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...

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[Reynard]

On the subject of ability scores: the things they measure in the game are very specific and I don't think they are particularly good role-playing tools. First of all, on the subject of intelligence: we, here in the modern era, can't even define what it IS, let alone whether there is such a thing as unilaterally "smart" or "stupid." What we call intelligence covers such a broad range of aptitudes it would be impossible, and pointless, to try and make it work in D&D (but various editions sure have tried; looking at you, AD&D 2.5). So, instead, in 5E the Intelligence score of a character affects a very short list of very specific things and THAT IS ALL.

As to the example upthread of the 6 Int barbarian who was raised in a demon hunting culture: it makes far more sense to use the result of that Int check to inform us about the barbarian. If the roll succeeds, that means the barbarian knows the important things, which implies a bunch of potential things about that barbarian's upbringing and personality. Other things are implied by a failure. Use that information to enrich the game, rather than hamstring the player.

Personally, at this point I think D&D could eliminate ability scores as descriptors entirely and instead just refer to them as aptitudes. Strength becomes Athleticism, Intelligence becomes Education and Charisma -- well, you just toss that one because it is a mess anyway (guile? charm? strength of will? magical magicness? who knows!). Players should engage the game however they want, whether pretending to be an elf or operating as an RTS commander. The numbers on the sheet are just part of the decision making process.

 

[Hriston]

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

Also, the Dragon article it appeared in was intended to be humorous and not to be taken seriously.

 

[turnip_farmer]

On the subject of ability scores: the things they measure in the game are very specific and I don't think they are particularly good role-playing tools. First of all, on the subject of intelligence: we, here in the modern era, can't even define what it IS, let alone whether there is such a thing as unilaterally "smart" or "stupid." What we call intelligence covers such a broad range of aptitudes it would be impossible, and pointless, to try and make it work in D&D (but various editions sure have tried; looking at you, AD&D 2.5). So, instead, in 5E the Intelligence score of a character affects a very short list of very specific things and THAT IS ALL.

That seems to me entirely backwards. Ability are not at all specific, they're extremely vague, and don't really make sense for that reason. They don't apply to a short list of specific things; those six scores cover literally every action the character takes where there is a meaningful risk of failure.

It's a necessary gamy abstraction, and probably not worth worrying too much about what it means.

Incidentally, I have scrapped the whole idea of knowledge rolls. I determine in advance of the session roughly what each character would know based on intelligence score, proficiencies and background. Makes more sense that way.

And I don't care whether a player's using 'metagame' knowledge, to be honest.

 

[Maxperson]

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."

There is a lot of talk about roleplaying dumber that your PC, but there is a flip side to this as well. It's simply not possible for a player to roleplay(in the way they are defining it) a PC who is smarter, wiser or more charismatic than the player. That inability would also cause the player to not roleplay their PC consistently with the PCs stats, and therefore(according to @Thomas Shey) would not count as roleplaying.

I've never been at a table with a player who has a 17 or higher Int, Cha or Wis, so I guess all of those 1e and 2e Paladins were not being roleplayed. And many if not most wizards from all editions and many if not most clerics from all editions were not being roleplayed.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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...."

I think its entirely possible to go "huh, that looks like its difficult, the guy with the 8 INT would probably give up and let someone smarter handle it."

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

Which is why you do it when you form your internal model of the character, not later.

I'll return to the same point I made earlier; if your internal model of an INT 8 character and an INT 16 one is the same, its not good roleplaying. Its either not trying or its developing the model with no reference to the set of numbers that is partly definitional of the character, and I don't believe for a moment either of those is necessary for immersion.

This is not saying someone doesn't have the right to do so; it isn't even saying it isn't roleplaying at all (and as I've said, even when it isn't much, token play and avatar play has a long history in the hobby and I'm not going to say it doesn't belong there); its saying its sloppy, and immersion is being used as an excuse.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

Do you IQ test all of your players and then always assign their PCs exactly that score? Because if not, there's no way(according to you guys) that they can roleplay that PC.

 

[Reynard]

That seems to me entirely backwards. Ability are not at all specific, they're extremely vague, and don't really make sense for that reason. They don't apply to a short list of specific things; those six scores cover literally every action the character takes where there is a meaningful risk of failure.

It's a necessary gamy abstraction, and probably not worth worrying too much about what it means.

Incidentally, I have scrapped the whole idea of knowledge rolls. I determine in advance of the session roughly what each character would know based on intelligence score, proficiencies and background. Makes more sense that way.

And I don't care whether a player's using 'metagame' knowledge, to be honest.

They only cover "everything" because the from 3E on the game designers lost sight of how resolution worked in D&D up to that point: namely that the player said "I do this" and the DM said "this is the result." Dice rolls were generally limited to very specific situations ("you have a 1 in 6 chance of spotting the secret door") and everything else was adjudication.

The thing that actually matters in 5E that gets buried is Proficiency Bonus. That is the true measure of a character's competence. 5E's design is backward -- it should be "make a proficiency check" with an eye toward whether a particular ability helps in that check.

But, hey, that's just me grousing. In 5E there is a specific list of things that Strength checks are used for, and then an infinite number of cases where the DM could call for a Strength check, and then a tedious negotiation of whether Athletics applies.

 

[Maxperson]

I think its entirely possible to go "huh, that looks like its difficult, the guy with the 8 INT would probably give up and let someone smarter handle it."

What if he wouldn't give up? I've already given a real life example of someone with an 8 who often didn't give up and came up with some answers that would, given your opinion here, surprise you.

 

[Guest 6801328]

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.

That's an illustrative example. These debates often end up comparing mental challenges to "picking up a weight", but those two things aren't even remotely comparable.

Here's a scenario:

Alfred and Betty both attempt an Athletics test, and they both succeed.

They attempt a different athletics test, and only Betty succeeds.

Does Betty have a higher strength than Alfred? If so, how much stronger?

There's not enough information to really answer that, is there? It could be that the first test was really easy, or maybe it was hard and they both got lucky with the dice roll. Maybe the 2nd test was medium, and Alfred got lucky but Betty rolled a 1.

On the other hand, if we knew that the first test was to pick up a 10 pound rock, and the second test was to pick up a 50 pound rock, we would start to have some information. I would probably guess that Alfred has a pretty low Strength score since he couldn't even pick up 50 pounds, but we still wouldn't have a lot of information about Betty. At least as strong as is required to pick up 50 pounds.

The problem with Int, Wis, and Cha, however, is that there is no unit of measure to express the difficulty of individual tasks. Take a dungeon puzzle where you have to realize that a message is an anagram. How many "mental pounds" does that weigh? In the real world, it could very well be that the brain surgeon fails to see it (because her brain is busy doing numerology on the letters and noticing that when you square the numbers and take the modulus of a certain prime number it almost produces the fibonacci sequence) until the coal miner announces, "Oye, that actually spells KILROY WAS HERE."

 

[Guest 6801328]

I think its entirely possible to go "huh, that looks like its difficult, the guy with the 8 INT would probably give up and let someone smarter handle it."




Which is why you do it when you form your internal model of the character, not later.

I'll return to the same point I made earlier; if your internal model of an INT 8 character and an INT 16 one is the same, its not good roleplaying. Its either not trying or its developing the model with no reference to the set of numbers that is partly definitional of the character, and I don't believe for a moment either of those is necessary for immersion.

This is not saying someone doesn't have the right to do so; it isn't even saying it isn't roleplaying at all (and as I've said, even when it isn't much, token play and avatar play has a long history in the hobby and I'm not going to say it doesn't belong there); its saying its sloppy, and immersion is being used as an excuse.

It's only "sloppy" if you think there's value in it. If you think it's an uninteresting mode of roleplaying then it's not sloppy to ignore it.

It really depends on how important you think the six attributes are in determining who your character is. Certainly if part of the concept is that your character is really dumb, then you should put a low score into Intelligence, even though...no matter which attribute generation system you use...you may not have a low enough number to truly model that. As I said upthread, 8 Int is just a smidgeon below average. But if you want to play a dumb Brute, put your 8 into Int to model it as best you can, and then have at it with the roleplaying.

But if "smart" vs "dumb" just isn't part of the character you are trying to portray, then the only purpose that stat serves is to impose a modifier in certain tasks. And it's ridiculous...and grossly exaggerates the importance of those 6 numbers in roleplaying...to call it "lazy" to ignore it.

The critique that I often see is that somehow it's cheating to dump Int and then not roleplay it. But don't we do the inverse all the time? At least I do. I put a 12 or a 14 in a stat to get the extra hp, or the extra AC, or the bonus to the Wisdom save, but then I make zero attempt to roleplay a tough or agile or wise character. Because usually the interesting parts of the character concept....the personality, the quirks, the phobias, the relationships, the goals...have pretty much nothing whatsoever to do with the six attributes. And I would so much rather spend my energy portraying those.