thread: 2005-06-02 : Immersion
On 2005-06-02, Brand Robins wrote:
Well, I?d assume that there would be some degree of immersion in the other PCs in a well setup game. After all one of the fundamentals of dramatic theory (all the way from Aristotle to Boal) is that one must be able to empathize with the protagonists enough to live vicariously through them. And that?s when you are simply watching a staged production that you have no control over (audience ownership of dramatic forms isn?t always a simple subject, btw, where control usually is fairly clear) ? if you have characters you are invested with, there should be some ability to form joint immersion.
In fact, I?ve always considered such joint immersion to be one of the best things that I got out of the Forge and talks about narrativist games in which the characters do not form a group or party, but are linked only by being part of the same story. It doesn?t always happen, as many of my players are still utterly focused on their own characters, but it does happen occasionally and when it does it changes the whole focus of the game. So much so, in fact, that I?ve started considering doing a new Pendragon game in which the normal generational rules are crossed with Ars Magic style troupe play in order to create a story that is about a dynasty (rather than about specific key individuals within a dynasty), and such a story would require group immersion in more than one character as well as in the family line as a whole.
