thread: 2005-06-02 : Immersion
On 2005-06-03, Sydney Freedberg wrote:
Brand's bit a ways back: "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."
Yes. Absolutely. Because in tabletop play (maybe in LARP play, I wouldn't know), you're not physically confronted with the external reality of your situation UNTIL the dice (or other mechanical cues) come in. In real life? If I'm 20 blocks away and stuck in traffic and already late, or my kid is about to crawl head-first off the edge of the bed and I'm a step too far away to catch her, or if the target's so tiny in the distance my shot is probably going to go wide, I can see it and know with a deep sick feeling in my gut, "I don't think I'm gonna make it."
In a tabletop RPG? Really great narration isn't the same thing: It's about you the real person at the table imagining, however vividly, your imaginary character confronting imaginary obstacles. But—and I've had this moment in Dogs—when you reach for the dice and think "I gotta roll WHAT?"—that is the same thing: I, the real person at the table, am confronting a real physical thing external to me, the dice, that is going to affect something I care about.
Caveat: Yes, the "something I care about" is a fiction. But the "I care" is for real. Thus, all the key elements are real.
