thread: 2005-06-02 : Immersion
On 2005-06-04, Charles wrote:
Per,
When I imagine my character killing another character, and the other character's player accepts that I have killed their character, and depicts their character as dying, how is this like switching into dice rolling mode? I suppose it is to the extent that my imagining of my character performing actions is not the same as me performing my characters actions. As long as my character actions consist mostly of talking, or if I'm LARPing and my character actions are non-violent but involve movement, or I'm LARPing in a LARP with boffing or some other physical method of handling combat, then my actions as player are the same as my character's actions. Once my character is taking actions that it is not possible for me to take physically, then one level of distancing happens. If, instead of imagining and describing those actions, I must switch into a different experiential mode and consider whether my dice pool is big enough, or my rolls good enough, to undertake the action I imainge my character taking, then my thoughts as player about the situation are not in sync with my thoughts as character and an additional layer of distancing takes place. For some people, this additional layer of distancing is a killer. Others seem to be able to move back and forth between immersed and consulting rulebooks without a substantial loss of immersion. Still others seem to be able to make the equation of player consulting dice and character appraising situation so thoroughly that they remain immersed while consulting the dice.
Since everyone agrees that some degree of intermittent non-immersion is required for almost all forms of gaming (long IC conversations between two players seem to require the least non-immersive elements, which is probably why immersion junkies prefer games in which long IC conversation is the primary content of play), I don't take Vincent's original claim to be that mechanics have no negative impact on immersion. Instead, I take his claim to be two-fold:
1) A negative claim concerning immersion: Non-traditional system like shared auhority over the world, multiple characters per player, or conscious attention to what we want as players, rather than simply what our characters want, are NO MORE LIKELY to be harmful to immersion than traditional system mechanics like rolling to-hit dice or scratching out hitpoints and writing in new values.
2) A positive claim concerning immersion: system can help or hurt immersion, depending on how well it supports his three proposed underpinings of immersion.
Vince, how well does that match what you are saying?
If we are playing freeform, and I and another player disagree whether a certain event should happen, we can either break out of our immersed states and discuss whether it happened, or we can break out of our immersed states and toss a coin to see whether it happened. If we were playing with a mechanical system, we would break out of immersion and use the mechanics. How easy we will find it to get back into immersion may relate to the specifics of the mechanics, or it may not. Vincent is arguing that how the mechanics effect his 3 criteria will be more important than traditionally obvious features such as whether they involve dice, or whether people other than a GM have say over anything except characters attempting to take actions. Likewise, a ten minute discussion of what happens may break immersion less than a one minute bidding war, or it may break it more. Obviously, never reaching a disagreement about what happens in the game, and therefore playing continuously IC, would involve less interuption of immersion than play in which we disagree over what happens and need to use some sort of (formal or informal) mechanics. However, trying for play with no disagreements over what happens, and no use of mechanics, will necessarily limit the subject of play pretty severely.
I would add an additonal underpinning, which is the degree to which the mechanic requires a state of mind which is similar to the PC state of mind. If my PC is trying to be totally open and honest with another character, and the mechanics for doing so pit us as players against each other in a competitive bidding war where one of us will lose and one of us will win, then that would seem to create a conflict between what I am experiencing as player, and what I am experiencing IC, and that may act to the detriment either of my ability to effectively use the rules, or to effectively remain immersed in my character, or both. If the mechanics instead involved us as players working together against abstract difficulty, then that might better mirror the IC situation, and better allow us to remain immersed.
For instance, this parallel structure between IC situation and OC mechanics is what makes Dogs mechanics interesting, although the finickiness of dice counting and manipulation seems to have been too distracting for Neel's players. Probably, greater familiarity with the system and experience with manipulating the piles of dice would also help with that. Drumming circles may work great for someone who is well familiar with them as a means of reaching a transcendent state, but they would probably not work nearly as well for someone accustomed to za-zen or to Catholic Mass as a method of reaching transcendance.
