Quote from: Jarcaneand treated with the same overt self-awareness one expects from fans of B-movies and MST3K

D&D has always been treated with a goofy tone by a good portion of the players.  Taking it seriously isn't wrong, but treating the game as a simple pastime and not worrying too much about sideline chatter and jokes has been going on since day fucking zero.

If anything, the "real roleplaying" bullshit has absolutely no root in the origins of the hobby.

Quote from: ggroy;3883311 + 1 = 3

2 + 2 = 5

...

Exactly.

2 + 2 = 5, for sufficiently large values of '2'.  

Quote from: Saphim;388321Saying you can't look into other people's heads is not a logical fallacy. "The opposition" kept making claims that they could not hold. End of story. It is not Argumentum ad populum every time something brings a crowd into the mix and I wasn't saying "you are wrong because these many other people say so" I was saying "you are wrong, because you contradict these many people who have no reason to lie and into whose heads you cannot look".

@moving the goalpost: I did not. I just didn't repeat metagaming, which I did not have to as plenty of people immerse themselves just fine while metagaming. And one guys metagaming is the next guys "genre emulation".

1)  Actually, it is Argumentum ad populum everytime you bring a crowd into the mix.  Which is par for the course.
Nothing can be proven to be true merely because other people believe it.  It does not matter if they have a reason to lie and if anyone can see in their head.  

2) "And one guys metagaming is the next guys "genre emulation""?  
You know, words have definitions.  
Metagaming has a definition.  You should look it up.

And you moved the goalposts because you were not responding to the original question.  But, by saying

Quote from: Saphimwhich I did not have to as plenty of people immerse themselves just fine while metagaming

you've come back around to it.
So when, by the definition of metagaming, you are not thinking as the character but thinking as the player, you are telling me that you are thinking as the character.  And apparently, plenty of other people are capable of this act of doing something by not doing it.

You are more talented than I, apparently.

Quote from: Benoist;388336LOL "Prendre des vessies pour des lanternes". French idiom. Means that you're taking something, considering an idea or concept say, and giving it much more importance than it really deserves.

'Making a mountain out of a molehill'

See?  It will be my path to untold wealth.  That will be $5, please.  Or 5 quatloos, or whatever strange currency you use up there.  

Quote from: J Arcane;388339It just seems like for one excuse or another, I can no longer seem to find real players who are willing and able to accept the fiction of the game world.  It's not a thing for them, they're just not willing to treat it as a real environment, to suspend disbelief as it were.

I'll agree to a limited extent that the "D&D is genocide" types are more common on the Internet, but I've encountered people like that IRL too, who insist on arguing against the most basic premises of the game in the most narrowly defined way, either because they like being argumentative douchebags, or because they think it's "funny".

Then you have the players who simply don't pay any fucking attention to what's going on and just roll the dice whenever they're told to, the ones who're more in it to see how badass a character they can roll up and still get it past the GM, the ones who ignore or seem to even react with hostility to anything that might present even the most basic backstory or fiction into the game.

I've even encountered quite a few who seem to treat the very idea of actually roleplaying something with open hostility, like it's some magic threshold where suddenly the past-time has just become too much of a geek endeavor for their tiny cocks to withstand. The other day I actually had a prospective D&D player inform a friend and I that any use of "voices", as he put it, meant he'd refuse to participate further in the game.

I'm just fucking sick of it.  The truth is, 4e isn't the problem, or the cause of the problem, it's just a symptom of it.  It's a generation too in love with irony and a very video game mindset to actually engage the game as it was meant to played, as a fucking roleplaying game.  D&D itself has become this ironic hipster geek thing, to be strutted out to gain "cred" in this burgeoning web geek culture that's formed in the last few years, and treated with the same overt self-awareness one expects from fans of B-movies and MST3K.  Everything is fucking cliche and shite and no one takes anything remotely fucking seriously, because otherwise you've suddenly crossed an invisible line and become one of "those guys", you know, the guys who actually are geeks instead of pretending to be them because it's cool to say on the internet.  

So you get lots of "dissociative mechanics" or whatever the fuck, because associating with them in the first place is anathema.

Dammit, J, these pearls of wisdom make me wish we weren't assholes to each other semi-frequently.  

Quote from: FrankTrollman;388309Verisimilitude.

"Realism" is right out, because you're playing a gnome who can make things catch on fire with her mind. "Immersion" is as you've noted a hapless three legged dog of a word. And "Simulationism" has been covered with six thousand word essays by the Ronster until it no longer means anything.

But Verisimilitude is a pretty good word. It's the extent to which the things that happen when you roll the dice and follow the rules match the way it seems like things should happen when you read the flavor text and describe the action.

-Frank

It has always been one of my big terms.  Verisimiltude = in-setting logic.  Internal consistency.  
If things make sense within the setting, players find it easier to react to the setting.  Too much inconsistency and lack of logic, and immersion becomes more difficult.

Probably even with the capital "I".

Quote from: Peregrin;388341D&D has always been treated with a goofy tone by a good portion of the players.  Taking it seriously isn't wrong, but treating the game as a simple pastime and not worrying too much about sideline chatter and jokes has been going on since day fucking zero.

If anything, the "real roleplaying" bullshit has absolutely no root in the origins of the hobby.

He isn't really talking about 'real roleplaying' or 'ROLEplaying over ROLLplaying'.  It's a matter of people not willing to step into a mindset or accept different assumptions because they are too busy being 'ironic' or posing as geeks.  It's like the entire premise of Wired magazine.  You can be 'in the know' on all these geek topics, but still hang out with 'the guys' at the sports bar and be 'normal'.  You can play casually, and still get in tune with how Haldek the Warrior thinks, or reacts to a situation.

Quote from: LordVreeg;388343You are more talented than I, apparently.

You are not alone.  I, too, have a distinct lack of ability when it comes to doublespeak.  We should form a support group.

Sure, but I'm more talking about tongue-in-cheek play more than casual play.  Those goofy breaking the 4th wall type things have been going on since Gygax and Arneson's campaigns.

Posing as a photographer for Wizard's Monthly Top Ten in order to distract the archmage nemesis, etc.  Those sort of things that some people would see as working against immersion have been going on since the first OD&D campaigns.

Hell, just a look at some of the PC and NPC names from the first campaigns and you'd half expect to see Rodney Dangerfield on the list.

It doesn't stop you from getting in-character, but coming from the posts I'm reading here, neither does it lend itself to the type of internally-consistent and believable campaigns that some people expect.

In fact, several grognards I've spoken with noted a definite "arms length" between player and PC before the late 80s/early 90s and the amateur thespian/story movement.

Of course, the unrealistic and goofy nature of D&D is why we have Runequest, after all, so people's expectations are being catered to, one way or another.

Quote from: StormBringer;388347He isn't really talking about 'real roleplaying' or 'ROLEplaying over ROLLplaying'.  It's a matter of people not willing to step into a mindset or accept different assumptions because they are too busy being 'ironic' or posing as geeks.  It's like the entire premise of Wired magazine.  You can be 'in the know' on all these geek topics, but still hang out with 'the guys' at the sports bar and be 'normal'.  You can play casually, and still get in tune with how Haldek the Warrior thinks, or reacts to a situation.

Indeed, it's a hard thing to put into words, because there's a temptation to fall into a number of terms I don't think quite fit the situation, or come across as looking like an opposite pretension.

I used "taking it seriously" there, and even that I don't quite like for it because it carries bad connotations for a lot of people.

I just mean that it seems like many gamers just won't accept a premise for any reason.  "Immersion" is indeed a foreign concept to them, because they don't even think about the game in a consistent way.  

It's just there as an excuse to get drunk, roll some dice, and bullshit, or to feel smart and cool for a few hours about how so above all this silly gaming nonsense they are, because they're so socially and intellectually stunted they can't do any of those things without such an excuse.  This is what I'm talking about when I rail against the whole "Cheetoism" thing, and against the Forge and Story gaming, because I think it's exactly the kind of bullshit that prevents roleplaying games from actually being roleplaying games.

I think both ends are extremist nonsense that undermine the potential of roleplaying as a past-time and destroy the whole reason I got into these fucking things in the first place.  

I'm glad to be acting again, because I apparently can't scratch the same itch in roleplaying anymore because no one knows how to actually do so.

Quote from: J Arcane;388339I'm just fucking sick of it.  The truth is, 4e isn't the problem, or the cause of the problem, it's just a symptom of it.  It's a generation too in love with irony and a very video game mindset to actually engage the game as it was meant to played, as a fucking roleplaying game.  D&D itself has become this ironic hipster geek thing, to be strutted out to gain "cred" in this burgeoning web geek culture that's formed in the last few years, and treated with the same overt self-awareness one expects from fans of B-movies and MST3K.  Everything is fucking cliche and shite and no one takes anything remotely fucking seriously, because otherwise you've suddenly crossed an invisible line and become one of "those guys", you know, the guys who actually are geeks instead of pretending to be them because it's cool to say on the internet.  

So you get lots of "dissociative mechanics" or whatever the fuck, because associating with them in the first place is anathema.

Good points. Found myself nodding reading it.

Quote from: LordVreeg;388292Again, a good point and one that Justin does an admirable job with.  All mechanics that a player must contend with are at some level dissociative.  

However, I have two points that need to be considered when judging this.  The first is that I do not think all mechanics reduce immersion equally, as some of them require out-of character thinking BEFORE you engage in the game mechanic to determine the outcome of an attempted task.  All character actions can be seperated into the decision to take an action and the mechanical interpretation of thataction. If the decision phase of the action BEFORE the mechanical interpretation is compromised, it is double-whammy, so to speak, eaning less time in-character.

In other words, I agree that the decision having your mage decide to cast a fireball at approaching enemies can be made in-character, and of course, there is a stepping back from immersion when you roll for damage.
But if the same player made the decision to cast a fireball because the player knew that that particular enemy is especially vulnerable to fire, and if the character had no way to know this, one would say the player was metagaming, and never acting in-character.  

Please note that the decision phase is the only phase where one can be immersed, BTW.  Every RPG mechanic is dissociative to a degree when you have to go through the mechaical interpretation.  
So if the mechanic in question compromises the decision phase, I would consider that a less immersive mechanic, like Fate/action points.

Your points reflect well with why I cannot stand the separation of At-will, Encounter, or Daily powers with regards to abilities that in any other edition would be at-will, or not restricted from use in the real world.

Everyone has their own reasons for playing.  

I like getting into what makes my character tick, acting that out, and making unique voices and speech patterns for different characters/NPCs.

Other people don't like that, and they do just want to socialize with D&D as the excuse, maybe clear out some dungeons.

As long as people have fun, I've no problem with it.  It's just a matter of finding the group that works for you.  I don't think there's any "wrong" or "bad" way to play.  I think that sort of exclusionary thinking works against any sort of community or potential growth the hobby could have if circumstances were right.

As for the young pseudo-intellectual hipsters, I don't know.  I haven't met any so I can't comment.

Quote from: J Arcane;388351I'm glad to be acting again, because I apparently can't scratch the same itch in roleplaying anymore because no one knows how to actually do so.

Tabletop rpgs and LARPing aren't my first choice of niches for acting.

From my very brief time in acting more than a decade ago, I never really made much of a connection between acting and playing tabletop rpgs.  As far as I was concerned, they were largely independent and "orthogonal" to one another.

Quote from: J Arcane;388339It just seems like for one excuse or another, I can no longer seem to find real players who are willing and able to accept the fiction of the game world.  It's not a thing for them, they're just not willing to treat it as a real environment, to suspend disbelief as it were.

I'll agree to a limited extent that the "D&D is genocide" types are more common on the Internet, but I've encountered people like that IRL too, who insist on arguing against the most basic premises of the game in the most narrowly defined way, either because they like being argumentative douchebags, or because they think it's "funny".

Then you have the players who simply don't pay any fucking attention to what's going on and just roll the dice whenever they're told to, the ones who're more in it to see how badass a character they can roll up and still get it past the GM, the ones who ignore or seem to even react with hostility to anything that might present even the most basic backstory or fiction into the game.

I've even encountered quite a few who seem to treat the very idea of actually roleplaying something with open hostility, like it's some magic threshold where suddenly the past-time has just become too much of a geek endeavor for their tiny cocks to withstand. The other day I actually had a prospective D&D player inform a friend and I that any use of "voices", as he put it, meant he'd refuse to participate further in the game.

I'm just fucking sick of it.  The truth is, 4e isn't the problem, or the cause of the problem, it's just a symptom of it.  It's a generation too in love with irony and a very video game mindset to actually engage the game as it was meant to played, as a fucking roleplaying game.  D&D itself has become this ironic hipster geek thing, to be strutted out to gain "cred" in this burgeoning web geek culture that's formed in the last few years, and treated with the same overt self-awareness one expects from fans of B-movies and MST3K.  Everything is fucking cliche and shite and no one takes anything remotely fucking seriously, because otherwise you've suddenly crossed an invisible line and become one of "those guys", you know, the guys who actually are geeks instead of pretending to be them because it's cool to say on the internet.  

So you get lots of "dissociative mechanics" or whatever the fuck, because associating with them in the first place is anathema.

I freaked out on a poster elsewhere about the whole alt/geek culture thing (geek lifestyle), as it just offended me.  It still does.  A lot of people I have a lot of respect give it cred, I find it an excuse for feeling good about themselves without reason.

4e isn't a problem at all; nor at the root of it.  I dissect mechanics because I love gaming enough to design my own games to create the play I want.  This also means my love of getting into theory with design makes me a little too serious.  I want every game to succeed.

I also have a background in psych, so to me, roleplaying as a term means something, and the term RPG is a recent bastardization that came from it.

I guess a lot of it comes out of what you want to get out of your game.  
I'll be back on later.  Good post.