thread: 2005-06-02 : Immersion
On 2005-06-02, Jonas Barka wrote:
As I see it you say that rules do not interfere with immersion. You can have both and that is bettet than having only immersion.
I belive this reasoning is in part flawed. To show my point I will use your example of the TV-show. You write:
"I grant that you don't do those things during immersion, at its most intense. But saying that those things prevent immersion is like saying that the commercials prevent your favorite TV show."
The commercials do not *hinder* the show in the sense that it stil happen, but I (and I belive many people with me) think they do lower some values of the show. That value could be immersion but can as well be called focus or something else. Take a horror movie as an example. The director have planned the move to be as scary as possible. The darkness, the music, the plot, everything strives to make you *live* the movie.
What happens when you insert commercial breaks in this work? You won't have any problem with the plot but every break resets the mood that has been building up in your head. You have to start over from square one. Imagine if there was short commercial breaks every minute of the move. Would it be scary at all? No, because it takes some time to build up the immersion.
How do this apply to rps:s then? Either you talk about about something else when you say "immersion" or you are *really* good at it. For myself and everyone I know it takes time to get in character and every time you act outside your character you have to start over. It takes maybe one minute to get resonable in character and up to an hour or more to more or less completely supress your ordinary self (usually only attainable in larps).
This means you have to limit the use of rules to between lengthier in character sessions of maybe 10-15 minutes. In this way rules *do* limit the ammount of immersion in a game. I'm not entierly opposed to rules as long as you realise that how and when you use them determines the level of attainable immersion. As well as a TV show may gain something by being separated into episodes the game generally gains from breaking for a new scene, describing certain things out of character, switching characters or even rolling some dice. These things add to the fun but detracts from the immersion. Finding the balance when everyones fun factor is maximised takes some experimenting with your gaming group.
/ Jonas
unrealitiesofmine.blogspot.com
