thread: 2005-06-02 : Immersion
On 2005-06-06, Jonas Barka wrote:
"(If social rules like "we don't spit on each other even when our characters do" do screw up your immersion, then your immersion's too brittle to deserve the name.)"
If you by "screw up" mean "lessen" then yes, it do lessen my immersion. You can solve it in three ways:
1. Actually do spit on the player. Potentially no immersion is lost, but if you feel to disturbet about it you could instead snap out of it completely.
2. Play games when spitting in the face is unlikely to happen, and when you get the urge to do it very briefly step out of charater (in your mind only) to react in a different way. The other players do not have to notice this. Some immersion is lost, and only to me.
3. Step out of character completely and describe the action. More immersion is lost to all who withness.
Number one is only suitable to hard core larps. Number two is sutable for most larps and certain free form tabletop. Number three could be considered the "normal" vay to handle it.
Is number three less disturbing for the immersion than rolling dice? It is for me, as the act of describing my characters actions as a pure result of his thoughts and emotions separates him from me less than if was to make a bidding war, where I had to consult my own knowledge in a much more direct way. It feels obvious to me but I cannot claim that the same applies to you. All minds do not work the same.
Can you understand my reasoning about different levels of abstraction and/or different levels of separation from the character? This works from a definition of full immersion as not being able to separate yourself from the character at all (Not desireable at all but I assure you there is no risk of this happening by accident).
How brittle the immersion is of course depends on how deep it is, so I do not understand your remark on "too brittle". I guess you have never experienced especially deep immersion if you consider out of character descriptions to not lower the level of immersion.
In my last larp (I know you do not consider larps but the same principles apply to tabletop, but on a less extreme level) i fell out of character (for maybe five seconds) when I saw a magazine lying on a table that was clearly not an inteended part of the setting. This would never have happended in a tabletop game, as I would never have entered this deep a state of immersion in the first place.
In short, social rules do not lower the level of immersion as much as mechanical rules, because of the different levels of abstraction.
"The game's formal rules made her feel her character's plight more viscerally than she had. Can you imagine having a similar experience yourself?"
Yes I can, and I have experienced this kind of feelings myself, but not in a character immersive way (the way I define immersion). As I see it she did not feel *as* the character but *for* the character. It is the same way you feel for characters in a good movie. To me this is not immersion but empathy and sympathy.
( Again I do not say rules can't be incorporated in the same game as deep immersion but not at the same time. When the rules enter the level of immersion is lowered. )
In general I see immersion as being closely tied to the stances with my proposed "Deep immersion stance" having the highest potential for immersion and Director stance the lowest. If you experience character immersion during director stance I do not think we talk about the same thing at all.
/ Jonas
unrealitiesofmine.blogspot.com
