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Is Immersion Important to You as a Player?
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<blockquote data-quote="Reynard" data-source="post: 8809637" data-attributes="member: 467"><p>Is that a thing people say?</p><p>I think the thing that reduces or breaks immersion is having to pull yourself out of the fiction to deal with the mechanics. Some trad games (especially those with light and consistent rules) minimize that, particularly whne everyone knows them. But I imagine that is true of certain narrative games as well. But if you have to reach for your character sheet, or "break character" to interpret dice results or negotiate the fiction, you are by necessity going to be breaking immersion as well -- regardless of game style. I think it is more common for certain kinds of modern narrative games to ask participants to remove themselves a level from immersion in order to engage the system to achieve specific "story" goals, but certainly many trad games require similar degrees of immersion breaking to engage complex mechanics or negotiate weird corner cases.</p><p></p><p>I think (contrary to my earlier opinion on the subject; see, discussions can lead to new points of view!) I think the defining factor isn't actually trad versus narrative, it is how much the game asks the player to do separate from what their character is doing. "I swing my sword. I hit! I do 0 damage as I slice through his stupid face" is immersion breaking at least a little, but less so than , "I swing my sword. I got a rank 3 hit with a 12% chance of crit. So that's 14 damage minus armor rating, plus a 3 round movement penalty. I guess I stab him in the thigh?"</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Reynard, post: 8809637, member: 467"] Is that a thing people say? I think the thing that reduces or breaks immersion is having to pull yourself out of the fiction to deal with the mechanics. Some trad games (especially those with light and consistent rules) minimize that, particularly whne everyone knows them. But I imagine that is true of certain narrative games as well. But if you have to reach for your character sheet, or "break character" to interpret dice results or negotiate the fiction, you are by necessity going to be breaking immersion as well -- regardless of game style. I think it is more common for certain kinds of modern narrative games to ask participants to remove themselves a level from immersion in order to engage the system to achieve specific "story" goals, but certainly many trad games require similar degrees of immersion breaking to engage complex mechanics or negotiate weird corner cases. I think (contrary to my earlier opinion on the subject; see, discussions can lead to new points of view!) I think the defining factor isn't actually trad versus narrative, it is how much the game asks the player to do separate from what their character is doing. "I swing my sword. I hit! I do 0 damage as I slice through his stupid face" is immersion breaking at least a little, but less so than , "I swing my sword. I got a rank 3 hit with a 12% chance of crit. So that's 14 damage minus armor rating, plus a 3 round movement penalty. I guess I stab him in the thigh?" [/QUOTE]
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