In a Narativist game, immersion in the sense of "I want to act like my assumed persona is really there and that is the primary consideration" tends to get in the way of things.
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Obviously since the players are frequently in, what I believe is called, author stance in a Nar game, first person immersion is going to fall by the wayside.
I think that's probably right as a general rule, although there are subtleties.
First,
some definitions:
In Actor stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have.
In Author stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions based on the real person's priorities, then retroactively "motivates" the character to perform them. (Without that second, retroactive step, this is fairly called Pawn stance.)
Most RPGs use author stance for PC generation, because there is at that stage no PC to be played. Classic Traveller and Runequest are possible exceptions - and I'm sure there are some others - where character generation can be experienced as a part of play, where I'm "being my guy" and resolving my guy's history. But generally, in choosing stats, race, class, feats, starting equipment etc I'm not immersing in my PC - I'm authoring him/her from an external perspective. (And even in Traveller, if I decide whether or not to try for re-enlistment based on a metagame estimation of the payoffs for me as player rather than ingame considerations as my emerging PC, I've left actor stance.)
Second, if a player makes decisions at the authoring stage that are intended to seed a certain theme, then it may be that playing from then on in actor stance will still produce the desired thematic payoff - simply by playing my PC's motivations and knowledge, I'll get to where I want to go.
In my experience, author stance is very common in all sorts of party play, whenever a player makes a decision about his/her PC's motivations and actions out of considerations of preserving party harmony and integrity. (A lot of the time when people say, Don't use roleplaying to excuse being a jerk, what they're actually urging is the adoption of author stance for this sort of purpose.)
A
blog that LostSoul has linked to a few times (including in this thread?) is interesting on this issue of stance:
Players can have different roles in a roleplaying game. . . One type of player role is when the game requires a player to be an advocate for a single player character . . . this means that his task in playing the game is to express his character’s personality, interests and agenda for the benefit of himself and other players. This means that the player tells the others what his character does, thinks and feels, and he’s doing his job well if the picture he paints of the character is clear and powerful, easy to relate to. . .
Games without character advocacy can be tricky because traditionally game design has operated from the faulty assumption that all games involve an identical, overarching player role that only requires the player to “play the character”. . .
when you apply narration sharing to backstory authority, you require the player to both establish and resolve a conflict, which runs counter to the Czege principle. . . that it’s not exciting to play a roleplaying game if the rules require one player to both introduce and resolve a conflict. . .
instead of only having to worry about expressing his character and making decisions for him, the player is thrust into a position of authorship: he has to make decisions that are not predicated on the best interests of his character, but on the best interests of the story itself. . .
all but the most experimental narrativistic games run on a very simple and rewarding role distribution that relies heavily on both absolute backstory authority and character advocacy. . .
One of the players is a gamemaster whose job it is to keep track of the backstory, frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go where the action is) and provoke thematic moments (defined in narrativistic theory as moments of in-character action that carry weight as commentary on the game’s premise) by introducing complications. . . The rest of the players each have their own characters to play. They play their characters according to the advocacy role: the important part is that they naturally allow the character’s interests to come through based on what they imagine of the character’s nature and background. . . once the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation . . . that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved . . . The player’s task in these games is simple advocacy, which is not difficult once you have a firm character. (Chargen is a key consideration in these games . . .) . . . The GM might have more difficulty, as he needs to be able to reference the backstory, determine complications to introduce into the game, and figure out consequences. Much of the rules systems in these games address these challenges, and in addition the GM might have methodical tools outside the rules, such as pre-prepared relationship maps (helps with backstory), bangs (helps with provoking thematic choice) and pure experience (helps with determining consequences).
These games . . . form a very discrete family of games wherein many techniques are interchangeable between the games. The most important common trait these games share is the GM authority over backstory and dramatic coordination . . . this underlying fundamental structure is undermined by undiscretionary use of narrative sharing . . . fun in these games from the player’s viewpoint comes from the fact that he can create an amazing story with nothing but choices made in playing his character . . . And it works, but only as long as you do not require the player to take part in determining the backstory and moments of choice. If the player character is engaged in a deadly duel with the evil villain of the story, you do not ask the player to determine whether it would be “cool” if the villain were revealed to be the player character’s father. The correct heuristic is to throw out the claim of fatherhood if it seems like a challenging revelation for the character, not ask the player whether he’s OK with it – asking him is the same as telling him to stop considering the scene in terms of what his character wants and requiring him to take an objective stance on what is “best for the story”. Consensus is a poor tool in driving excitement, a roleplaying game does not have teeth if you stop to ask the other players if it’s OK to actually challenge their characters.
I think that this is right, and that author stance, in standard narrativist play, is typically going to focus on "What would it be cool for my character to do (or be)?" rather than on broader considerations of "What would be cool for the story?"
Which relates back to another point that has come up in this thread - the sort of play I've been talking about has nothing to do with not imposing consequences for PC acts, or of seeking player permission to impose consequences. But it is about making sure that those consequences will lead to further choices that drive the game forward. (My discussion upthread of how I should proceed with my dwarf PC's behemoth-squashed followers is a real-time working of how a GM thinks about consequences in this sort of play. But it's not the job of the
player to think about his/her PC's actions in that sort of way.)
