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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[jgsugden]

Fixated? That was like the topic of the side-conversation I was having with @Lanefan. I suppose you didn't read much of that either before you decided to get involved. I can see from your response here that you don't actually have a citation that IQ/10 is something from the "AD&D core books" as you said it was.

Yeah. If you can't see it, there is no point talking to you.

 

[Hriston]

If anything, the dishonesty occurs as a result of the thought policing. The situations where I've seen the most dishonesty is with tables/DMs that try to enforce the player/character divide. Players end up trying to disguise motives, as if they just happened to guess the weakness of this particular monster.

Whereas when nobody polices what's in the player's head, nobody has an incentive to lie.

Player A: "Oh, this is an Ice Devil. Get out your silvered weapons."
DM: (Stares silently at back of DM screen in attempted poker face.)
Player B: "Uh....we may need a Plan B..."

Right, these are tables that highly value actor stance play, but the technique of sequestering player knowledge from character knowledge results in some players shifting into director stance (or maybe even pawn stance) in order to use their player-side knowledge. This is, of course, done surreptitiously and is seen as highly dishonest, so if someone is seen to be using player knowledge outside of that context by someone who's used to playing under that paradigm, it's also seen as dishonest even though it's a perfectly valid way to engage in roleplaying.

That being said, I'm not really talking about using knowledge my character doesn't have when I say that I don't regard its Intelligence as something that puts a limit on my roleplaying decisions because there's no actual connection between my character's Intelligence score and what my character knows unless what my character knows is put to a check.

 

[Hriston]

Yeah. If you can't see it, there is no point talking to you.

I'm not inclined to see something that isn't there just because you tell me it is.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, the problem is that the DM combined the real world (an actual puzzle) with the game world, and then expected the players to only be in one of those worlds, and solve an intellectual challenge with a make believe brain. Which isn't possible. As evidenced by...

So, in other words, you didn't actually approach the problem by inhabiting your character. You let the dice...probability...tell you what to do. How is that roleplaying?

Just like I'm letting the character's stats inform my roleplaying, I'm letting the dice inform my roleplaying.

While I prefer full immersion and character inhabitation, I'll be the first to admit it's not always possible and that sometimes something external (e.g. the dice I roll or my-as-player's level of boredom) is going to affect what my character does.

 

[Hussar]

Just like I'm letting the character's stats inform my roleplaying, I'm letting the dice inform my roleplaying.

While I prefer full immersion and character inhabitation, I'll be the first to admit it's not always possible and that sometimes something external (e.g. the dice I roll or my-as-player's level of boredom) is going to affect what my character does.

Really, I don't see the problem here. We allow dice to determine our fictional positioning all the time. Did I do X? Well, let's roll the dice and see. So, why shouldn't we use random chance influence our portrayal of a character when the player is in doubt what the character would do? Seems perfectly understandable.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Really, I don't see the problem here. We allow dice to determine our fictional positioning all the time. Did I do X? Well, let's roll the dice and see. So, why shouldn't we use random chance influence our portrayal of a character when the player is in doubt what the character would do? Seems perfectly understandable.

Oh, I agree it's a perfectly reasonable way to play.

I just think it contradicts the holier-than-thou claims about "knowing what your character would do" and immersing yourself into the mindset of somebody with a different intelligence.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Has anything better replaced it?

Nothing replaced it. Bad science was bad.

 

[Hussar]

Oh, I agree it's a perfectly reasonable way to play.

I just think it contradicts the holier-than-thou claims about "knowing what your character would do" and immersing yourself into the mindset of somebody with a different intelligence.

It's not a case of "holier than thou". It's simply a case of different preferences. Sometimes you actually don't know what your character would do. I see that as completely immersive. You are so taken with building and portraying this character that sometimes you aren't sure how the character would react. For those who play in pawn stance most of the time, this is never a consideration. You always know what your character would do - it does whatever is most advantageous. All choices are boiled down to "What will make my character more powerful/effective" and nothing else really matters.

Having made the mistake of sitting across the table with that for some time, I know that I will never do that again. I'd rather not game at all than game with people like that.

 

[Imaculata]

Oddly, I tend to favor visual aids over 'theater of the mind' to help my immersion. No matter how good a DM, when a session runs long, attentions start to wane. And when that happens, it becomes harder for the DM to 'set the scene' and for players to 'envision the scene'. Having a bunch of pawns and a map really helps my decision making and imagination. Especially if the map looks really good, and we're using painted minis.

 

[Mannahnin]

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 every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. " - H. L. Mencken.

Of course you can run puzzles and problem solving with dice rolls instead of based on player skill, and if you and your table find that fun, it is NOT wrong.

For me, it's deeply unsatisfying. And it's the result of equating two things (intelligence and physical strength) which are fundamentally incomparable. One is subject to relatively simple metrics (though in reality, of course, lifting weights has taught me how complex and specific real world strength is when we break it down into different tasks and muscle groups), and the other we've struggled to find any meaningful way to measure for a century or more. IQ tests, for example, constantly get modified so that "100" stays in the middle despite people scoring higher and higher on average in successive generations, with greater access to education and information about the world.

I can respect the choice of any individual player to personify their low-Int character by not solving puzzles or being the first to offer ideas to solve problems, but I think if they entirely refrain from helping solve problems they're going to wind up detracting from their own and everyone else's fun. Creative problem solving is one of the most important parts of the game, and the players do that as a team.

I cannot see any viable way to police or fairly judge the choices of other players in this area.