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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 7639957" data-attributes="member: 75787">Umbran's comments on what breaks immersion for them is very helpful. There is always a big discussion whenever people talk about "immersion-breaking". For me, having played both the above systems about half a dozen times each, I found DitV much less immersion-breaking than PbtA. But when I look at the mechanics behind each of them, Umbran's position seems naturally stronger. I agree with the generally-stated position that the more system you have, the more apt it is to break immersion.But I think we might be underestimating the differences between how people perceive system. For me, when i played DitV, I still felt strongly in character. When establishing the stakes, I am continually thinking about how much my character cares about this. When I raise the same question, with the rider that I am now thinking about if I care enough to risk the consequences, and the decision to escalate a conflict feels visceral to me. I imagine myself yelling at the opponent and my fist balling up, ready to move to brawling. (I note that I have just moved from 3rd person to 1st person immersion even while discussing this topic).But moves in PbtA, while mechanically much simpler, always have me looking at the playbook in a mild state of despair. I just want to know where the target lives, but the playbook says I get two questions and my character feels focused on just finding the target, so I guess I'll spend a few minutes thinking what else I might ask. I have a mathematically-inclined mind and am a professional statistician, so for me, judging probabilities and if/then rules are intuitive and natural. Maybe that explains why the Dogs rules are simpler for me to internalize -- not sure. But i think the search for a universal formula linking system to immersion is a chimeric one.</blockquote>

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