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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[Lanefan]

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.

Playable, yes; but barely, and with rather severe limitations. Much like a character with a 3 in any other stat.

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

Yes. And there it gets tricky - someone in the 6-8 range could be an idiot savant, brilliant at one particular (and sometimes obscure) thing and completely hopeless at anything else. Or it could be someone who's just rather slow on the uptake and-or needs to be told what to do all the time. Hodor from Game of Thrones would be in the 6-ish range, I think.

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?

You don't. You play it subjective, and look for patterns. If an Int-7 character comes up with the right answer once in a while, who cares. If that same character comes up with the right answer on a regular basis, there's a problem.

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."

Not sure how anyone else does it, but sometimes if I'm playing a less-than-brilliant character and I-as-player come up with a good idea, I'll roll for myself (using roll-under-stat) to see if my character might have thought of it. Fail the roll, idea gets self-censored.

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?

If you're a reasonably bright person playing a not-so-bright character it's on you-as-player to, in effect, largely stop thinking. Don't even try to solve the puzzles or riddles when they arise. Better yet, if you insist on thinking, try thinking of egregiously wrong answers and then advocate for those.

 

[Lanefan]

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

Has anything better replaced it?

 

[Lanefan]

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

Dragon article? It's in the 1e DMG p. 15 under description of abilities: "The intelligence rating roughly corresponds to our modern 'IQ' scores. [plus mnemonic, reasoning and learning ability]"

 

[Mannahnin]

If you're a reasonably bright person playing a not-so-bright character it's on you-as-player to, in effect, largely stop thinking. Don't even try to solve the puzzles or riddles when they arise. Better yet, if you insist on thinking, try thinking of egregiously wrong answers and then advocate for those.

I don't think we're that far off in our play styles. I enjoy playing a not-so-bright character occasionally, and I'll deliberately hang back when it comes to the puzzles or the magical stuff unless my input is really needed. And yes, sometimes it's fun to lampshade it by playing dumb in a funny way.

But I don't think, overall, that trying to stop thinking works very well or that it's fun for everyone.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't think we're that far off in our play styles. I enjoy playing a not-so-bright character occasionally, and I'll deliberately hang back when it comes to the puzzles or the magical stuff unless my input is really needed. And yes, sometimes it's fun to lampshade it by playing dumb in a funny way.

But I don't think, overall, that trying to stop thinking works very well or that it's fun for everyone.

It can, if one approaches the game session as being a time to switch one's brain off for the evening - which can sometimes be a very welcome thing to do!

There's times when I'm quite happy to knock back a beer or two and just let other people do the thinking.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Has anything better replaced it?

Yes. A general understanding that intelligence...or the amalgam of disparate processes we put under that single term...is far, far, far too complex to boil down to a single metric.

 

[jgsugden]

There are a lot of arguments here that could be dismissed if you ask yourself, "How does that happen when we look at an equivalent situation in strength?"

For example - How do we determine what a 6 to 8 intelligence character can think up? We make a judgment call and assign a difficulty to it, usually based upon a DC.

Let's say I put a really big rock in my campaign world. A PC walks up to it and says they want to lift it. At this point in time, I do not have a measured weight for the rock, or any real idea if it is awkwardly shaped so as to make it more difficult to lift than other rocks of the same weight. So, as a DM, I have to decide how to handle it. I determine, in my mind, exactly how big it is and decide whether the PC can just lift it because they have a high enough strength that it likely is under their lifting limit as stated in the book - or I decide it is big enough that I'll require a strength/athletics roll. If I decide on a roll, I have to set a DC.

Let's say I put a puzzle into my campaign world in a carnival booth. A PC says they want to solve it. At this point, I do not have the puzzle worked out in fine detail, and no real specific idea how it is to work. So, as a DM, I have to decide how to handle it. I determine, in my mind, exactly how difficult it is to solve and decide whether the PC has a high enough intelligence to just solve it (based upon their passive intelligence), or if they need to make a roll. If I decide on a roll, I set a DC.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes. A general understanding that intelligence...or the amalgam of disparate processes we put under that single term...is far, far, far too complex to boil down to a single metric.

That's not a replacement, that's a punt.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes. A general understanding that intelligence...or the amalgam of disparate processes we put under that single term...is far, far, far too complex to boil down to a single metric.

That isn't a replacement. That's a negation.

 

[jgsugden]

That's not a replacement, that's a punt.

That isn't a replacement. That's a what they said.

It is a fair statement - we try to simplify concepts down into a label, and time and again, we realize the world is too complex to simplify this way and be accurate. However, when we're trying to play a game, and we want it to be attribute driven, then we have to accept the foibles of inaccuracy and accept some deviation from perfection.

Intelligence in D&D is modeled on IQ, which is an imperfect metrification of certain elements of mental acuity. However, "good enough".

The question at hand is, "Is it ok to ignore it because it isn't perfect," or "Do I do my best to role play that attribute and realize it will not be perfect (but perhaps realize that in exploring that imperfect attempt I might learn something)."