I'd suggest we have to be precise on what we mean, because I think we are after 2 different types of immersion. For your type that disassociation may not matter. For our type, it certainly does.
Well, this is what I get from Oxford Languages, via Google:
noun:
immersion
- 1.
the action of immersing someone or something in a liquid.
"his back was still raw from immersion in the icy Atlantic sea"
- baptism[/URL] by immersing a person bodily (but not necessarily completely) in water.
- 2.
deep mental involvement in something.
"a week's immersion in the culinary heritage of Puglia"
- a method of teaching a foreign language by the exclusive use of that language.
"as a teacher she advocates learning by immersion"
So we're talking about being deeply mentally involved with the fiction - imagining it with a certain intensity, and making decisions about the game by reference to the fiction.
I don't know what the "two types" are supposed to be.
And the idea that, by deciding to go harder - say, by throwing in an extra die from a pool - there must be a
reduction in immersion is simply a false empirical conjecture. I mean, I can't speak for people I don't know, but for the people I do know this does not prevent being deeply mentally involved with the fiction, and making decisions about it by reference to the fiction.
Thinking about how badly you (as the PC) want something, what's at stake, what price is worth paying - those are decisions that bring you into the fiction. They don't take one's thinking away from it.
So you agree some methods of authoring a character make for different experiences. Then why stop short of saying some methods of authoring a character make for greater immersion (immersion is an experience after all)?
Well, first, from the fact that changing something - in this case, method - affects the resulting experience, it wouldn't follow that changing that thing alters everything, or that
any aspect of the resulting experience can be affected in this way. That's an empirical matter, not an a priori one.
Second, the methods I'm distinguishing are not mechanical techniques - which I think, in general and in themselves, make little difference to the experience of the fiction - but rather degrees of "seriousness" or depth or intensity.
I've experienced this sort of intensity arising from GM narration, but I don't think GM narration of GM-conceived ideas is the most reliable way to generate it. I think creative equality is more reliable.
isn't one of the goals of narrativism to create methods for narrating the character that centers the fiction around the character and what matters to them and thus can lead the player to a more immersive experience in regards of the character and those issues that matter to the character?
I'm not sure what you're meaning by "narrativism".
If you're meaning "narrativism" as per
The Forge "story now"then narrativism is a "creative agenda" - of addressing "premise" and thereby creating "theme", using the particular approach to the shared creation of a fiction that RPGing permits, namely, one participant framing the situation while another says what the protagonist in that situation does.
Premise is, to quote, a "problematic human issue". It can come from character or setting or situation. And (to quote), "Theme is defined as a value-judgment or point that may be inferred from the in-game events."
Narrativist play doesn't depend in any special way upon "methods for narrating the character". As I've often posted, the keys to narrativist play lie mostly on the GM side, and pertain to (i) how situations are established (particularly how they relate to, or express, premise), and (ii) how consequences are established (particularly how this allows place for players to give voice to theme).
Is it fair to say that the only real difference of opinion here is which methods of authoring lead to the more immersive experience? And if so, is it possible that this difference of opinion is because we mean different things by immersive experience?
I don't know. I think the way I'm using "immersion" is fairly clear, and fairly intuitive.