Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 8242769" data-attributes="member: 177">So, there's a lot of game theory verbiage in your post, but I think we can get at this element without referring to games at all, because it isn't a quality of games, specifically.&nbsp; Most of us have probably had the experience of watching a movie or TV show, or reading a book, and forgetting that we are doing so.&nbsp; We become absorbed into the fiction, and the outside world drops away.&nbsp; You no longer sense the person sitting next to you in the theater.&nbsp; You no longer notice you are turning pages.&nbsp; That the real world exists is forgotten for the moment.&nbsp; That, in a nutshell, is immersion.&nbsp; Immersion is sought in RPGs for the same reason it is sought in movies, TV, theater, and books.Now, in RPGs, we are usually talking about a subset of that kind of immersion - immersion in the first-person experience of a single character.&nbsp; But the reason that experience is important to some is still the same.Mind you, I think the assertion that you cannot be role playing while using dissociative/non-diagetic mechanics is like saying an actor cannot actually be feeling emotions while remembering their blocking, where the camera/audience is and adjusting to suit, or recalling their lines.&nbsp; I can accept that maintaining immersion in the role can be harder when your mechanics are outside the fiction, but it is not impossible.&nbsp; Humans aren't great at multitasking, but we can sometimes achieve it to some degree.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 8242769, member: 177"] So, there's a lot of game theory verbiage in your post, but I think we can get at this element without referring to games at all, because it isn't a quality of games, specifically. Most of us have probably had the experience of watching a movie or TV show, or reading a book, and [I]forgetting[/I] that we are doing so. We become absorbed into the fiction, and the outside world drops away. You no longer sense the person sitting next to you in the theater. You no longer notice you are turning pages. That the real world exists is forgotten for the moment. That, in a nutshell, is immersion. Immersion is sought in RPGs for the same reason it is sought in movies, TV, theater, and books. Now, in RPGs, we are usually talking about a subset of that kind of immersion - immersion in the first-person experience of a single character. But the reason that experience is important to some is still the same. Mind you, I think the assertion that you [I]cannot[/I] be role playing while using dissociative/non-diagetic mechanics is like saying an actor cannot actually be feeling emotions while remembering their blocking, where the camera/audience is and adjusting to suit, or recalling their lines. I can accept that maintaining immersion in the role can be [I]harder[/I] when your mechanics are outside the fiction, but it is not impossible. Humans aren't great at multitasking, but we can sometimes achieve it to some degree. [/QUOTE]

Verification