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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[Swarmkeeper]

This inherently ignores something - if your low score is wisdom, and in some instances intelligence, then making this assessment is something your PC should generally lack the wisdom (or in those rarer circumstances - intelligence) to realize and follow. A wise cleric might realize it isn't a good idea for him to try to solve the puzzle of naught evil death, but a fighter with a wisdom of 8 might very well think that relying upon luck is a perfectly reasonable thing to do when trying to solve that puzzle.

Nothing is ignored. The player chooses how to portray their PC.

 

[Hriston]

However, when they say they just ignore their character's intelligence score when the PC uses their memory, deductive reasoning, knowledge, mental acuity, reasoning, and recall ... THAT means someone is ignoring their character's established traits.

What do you think a given Intelligence score establishes about a character other than its modifier on attacks, checks, and saves that use Intelligence and, if the character is a wizard, its spell save DC?

 

[Hussar]

Nothing is ignored. The player chooses how to portray their PC.

Funny how that choice is almost universally to the advantage of the PC. These types of players never choose to portray their character as a disadvantage.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Funny how that choice is almost universally to the advantage of the PC. These types of players never choose to portray their character as a disadvantage.

Not sure what you mean by “these types of players”. In my games, as prescribed by the definition of roleplay in the 5e PHB, players determine how they portray their characters. The DM doesn’t mandate they play stats in any particular way. If a DM is presenting real and varied challenges, the dice will make sure the weaknesses of the PCs will shine, too. Not to mention, the goals of play are to have fun and create an exciting, memorable story - we regularly see players at our tables leaning into their PC’s weaknesses and flaws in the effort to achieve these goals. So, yeah, not close to “universally to the advantage of the PC” IME or in the experience of other 5e DMs I know.

Are you implying you prefer a game where the DM polices stats? To me, that sounds onerous and arbitrary as to whether a DM determines “your character wouldn’t know/say/do that” based on an ability score of 5 vs 7 vs 9 vs... The DM has enough on their plate without having to tell players how to run their characters.

 

[jgsugden]

...
Are you implying you prefer a game where the DM polices stats? To me, that sounds onerous and arbitrary as to whether a DM determines “your character wouldn’t know/say/do that” based on an ability score of 5 vs 7 vs 9 vs... The DM has enough on their plate without having to tell players how to run their characters.

I can't speak for him, but I can say this for me: I prefer a game where policing stats is not at issue: where players play the PCs that are described by the character creation process, and as described by the rules, they do their best to play a character with a low intelligence as if it had low intelligence, a character with a low wisdom as if they had a lot wisdom, etc...

Where players play themselves, rather than their PCs, I usually have a conversation with them first to raise awareness and offer suggestions.

If the issue persists, I take it out of their hands by using further abstraction. As an example, if a PC is ignoring their low intelligence, instead of telling them a riddle, I tell them the PCs are given a riddle, and then make the riddle answer reliant upon an in game fact that the player can't know. For example, the riddle might be delivered in dwarven, some of the words might be synonyms for nautical terms in dwarven, and those nautical clues might provide the context to realize that the riddle is describing the ship of a certain famous Dwarven Mythical Pirate. And, if the player is exhibiting unreasonable levels of knowledge about the monsters in the setting, they'll start to encounter variants of those monsters with different stats, or homebrew monsters that they will not know anything about.

In the end, D&D is an RPG - a role playing game. If you're not playing the role described by character creation, you're not playing the role playing game described by the books.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I can't speak for him, but I can say this for me: I prefer a game where policing stats is not at issue: where players play the PCs that are described by the character creation process, and as described by the rules, they do their best to play a character with a low intelligence as if it had low intelligence, a character with a low wisdom as if they had a lot wisdom, etc...

I agree... up until the colon... I would argue that after the colon is an example of policing how someone at your table is required to roleplay. Maybe that policing happens just once at session zero, or maybe you need to speak to a player outside the game for violating this requirement (as you go on to say below), but it still is policing.

Where players play themselves, rather than their PCs, I usually have a conversation with them first to raise awareness and offer suggestions.
If the issue persists, I take it out of their hands by using further abstraction. As an example, if a PC is ignoring their low intelligence, instead of telling them a riddle, I tell them the PCs are given a riddle, and then make the riddle answer reliant upon an in game fact that the player can't know. For example, the riddle might be delivered in dwarven, some of the words might be synonyms for nautical terms in dwarven, and those nautical clues might provide the context to realize that the riddle is describing the ship of a certain famous Dwarven Mythical Pirate. And, if the player is exhibiting unreasonable levels of knowledge about the monsters in the setting, they'll start to encounter variants of those monsters with different stats, or homebrew monsters that they will not know anything about.

In the end, D&D is an RPG - a role playing game. If you're not playing the role described by character creation, you're not playing the role playing game described by the books.

I'll refer us all back to the definition of roleplaying as explained by rules of D&D 5e: "it's you as a player determining how your character thinks, acts, and talks."

Yes, the player can certainly use the character creation process to inform how they play their character. To be clear, I don't think I've seen too many players not do that. But, again, I'll stand by the assertion that the 5e DM has zero role in telling a player how to play their character. IMO, it's a big waste of DM time and energy to worry about how someone is playing their character. Someone's INT 6 character, for example, coming up with smart tactics does not rise to the level of violating the goals of play, IMO. To argue otherwise, to use your logic, "you're not really playing the role playing game described by the [5e] books." I don't subscribe to your logic, though. If you want to police adherence to PC stats for your own roleplaying purposes as a 5e house rule at session zero, and that is fun for your table, go for it! That's a big goal of play: for everyone to have fun.

As for a player "exhibiting unreasonable levels of knowledge about the monsters in the setting", that's a metagaming issue. I've learned that - to paraphrase Fight Club and @iserith - the best way to deal with metagaming is not to worry about metagaming. Players in our games are welcome to use whatever knowledge they want. However, what the player, and hence their PC, thinks they know and what is actually true in the game world could be very different things. If the player, via the PC, acts rashly without testing metagame assumptions in-game, they might find their PC in dire circumstances. Monster variants are one way to deal with that. Players learn very quickly to engage with the game world rather than act upon brash metagame assumptions.

Brings me back to this point which ties back to the OP: If a DM finds themselves saying: "Your character wouldn't know/do/say that", immersion is broken.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, and those limitations in D&D 5e, represented by low numbers on the character sheet, come into play when the DM determines that a roll is necessary to resolve an action the PC is attempting. Low numbers naturally = less of a chance of success. Most often, therefore, it is not a smart play to attempt things that involve your PC's weaknesses if it can be avoided. I would add that it is not my job, as a 5e DM, to mandate how the player chooses to portray the numbers on their character sheet. In 5e, what the PC thinks, attempts, and says is the squarely the domain of the player.

Edition-agnostic, I say it's still on the player to a) let the on-sheet numbers inform roleplaying and b) to not use player knowledge that the character would not or could not have.

It's often difficult to enforce a) unless it's extreme. But I'll come down hard on b) every time I see it.

Nothing, IME, breaks immersion more that a DM telling a player: "your character wouldn't know/do/say that".

Fair enough.

I submit, however, that it's every bit as immersion-breaking when a player acts on info the character couldn't know. Trolls v fire is the classic example but one can argue it's common knowledge among adventurers, so that one's admittedly a gray area.

More egregious is when, say, a lone character goes out to scout (and this scouting is roleplayed at the table) and doesn't or can't return and report, and other players then act on information that in theory only the scout could know, as if the scout had reported back. Instant smackdown.

 

[Lanefan]

I agree... up until the colon... I would argue that after the colon is an example of policing how someone at your table is required to roleplay. Maybe that policing happens just once at session zero, or maybe you need to speak to a player outside the game for violating this requirement (as you go on to say below), but it still is policing.

To the extent that the expectation is that you roleplay your character rather than yourself, I see no problem here.

Put another way, it's not an unreasonable expectation that a player use their character's stats to inform that characater's personality.

As for a player "exhibiting unreasonable levels of knowledge about the monsters in the setting", that's a metagaming issue. I've learned that - to paraphrase Fight Club and @iserith - the best way to deal with metagaming is not to worry about metagaming. Players in our games are welcome to use whatever knowledge they want.

Which puts players right back to playing themselves rather than their characters. Bleah.

The best way to deal with metagaming IMO is to set an expectation up front that it flat-out won't be tolerated, and then be ready to set an example by harshly enforcing that expectation if needed. Set that standard and keep to it and metagaming largely goes away.

 

[Campbell]

My personal stance is that the character sheet is not the character. That if there is dissonance between our shared understanding of the fiction and what's on the sheet it's usually the sheet that is wrong.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I submit, however, that it's every bit as immersion-breaking when a player acts on info the character couldn't know. Trolls v fire is the classic example but one can argue it's common knowledge among adventurers, so that one's admittedly a gray area.

Trolls v fire is an old chestnut! All it takes is one troll that heals from, or is otherwise boosted by, fire and the players learn not to make metagame assumptions about trolls. Players need to test those assumptions by engaging with the game world via their PCs. Telegraphing that things are not exactly as they seem is a key DM behavior here to remind the players to engage with the game world.

More egregious is when, say, a lone character goes out to scout (and this scouting is roleplayed at the table) and doesn't or can't return and report, and other players then act on information that in theory only the scout could know, as if the scout had reported back. Instant smackdown.

Doesn't bother me in the least. The lone scout hasn't returned and the other PCs can do what they please. Doesn't mean the same conditions described to the scout are the exact same conditions that the other PCs encounter. The lone scout happened to be too short to trigger the head high poison trap, etc... The other players learn to engage with the game world and not rely on "information that in theory only the scout could know." The DM maintains their sanity by not caring about metagaming and not having to deliver said "instant smackdown" (assuming that is code for some kind of out-of-game scolding... not really sure how that looks at your table).

To the extent that the expectation is that you roleplay your character rather than yourself, I see no problem here.

Put another way, it's not an unreasonable expectation that a player use their character's stats to inform that characater's personality.

The players at our table most commonly use their stats to inform at least part of how they portray the character, too. As DM, I don't need to care, really. The players can do what they like as control of the roleplay of their character is squarely up to them.

Which puts players right back to playing themselves rather than their characters. Bleah.

The best way to deal with metagaming IMO is to set an expectation up front that it flat-out won't be tolerated, and then be ready to set an example by harshly enforcing that expectation if needed. Set that standard and keep to it and metagaming largely goes away.

As DM, I'm not into "harshly enforcing" anything in regards to metagaming. Don't get me wrong, metagaming used to drive me crazy. Until I tried ignoring it, that is. I'm not above pleading guilty even to having uttered the words "Your character wouldn't know that" on more than one occasion. That was several years ago, though. Now, the only mention metagaming gets in our campaign is on the rule page in our Discord: 7. Metagaming: there's no prohibition, but better check your assumptions in-game - things may not work the way you think they do in the game world. And, as expected, that's been enough.