thread: 2005-06-02 : Immersion
On 2005-06-03, Vincent wrote:
Well, I'm not going to seriously take on both the Scandinavian Scene and The Method on my dumb little blog.
I don't know anybody here in the US doing 7-day larps. It may well be that weird things happen during 7-day larps, real break with reality shit. Religious frenzy-level break with reality shit. I've got nothing to say about that.
Tabletop play immersion, though? Even at its most intense? The rules don't have to interfere with it a single bit. Sometimes they will, but it'll be because of qualities of those particular rules, not because you used rules at all.
Read this by Brand again, and carefully:
I remember one where a character was talking with her lover about his family (who are members of a group that kills people of the character?s type) and about him leaving the family. Things were starting to tense up and I casually reached for the dice, trying not to distract from the play, and the player started crying hard. The scene went on, things came to a head, and then we rolled to see what happened with the girl and her lover. When I asked her, afterwards, why she started crying the player said "Because, while I?d kind of known it, when you reached for the dice I suddenly realized how bad this was, and how likely it was she was going to lose her lover."
I deny that less is more. I assert that better is better. Easing transition is a matter of having rules that work with immersion, not having few rules or using them infrequently. I'm'a shout: MOST ROLEPLAYERS HAVE NEVER HAD RULES THAT WORK. It's no wonder that you think that rules interfere.
GB Steve: "As for the doors, that's not a choice that some people can make. What you enjoy is not necessarily about choice, it's whatever works for you."
Everything I do here in RPG theory and RPG design is predicated on my conviction that I am the same kind of roleplayer as everybody.
