do. And unless you're oblivious to the game function, you should be able to know that. As an example, a game that's supposed to represent fairly gritty modern adventure is not liable to give you good support for stylistic flourishes and other things that would be supported in a game of swashbuckling combat (even its modern equivalent). But often its impossible in practice to outright forbid it (the skills and such to theoretically support it will be present for example). So its a thing that doesn't work well, because, well, its not something that's supposed to work well.

Another example would be someone wants to play a Drunken Master style martial artist. Even in games that have somewhat functional martial arts systems, may well not support that because it doesn't have the special rules required to make being drunk a benefit rather than a deficit.

A game could offer stealth options and make those options ineffective, with the intent of encouraging players who pick that skillset not to use it. A rogue type character in that kind of setting would presumably know that they have a largely useless set of skills and only try to apply them in desperate gambits or ideal circumstances, and thus be well modeled by a player trying to play well.'

It might not even be intended to discourage it so much as have it only work in selective cases (where there's plenty of cover and/or lots of distraction for example), so its useful but a bad choice for a primary operating procedure (because the situations that favor it only occur irregularly).

I don't think that makes for a great game, but I don't think the reason is a failure of immersive design, so much as just kind of cruelty to some of your players?

Again, only if you assume all character concepts are supposed to be viable in every game. Sometimes they're really not supposed to.

 

[Pedantic]

It usually isn't, because its usually punishing things you aren't really supposed to do. And unless you're oblivious to the game function, you should be able to know that. As an example, a game that's supposed to represent fairly gritty modern adventure is not liable to give you good support for stylistic flourishes and other things that would be supported in a game of swashbuckling combat (even its modern equivalent). But often its impossible in practice to outright forbid it (the skills and such to theoretically support it will be present for example). So its a thing that doesn't work well, because, well, its not something that's supposed to work well.

That makes sense, but I was reading the initial example as a mechanic presented on par with more effective choices. Stealth skills that will rarely work, but cost the same as more consistently rolled skills, classes or archetypes designed to do it evoke something that doesn't actually work effectively in the resulting game.

It's a very different scenario to have a mythos game where casting spells is more likely than not to turn you into an NPC, to make that a desperation move instead of a primary archetype, and to print the 3.5 monk which is ostensibly as reasonable a class pick as a Druid. The former tells you something about the world, the latter is a design failure (or a very cruel way to educate players about the relative merits of being about as effective as a tiger, and summoning multiple tigers in the setting).

 

[Thomas Shey]

That makes sense, but I was reading the initial example as a mechanic presented on par with more effective choices. Stealth skills that will rarely work, but cost the same as more consistently rolled skills, classes or archetypes designed to do it evoke something that doesn't actually work effectively in the resulting game.

Well, sometimes you'll get this sort of thing simply because the character generation mechanic is not complex enough to make the distinction. If you've got a game where all skills cost X based on level, you can almost take it as a certainty that some of them are going to be better value to cost than others. But that's not an uncommon type of design, because some people really dislike dealing with variable costs and such in character design, so the distinction gets lost on the altar of simplicity.

Now if you're dealing with a class system or similar and deliberately set up ones that that are generally ineffective compared to others, then yeah your design is either thoughtless or malign [gives a casual glance toward Palladium for no particular reason].

It's a very different scenario to have a mythos game where casting spells is more likely than not to turn you into an NPC, to make that a desperation move instead of a primary archetype, and to print the 3.5 monk which is ostensibly as reasonable a class pick as a Druid. The former tells you something about the world, the latter is a design failure (or a very cruel way to educate players about the relative merits of being about as effective as a tiger, and summoning multiple tigers in the setting).

Though the 3e design team apparently did bake in some trap options, I doubt they did so deliberately with classes; they simply didn't understand their own game (which is obvious given they expected it to be played like AD&D2).

 

[Pedantic]

Well, sometimes you'll get this sort of thing simply because the character generation mechanic is not complex enough to make the distinction..... But that's not an uncommon type of design, because some people really dislike dealing with variable costs and such in character design, so the distinction gets lost on the altar of simplicity.

Truly the darkest and most demanding god of design. Simplicity is expensive, and less correlated with elegance than it gets credit for.

Though the 3e design team apparently did bake in some trap options, I doubt they did so deliberately with classes; they simply didn't understand their own game (which is obvious given they expected it to be played like AD&D2).

Intent has nothing to do with quality, but yeah, I don't think the error was well understood for years.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Truly the darkest and most demanding god of design. Simplicity is expensive, and less correlated with elegance than it gets credit for.

You don't have to sell me on that.

Intent has nothing to do with quality, but yeah, I don't think the error was well understood for years.

I've said before its the curse of not blindtesting; you'll project your expectations on a gaming populace that may be very different on the whole than the people you test the game with.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, that's like my issue with doing it FTF at all. Its always possible, but I'm always having to work around the fact that the face and voice of the person involved are, from lack of a better term, not right. I had no problem doing it when I was working purely through text, because, face it, readers are used to projecting what they read in text, that's the whole reason fiction works. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some number of potential immersives never do it for my reasons but don't even understand why.

I get this; but for me while I can be nicely immersed in a character while writing text for it, the whole in-the-moment real-time interaction piece is missing, which makes it just not the same.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I get this; but for me while I can be nicely immersed in a character while writing text for it, the whole in-the-moment real-time interaction piece is missing, which makes it just not the same.

I'm not talking about it in downtime. I'm talking about all the RPG exchange being done in realtime, but with text. That's how chatroom and a lot of MU* games (to the degree those still exist) work(ed).

 

[Lanefan]

I'm not talking about it in downtime. I'm talking about all the RPG exchange being done in realtime, but with text. That's how chatroom and a lot of MU* games (to the degree those still exist) work(ed).

Ah. I'm thinking of play-by-(e)mail; which I've done in the past.

With something like chatroom, I'd feel limited by my slow and often-woefully-inaccurate typing.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Ah. I'm thinking of play-by-(e)mail; which I've done in the past.

With something like chatroom, I'd feel limited by my slow and often-woefully-inaccurate typing.

And that's probably a limiting factor for a lot of people, honestly. It still was the situation that worked best for me.