thread: 2005-06-02 : Immersion
On 2005-06-05, Jonas Barka wrote:
Yes, for *really* deep immersion I'm talking about larp, but I still apply the same goals and techniques for tabletop rpgs. You can move from one to the other in infinitessimally small steps. For tabletop games I sometimes use rules because they can add things to a game, but when doing so I sacrifice some of the immersion. At the other end of the scale (opposed to larps) we have adventure boardgames such as Hero Quest. They can of course still offer some small taste of immersion but I play them for other resasons and do not expect to be immersed.
I can also describe it this way. Vincet writes:?
"I grant that you don't do those things during immersion, at its most intense."
He admits that rules can maybe not happen *during* the immersion, but claims that using rules *between* the immersion do not ruin the immersion.
The problem here is that if I want to have immersion and nothing else, this in between time will have to go. Consider two alternatives:
1: A game of four hours have 90% of the time as immersion, and 10% of the time dedicated to rules. The 10% of rules time do not at all make make the quality of the immersion time worse.
2: A game of four hours having 100% the time dedicated for imersion.
If imersion is the only thing I value option two is clearly the better choice. It's the same thin as that an adventure of 50% problem solving and 50% combat do not give as much problem solving as a game with 100% problem solving. If I on the other hand only like combat I want to have it non-stop even if some problem solving do not ruin the actual combat.
If you want to watch a TV show for one hour do you want 50 minutes of show and 10 minutes of commercial, or do you prefer 60 minutes of TV-show. I do and I'm quite sure you feel the same. You cannot have it all, the time spent rolling the dice is time when you do not immerse. That do not mean you cannot *combine* the two, but that is another matter.
(This do not consider time lost entering immersion, but that is not needed to show how rules take away from immersion.)
/ Jonas
unrealitiesofmine.blogspot.com
