Quote from: Omnifray;689146Are you saying that how you set up a game of monopoly doesn't affect the experience of playing it?

Nope. I'm saying it does not affect immersion during the playing of the game.

Quote from: fuseboy;689154Can you say more about how this works?  What's the ref team's goal?  Are they tweaking to taste, or are they just trying to put in hooks?  Does the ref team communicate the changes to the player?

This is mainly about hooks and stuff, not "tweaking to taste".

Each of the PCs may have various secrets in their past devised by the player. The ref-team may want to link these secrets up. For instance, one of you is secretly of noble blood and a distant relative of the king, and another has a secret vendetta against a member of the aristocracy. The GM could decide that the member of the aristocracy that PC2 has a vendetta against is PC1's close relative. PC3 may be an orphan; PC4 may be an assassin. The GM could decide that there is a connection between how PC3 was orphaned and the work of PC4's assassin's guild / associates. If there aren't enough secrets in the PCs' backgrounds to make things interesting, the GM could add some in.

The GM could also be coming up with a behind-the-scenes take on some aspect of a PC's stats/background, giving you something to discover about your own PC in the future. For instance, you decide that your character, PC5, has red hair and green eyes. The GM decides that this is due to fae, specifically unseelie ancestry.

Oftentimes the change/elaboration would not be fully communicated to the player, although it might be partially communicated. For instance, PC1's player would be told about the existence of the close relative, but not PC2's vendetta against them. PC2's player would be told the identity of PC1's close relative, and might be given that character's family tree, but would not be told that PC1 is secretly person X on that family tree. PC4's player might be given some more information with hints about how PC3 was orphaned, but PC3 might not be named in this information. PC5's player might be told that PC5 had a few quirky ancestors.

In summary you get given the information your character would have, and the purpose is that there is secret info worked into the game from the start, tied in with and perhaps a part of particular PCs' backgrounds.

Cool, that makes sense. Does this seem .. controversial?

I was getting at this sort of thing in another thread, where I was asking how details get added to backgrounds during play.  Like, who is the authority?  If a player writes about their uncle, is it cool for the GM to say that he's a lycanthrope?  Or is the uncle now subtly the authorial property of the player, and it would seem weird and invasive for the GM to start doing anything to it?  If the player hasn't mentioned a cousin, is it cool for the GM to tell the player they have one, two months into the campaign?

What I was sensing is that player backgrounds are a sort of authorial gray area in some play groups, as they're a sort of prop for the character's mien.

Your approach seems to basically say, "Your backstory is correct, as you've written it, but your authorship ends there. Expect surprises to emerge from it at some point."  That seems a useful thing to say if your goal is to give characters mutual baggage.

I had to look up "mien", but I think I like the phrase "mutual baggage".

Certainly some gamers would not wish to submit their character to the GM's delicate hands, and would deeply resent the rug being pulled out from under their feet with "dirty tricks" regarding the nature of their character, even assuming that there was no question of them having to retcon the character's thought processes, and that the discovery was being made as much by the character as the player when the thing entered play. So in that sense, yes, controversial.

I know one gamer in particular who will not even play in a game where that sort of thing is going on, even if that gamer's own PC is not vulnerable to such machinations.

Quote from: Omnifray;689172Certainly some gamers would not wish to submit their character to the GM's delicate hands ... I know one gamer in particular who will not even play in a game where that sort of thing is going on

This is so fascinating to me.  I'd love to unpack what that's about.

Something occurs to me for your step 3 - you could read the character's background, and for each NPC or place they mention, you could ask them:

"How well do you know him/her/this place?  Could he/she/it harbor dark secrets?"

By 'mien prop', I meant the sort of situation where a character is orphaned by an orc raid on their village, apparently killing everyone.  The idea of the character-as-homeless orphan is meant to evoke sympathy, or a life of hardship.  So if it turns out that, in reality, thirty villagers survived and resettled not twelve leagues away, where they've been living prosperously for a decade, the player is likely to be disappointed because their concept has been undermined.  (I guess the immersion-breaking comes from the fact that while the character would likely be thrilled to bits, the player is feeling cheated OOC.)

As a player, I welcome a gm using my characters background. If the gm adds an assassins guild that was secretly behind the death of my wife....That's great! Why the hell would I bitch about the gm changing my backstory? he made it better.

Also, there would be things the character did not know. life is full of surprises.


I am not a control freak though.

Quote from: Omnifray;689139Obviously these "concerns" even where not obviously inherently directly connected with immersion can distract a player from achieving an immersive experience.

You know, there probably ought to be some kind of distinction between character-as-avatar-immersion and character-acting-immersion. I can see how one or two of those might interfere with the latter, but my idea of immersion covers a little less ground from the looks of things.

Quote from: beejazz;689132Isn't immersion the thing where you make decisions in character in response to the environment? Isn't chargen pretty much definitionally part of the meta game? There may be better or worse ways to make a character, but I would have a hard time linking that with immersion as this site usually uses the term.

A digression, but I suppose you could argue that random-roll characters are getting a character result more like what real-life people get - where they don't get to pick how smart/strong/tall/attractive/whatever they are. Whether this helps the player bond with the character or is just a turnoff probably depends on the player.
(It'd be horribly unfair but I've occasionally thought a game could have a premise something like the movie GATTACA, with random-roll PCs and point-buy PCs being separate subraces).

Quote from: beejazz;689132Isn't immersion the thing where you make decisions in character in response to the environment? Isn't chargen pretty much definitionally part of the meta game? There may be better or worse ways to make a character, but I would have a hard time linking that with immersion as this site usually uses the term.

Right...but if the character's relationship with said environment is affected in chargen, then the chargen is affecting immersion as a secondary by-product.

I added in a part where the PCs roll on a social acquisition chart, and the player and GM create a story behind where the skills/items/relationships that are rolled up come from. Gives the PCs more unique stuff in chargen, as well as a better connection to the setting...

Quote from: TristramEvans;689097I prefer character modelling as my go-to form of chargen since it was first introduced in MSH.

I like that a lot, too.

In my regular group these days we often play pregens.

I guess my favorite for "immersion" is to roll up inherited factors and then jump into play as a youth (pretty usual in games of the 1970s). To get older characters quickly, something roughly like Classic Traveller -- or the more detailed Growing Up On Tékumel and Coming of Age on Tékumel-- is a good way to go.

Quote from: Phillip;691398I like that a lot, too.

In my regular group these days we often play pregens.

I guess my favorite for "immersion" is to roll up inherited factors and then jump into play as a youth (pretty usual in games of the 1970s). To get older characters quickly, something roughly like Classic Traveller -- or the more detailed Growing Up On Tékumel and Coming of Age on Tékumel-- is a good way to go.

Though not a fan of the system overall, I do very much admire Burning Wheel's chargen system, which is a variation of the life path method. Would love to see something similar for a more traditional rpg. I've even thought of trying to adapt it to RQ.

"Life path," yeah. I think I remember other things more or less along that line in Cyberpunk and Legendary Lives, probably some other old games.