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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8321801" data-attributes="member: 71699">I'm more interested in characters entering the world and unfolding what is there. I dislike when the world is inert - propelled only by the characters - because for me that misses opportunities for inspiration. Thinking on that, I guess I value most inspiration that is some sense unexpected or surprising. So it takes characters to places they wouldn't have gone if everything had developed outwards from them, rather than having life - purpose and currents - of its own.I do agree about choices as to where to invest effort.I agree, and would go on to say that an immersive world is one that is not detached and academic. If that is where a group landed, they are unlikely to find world-immersion helpful to their RPG.It is like your earlier comment about "top down perspective I find many people who are interested immersion really care about. They want to think abstractly about the shared imagined space"... perhaps it's not the abstract thinking that offends, seeing as it is literally abstraction - 'existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence' - all the way down. Perhaps it is where the approach to abstraction feels too 'top-down' and 'detached'? For me, those are not goals of immersion-in-world.Think of what Tolkien wrote, or Le Guin? Was their immersion in world detached? Le Guin took an anthropologist's approach to her world building. Her worlds are warm places, filled with people as alive and flawed as Tenar and Ged. Tolkien was an academic, and maybe one can criticise his characters as somewhat facile; but I don't believe one can fault them more than one can fault the vast majority of characters portrayed in RPG. Hence I'm doubtful on 'academic' being at issue: does it stand in for a more specific set of faults?There might be a difference between us on who owns what, and theories about that. We both want 'personal' and 'immediate', and we seem to believe different things about how to achieve it. Is part of that, that you want the world facts to be established by everyone at the table, whereas I am okay with dividing up the job, with different participants having different spheres of influence? Is at issue where fiat lies?</blockquote>

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