D&D 5E What are your biggest immersion breakers, rules wise?

[iserith]

Yes, people can overlook those issues. Good for you. It's a lot harder when those issues are intrinsic and impact areas of internal consistency. Sure, you can spend a lot of time like Charlaquin and rationalize everything with increasingly absurd explanation.

So you're saying it's not impossible to overcome this issue...

Also it doesn't take much time at all, and it's why I don't have a problem with hit points, Vancian casting, resting and healing, warlords shouting severed hands back on, and on and on and on.

I wasn't always this way, but I decided to change.

 

[Tony Vargas]

but some of us prefer things that do not suck, thank you.

Hey, we do all like D&D, so clearly we have a very high tolerance for suck.
;P

I mean, no one should care about immersion. It’s a meaningless buzzword, and it’s not really necessary to the enjoyment of an RPG.

I've certainly experienced moments of relative immersion even a context as profoundly abstract as a TTRPG, even strung them together enough to accumulate some particular investment in the character.
So, it is an over- and miss-used buzzword, but not meaningless. Though, I agree it's not necessary to enjoy an RPG.

The idea of a single mechanic "breaking immerssion" has always felt off, to me, too, because it is such a fleeting experience, and so much in the abstract nature of a TTRPG already mitigates against ever achieving it. (LARPing would seem more fertile ground.) The idea that achieving immersion would be a given but for one loathsome mechanic is particularly hard to take seriously in that context. (That it consistently seems said mechanic just happens to enhance playability or balance - or, the ultimate horror, gives a martial character something cool to do - also contributes to the sense that there's something else going on. )

If you find yourself saying, “wait, that doesn’t make any sense!” try thinking of an explanation that does make sense. It’s good for your brain, it’s easier than coming up with house-rules to “fix” all the things that “don’t make sense,” and it makes the game more enjoyable.

By the time you say that to yourself, it's too late, the moment of immersion has passed. But, yes, coming up with a way of imagining it that works better for you should help next time...

 

[Waterbizkit]

I've skimmed enough of the thread to realize that other people have already held this opinion, so at least I don't have to be that guy, not that I mind being that guy...

Anyway...

Nothing. Nothing breaks my immersion. The way I look at it, the definition of immersion, at least as it's being discussed here, would imply not thinking of the game as a game. If that's the correct way to look at it, nothing has ever broken my immersion because at no point as a DM or as a player have I ever stopped thinking of the game as a game.

I don't say this to be contrarian and simply post an opinion outside of the norm or what the thread is looking for, it's just the way it's always been for me. At no point even deep in a moment of role-playing have I ever stopped realizing the basic fact that D&D is a game that my friends and I are sitting around playing at a table in someone's home.

Now I don't say this to belittle anybody who has one or more aspects of the game that get under their skin and break their immersion, everybody's game is different, which is of course one of the best things about this game. If anything, reading all of the different ways so many other people have their immersion broken by different aspects of the game make me a little bit more grateful for not having the same issues. Plus, it's always interesting to read about other people's experiences, even if I don't necessarily see eye-to-eye with them.

Anyway, that's my answer to the question posed at the beginning of the thread. I'm not sure I've contributed very much, but it's the internet, so I suppose making a comment without actually contributing much to the discussion is really just par for the course.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Bardic Dave]

Did ... you ... not .... notice ... that .... I .... specifically ... delineated ... TWO different ways that immersion can be broken?

And that I have been almost exclusively talking about the second (the "intrinsic" issues)? Did you miss the part where I said, "The second is more important from an RPG perspective; specifically, issues that are intrinsic."

And that you then proceeded to focus on the first? Yes, people can overlook those issues. Good for you. It's a lot harder when those issues are intrinsic and impact areas of internal consistency. Sure, you can spend a lot of time like Charlaquin and rationalize everything with increasingly absurd explanations (IT'S NOT A BUG, IT'S A FEATURE! IT'S NOT INTERNAL INCONSISTENCY, IT'S AN OPPORTUNITY TO BE IMAGINATIVE! IT'S NOT A RULES ERROR, IT'S A THRILLING CHANCE TO PRACTICE MINDFULNESS!), but some of us prefer things that do not suck, thank you.

You’ve been exceptionally patient and explained yourself extremely well. Let’s face it: they’re just not going to give you the satisfaction of acknowledging your point (which I happen to think is a very sound one). They’re too invested in their own point of view. Best to just let it go and not let it ruin your immersion... erm, your enjoyment of these message boards.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

... why are all the houserule fixes that supposedly help better immersion also turn PCs into glass cannons with slow recovery? Is every combat being probably debilitating rocket tag what you guys want?

 

[iserith]

Well, you may not have a problem with it, but I am guessing that this is from a general rules-perspective as opposed to an immersion perspective.

For example, your compatriot-in-argument, Charlaquin, thinks immersion is just a buzzword. But that's because (as in this post) the two of you are used to arguing about rules.

I don't understand where you're going with this part above.

If you are playing, say, Cthulhu, and you're an hour-and-half into the game, and everything has been building this gradual sense of horror, and you're feeling it, and you open a door behind which is the eldritch horror you're sure will drive you (your character) beyond the bend, and the GM says, "Hey it's Mike Meyers, and he's going to do his Dieter Impression" and then proceeds to do a 30 minute, terrible, Sprockets routine and then says that he Dieter wants you to love his abshmienke ... does that break immersion for you?

Heck no. Touch my monkey.

Maybe?

No, of course not! The fault is not with the DM, Iserith, or with the stars, the fault is with YOU for not being fully immersed.

Shame on you. Immerse yourself better.

I have no control over the DM or the stars. I only have control over myself. That's where I'll start to look for solutions, even if I may also reach out to the DM for help.

 

[Charlaquin]

You're still trying to pass the burden for bad writing from the writer to the audience. The problem isn't that my standards are too high. The problem is that the quality of the product is too low.

I haven’t made any comments about quality or burdens. All writers make continuity mistakes from time to time, and yes, that is on them. Working to reduce such mistakes as much as possible is part of improving as a writer. But, once the creative work is released, it’s released. Any mistakes that were not caught before that point are now part of the work. If there are a lot of mistakes, especially serious ones, that reflects poorly on the quality of the work. But pointing out the mistake won’t make it go away. When you notice a mistake in a work, you can complain about it, or you can come up with your own explanation that satisfies you.

The inconsistency is there, regardless of whether anyone notices it. If we're going to pretend that this whole scenario is actually happening - if we're going to assume the central conceit of a role-playing game, that these events could actually take place in some hypothetical world - then the true explanation can't be influenced by our awareness of it. Saying that it's just fiction, and that none of it is real, is dodging the question.

Indeed, if you just stop at “well, none of it is real, so it doesn’t matter if it’s consistent or not,” then we are dodging the question. It is also dodging the question to say “this inconsistency breaks my immersion” and leave it at that. If we want to answer the question, we must accept that what has happened in the fiction has happened in the fiction and does not match our expectations of what would happen in reality and then come up with an in-fiction reason how it happened.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Tony Vargas]

... why are all the houserule fixes that supposedly help better immersion also turn PCs into glass cannons with slow recovery?

They don't much slow recovery in the practical sense.
If a DM goes with the 1wk long rest in 5e, for instance, you just shift pacing. If you eliminate HD & overnight healing, slots dedicated healing will still do the job in an extra day or so, just with some additional die-rolling and bookkeeping.