D&D General The History of 'Immersion' in RPGs

D&D historian Jon Peterson has taken a look at the concept of 'immersion' as it related to tabletop roleplaying games, with references to the concept going back to The Wild Hunt (1977), D&D modules like In Search of the Unknown, games like Boot Hill, and Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood speaking in Dragon Magazine.

Immersion and Role Playing in the 1970s

The idea that role playing involved a property called "immersion" occurred to the early adopters of the 1970s fairly early. The earliest e...

playingattheworld.blogspot.com

 

[Guest 6801328]

This may be a thread in the D&D general forum, but the point goes well beyond any incarnation of D&D.

And as I've said before, I'm not insisting that someone play an 8 INT character as an idiot; but if he's not even paying attention to the fact that his character has that 8 INT when making his decisions, he's not roleplaying him. He's using him as a vehicle to play himself, or, at best, playing a version of a character in his head that's disconnected to the one on paper.

How do you suggest one roleplay the difference between 8 Int and 10 Int? Because, like I keep pointing out, according to the rules of the game there's really a very slim difference between the two.

EDIT: I mean, do you really think there's a discernible difference? Like, there's some puzzle the party faces, where the player would say, "If only I had 10 Int I would know the answer. But since my Int is 8 I probably do not...."

EDIT2: And, if I were to sit there worrying about such things, it would be the exact opposite of immersion.

 

[Maxperson]

The dishonesty is calling what you're doing when you do that roleplaying. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with token or avatar play, but when you claim you're roleplaying while ignoring the established traits of the character, I call shenanigans.

One True Wayism at its best.

 

[Lanefan]

One True Wayism at its best.

Sometimes, one-true-wayism has a good point to make.

 

[Maxperson]

Sometimes, one-true-wayism has a good point to make.

And other times, like in this situation, it's flat out wrong. There are many different ways to roleplay. Being unable to act out the PC's stats does not stop what you are doing from being roleplaying.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

I think the game functions much better when players can make good decisions for their characters, and it's left at their discretion whether they want to personify a low mental stat by dumbing down their own performance. A low Int score can be adequately represented by them portraying the character as generally not bright even if they do have the occasional good idea or spot the solution to a puzzle. And by the mechanics of not being good at Int-based skill checks to get info from the DM.

Again, it comes down to consistency.

If your character never before had a really good idea, never before knew any esoteric lore about monsters, etc, but, suddenly, when it would be most advantageous for your character to know something, pulls out some fact, well, one time would likely get ignored. But repeatedly? "My character is only stupid when it doesn't matter" is bad roleplaying. Yeah, he's dumb as a rock whenever it's not important, but, somehow, every time we're in some tense situation, suddenly Door the Half Ogre Barbarian becomes Sun Tzu.

If it happened in any other medium, we'd pillory the writers. But, "Oh, you can't tell me how to roleplay" and "don't you badwrongfun me" suddenly become valid defenses? No thanks. I'd rather play with people who can actually play their characters. I have zero interest in playing with people like that anymore. Been there, done that, and all it does is suck the fun out of the game for me. So,I don't play with people like that anymore.

 

[turnip_farmer]

Again, it comes down to consistency.

If your character never before had a really good idea, never before knew any esoteric lore about monsters, etc, but, suddenly, when it would be most advantageous for your character to know something, pulls out some fact, well, one time would likely get ignored. But repeatedly? "My character is only stupid when it doesn't matter" is bad roleplaying. Yeah, he's dumb as a rock whenever it's not important, but, somehow, every time we're in some tense situation, suddenly Door the Half Ogre Barbarian becomes Sun Tzu.

If it happened in any other medium, we'd pillory the writers. But, "Oh, you can't tell me how to roleplay" and "don't you badwrongfun me" suddenly become valid defenses?

Not 'suddenly'. Those are always valid defences.

I expect different things from a game than a book, or a film. Lazy, derivative worldbuilding would bother me in a work of fiction, but I'm all for it at the gaming table.

Good thing we all have different tables.

 

[Hussar]

Not 'suddenly'. Those are always valid defences.

I expect different things from a game than a book, or a film. Lazy, derivative worldbuilding would bother me in a work of fiction, but I'm all for it at the gaming table.

Good thing we all have different tables.

Oh, hey, now that I agree with. I'm purely stating this one from my own point of view. This all started as a difference in views on what would be enjoyable at a table. For me, I treat character consistency and portrayal as important. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, others don't. For me, and I'm only talking about my own personal enjoyment, playing at such a table is not fun for me.

 

[Mannahnin]

Not sure how you're defining Int 3 but to me that implies someone compromised enough to be unable to self-dress and maybe or maybe not capable of coherent speech. Remember, 3 is the extreme low end of the bell curve and thus implies great disability - way way beyond simply being a "dumb person".

"Animal" Intelligence used to be defined as the 2-4 range. Int 3 falls right in there.

For low Int e.g. the 6-9 range, this is fine. When you get down to 3, however, you'd better hope there's another character telling you what to do in very simple words, 'cause otherwise you're pretty much acting on sheer instinct in matters of food, water, and self-defense and not really doing much else.

I don't think this is really accurate. It's a bit of a caricature that D&D players have batted around for decades. Moldvay does define the 3 Int as having communications difficulties, but in no edition does D&D tell you that your 3 Int character can't dress themselves because they're too stupid. The closest I remember seeing is Feeblemind or 3rd edition ability score damage, where being reduced to zero would incapacitate a character. 3 Int is, in most editions, still supposed to be a playable character.

And again, 3 is the extreme example. In our actual games we're dealing with more the 6 to 8 range, right?

I asked Thomas and he didn't answer, but how do you define "whether the character is actually sharp enough to come up with something" in any objective manner which we can agree on at the table for a ruling? Do you require EVERY idea any character has to involve an Intelligence check, or the party can't use the idea? Or do you as DM just overrule the players sometimes? "Sorry, Thag is too dumb to figure out the word puzzle and none of the rest of you did it, so you're not getting through the door."

How does anyone make a ruling or judge whether my 6 or 8 Int character couldn't come up with an idea? If you make it a check, where do we draw the line and not require checks anymore?

Do we just assume, based on that IQ approximation someone came up with in the late 70s or early 80s, that if I have a 126 IQ and my character has a 13 Int, any idea I can come up with he can come up with?

If so, does that mean that if I play a character with 12 or lower I have to make a check every time? And that if I play one with a 14 or higher the DM should let me roll checks to solve any puzzle or problem I can't think of a solution to?

 

[Oofta]

Maybe we're playing different versions of D&D? In the version I play (5e) there is nothing that defines just how smart or dumb the various Int scores are. In fact, a really low Intelligence means that you are at most (with a score of 3) just 20% less likely than average to succeed on related tasks (in which the outcome is uncertain and there is a consequence to failure.) In other words, even with an Int of 3 the difference in outcomes is something that wouldn't be immediately obvious and would have to be observed statistically over multiple events.

Not exactly a drooling idiot.

That said, I love to lean into it...perhaps too much...and I'll ham up my low Int (or low Cha, or low Wis) characters for narrative effect, but the reality is that the difference between an attribute of 6 and an attribute of 14 is statistically significant but nowhere near the difference between, say, IQ's of 60 and 140. Not even in the same ballpark.

If you want to roleplay a low Int as sackful-of-hammers dumb go for it! That can be a lot of fun, and the game allows it. But if you want a game in which the low Int actually defines you as really dumb, maybe you're the one who should go play a game that suits your tastes.

Would you say the same thing about, say, strength? That a 3 strength wouldn't be noticeable? The monster with the lowest intelligence that I can think of that can still speak is an ogre with a 5 intelligence. Intelligence might not be visible, but I think it should make a difference.

Whether it as an impact at the table is up to the table and what they enjoy.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Acutally we do; in that one's Int score can be (and in 1e, was) vaguely defined as one's IQ divided by ten.

Got an IQ of 126? Divide that by ten plus rounding error gives you Int 13.

That was in the days before IQ became a widely discredited measure.