Quote from: Seanchai;388438Probably because that's just what's happening. You've got the classics going on here: neologisms/jargon, theories that don't explain what's actually happening and seen at the gaming table, pronouncements about what is and what is not a roleplaying game, et al..

We humans use the same basic pattern over and over to attack that which we dislike, fear, or don't understand.

Seanchai

Oh please.
As If you have been able to do anything but anklebite and dismiss what you have proven you can't actively debate.

Please offer something other than mewling dissatisfaction with other people's reasoned debate.   I'm perfectly willing to hear and to respond to why you think you are right and other people are wrong.  Just stop wasting space flinging random vitriol.

Quote from: StormBringer;388440I think my irony meter just broke.

No kidding.  Get a power-painter for that kettle, I want it DARK...

Quote from: The_Shadow;388421Unfortunately, I think the hobby has shrunk to the point that the reaction is only online rather than on the shelves of stores, and is already with us in the form of the OSR. If V:tM was an echo of the boom of '81, the echoes are just getting smaller.

Well, in the real world, R&D often looks to marketting to see what they can do better.  I can see it now, "5e, with *NEW* immersive mechanics!"

Quote from: LordVreeg;388205No, you're not.  Or at least, not to everyone.

I do disagree with you about the lack of objective truth here....not talking about any game in particular, but there are rules that promote metagaming...this is the opposite of in-game thinking, so it certainly reduces immersion.  I don't find this fact subjective at all.

I'm not saying there's isn't a fact-of-the-matter when it comes to specific experiences. But whether a rule promotes disassociation or not is highly contextual based on the experience.

Here's an example from a 4e game I was in where what you might think of highly "disassociative mechanics" were quite immersive, and something you might think of as "immersive" was actually the opposite.

We were wandering along having been teleported to a strange land and trying to find our way home. We started hearing some noises, and it turned out some Umber Hulks were pincer-ambushing us. We fought two, and they were way more powerful than us, so we started running. This became a skill challenge.

The skill challenge was that each round, everyone rolled an appropriate skill (Endurance and Athletics, mainly), as did the hulks. We needed to build up 8 successes of difference to have gotten far enough away. Each round, the difficulty of the check went up as we got more tired. If the hulks catch up to the number of successes you have, they catch you and Bad Shit [tm] happens.

So, narratively, it's this hectic chase, and the cleric in our party can't make it. He drops back, the hulks grab him, and he gets torn to shreds in a short combat. I'm playing a rogue at the time, and my rogue has really shitty Endurance, so I'm proposing all sorts of alternate checks to Curtis, some of which go off, some of which (Acrobatics to leap over obstacles is cool, Perception to find a place to hide isn't).

Finally, I'm something like two checks away from succeeding. I'm the last guy in this chase, one PC having gotten away and the cleric having been eaten. There's a bridge up ahead over a stream.

So I think to myself "OK, tremorsense isn't going to work in water, so I just need to dive over the side of the bridge". I fail the check that round, get to the bridge, and dive into the water just as the hulks catch up.

Now, the bridge is a curved / arched footbridge spanning maybe fifty feet, so I figure that if I roll over the side, hit the water, and swim under it, I'll be out of sight, and can make some wicked hide check.

This leads to an hour long argument with the DM over whether or not I actually broke line of sight with the Umber Hulks when I dropped over the side, with the calculation of sight lines using geometry, etc. I've got a couple other PCs on my side here (it was one of them who was doing the geometry), and basically things grind to a halt because of a difference in the imagined world (the DM goes back on the bridge being curved, and instead claims it was flat, etc.)

Anyhow, I end up getting killed by the hulks in the end, but for me, the more immersive part of that situation was fleeing from the Hulks, gradually tiring, and having to try something crazy to get out of that situation, and the least immersive part was dickering over the exact set-up of bridge, stream and water level.

It's experiences like that (and I've had similar experiences with many different systems over the years) that lead me to believe that what counts as "disassociative" and "immersive" are not found in the rules of an RPG, but derive from the actual play experience.

QuoteHowever, as I have said, a good GM, a good group of players, and a good adventure make up for a lot, and as I do not believe that 100% immersion is
ever possible.  All games we play allow us to create some immersion, some are better than others, and some that may not be as good may offer other game benefits.

The second experience I would relate regarding this point is the "long IC conversation between the DM and another PC" experience that I'm sure we've all sat through at one point or another. My buddies Curtis and Rob, in the Iron Heroes Dessinger campaign that's partially written up on this site, once had an hour and a half long IC discussion which went from fascinating to kind of boring b/c no one else was in the scene. While it was kind of important to the story at the time, and both are excellent roleplayers (they are in fact the best people at portraying RPG characters I have ever met, which is why I continue to RP with them to this day), it wasn't particularly immersive for me or my buddy Chris, who were just kind of sitting on our hands the entire time.

That experience had nothing to do with mechanics or the specific ruleset we were using, and yet it bore directly on our feelings of immersion at the time.

Quote from: StormBringer;388169I think they are more equal than you give them credit for.  Take Akrasia's example of chess:  You can certainly play the part of King Harold against your opponent, King Ogrek.  But you will be doing some seriously heavy lifting, because the chess game itself is little more than a 'scoreboard' or 'tally' if you will.  Obviously, the Rook can't actually move.  It's a building.  The 'movement' is an extreme abstraction of the political manoeuvring of the royal court.

It's not 100% subjective.  Chess is a shitty RPG because of the extreme abstraction or disassociation.  It is neither delusion nor mental illness.  Because of the rules, some games simply make it more difficult to maintain a 'role' consistently.  Piling on all kinds of fiction or explanation does not negate the fact that the underlying rules are not good for assuming a role.  It re-inforces that you have to essentially ignore the rules, or subsume them greatly, in order to take on this role and maintain it.

Chess is a very extreme example, obviously, but I would find arguments that 'immersion' is a binary state to be prima facie ridiculous.  I doubt further inspection would reveal them to be any less specious.  Hence, I think everyone can agree that there is a range that can be discussed, and different games will fall on this spectrum in different places.  Where those lie on the continuum as a matter of personal preference (to a degree) is non-controversial, but that is not an argument in and of itself.

Oh, I wouldn't deny that some games in general don't allow for immersion, if we're considering the set of all possible games and including things like chess, jumping jacks and tag and the like. But I think RPGs form a unique subset of all games, and that the distinct feature that makes a RPG a RPG is precisely that is a game in which one acts out the role of a character in an imaginary world.

And I think any game that belongs to that subset and has that feature can be immersive. What's important there, IMHO, is how the group dynamics and individual players' actions allow them to engage with the world and other PCs and how they use the rules, rather than the content of the rules themselves. I don't find Perception checks themselves to be inherently disassociative, for example. I don't even find it disassociative to be asked to make a bunch of them in a row if I'm searching a room or a house. But I do find it disassociative to be asked to make one every ten feet when I'm just wandering along (Jim Bob has a story about having to do this in a GURPS campaign, IIRC).

Quote from: LordVreeg;388418What will really make the scene *pop* is when an RPG system, a newer one, is really good enough for long-term, campaign play, has basic, advanced an optional rules, and is used in a large scale video game, so it brings fans to the tabletop version from both directions.  It needs to get the hardcore gamer not to hate it, the newer and more casual player to enjoy the more basic rules, and to bring in some curious video gamers who want to see what it is all about when you have a live GM.

That's nearly impossible.  Harder than avoiding the dreaded "Developer's Paradox" in video games.

I'm not saying it can't be done, but you'd have to have the most amazing PR to ensure success.  Someone everyone loves.  Neil Patrick Harris or something.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;388447I'm not saying there's isn't a fact-of-the-matter when it comes to specific experiences. But whether a rule promotes disassociation or not is highly contextual based on the experience.

Here's an example from a 4e game I was in where what you might think of highly "disassociative mechanics" were quite immersive, and something you might think of as "immersive" was actually the opposite.

We were wandering along having been teleported to a strange land and trying to find our way home. We started hearing some noises, and it turned out some Umber Hulks were pincer-ambushing us. We fought two, and they were way more powerful than us, so we started running. This became a skill challenge.

The skill challenge was that each round, everyone rolled an appropriate skill (Endurance and Athletics, mainly), as did the hulks. We needed to build up 8 successes of difference to have gotten far enough away. Each round, the difficulty of the check went up as we got more tired. If the hulks catch up to the number of successes you have, they catch you and Bad Shit [tm] happens.
[...]
So, narratively, it's this hectic chase, and the cleric in our party can't make it. He drops back, the hulks grab him, and he gets torn to shreds in a short com

Anyhow, I end up getting killed by the hulks in the end, but for me, the more immersive part of that situation was fleeing from the Hulks, gradually tiring, and having to try something crazy to get out of that situation, and the least immersive part was dickering over the exact set-up of bridge, stream and water level.

Two things, one, skill challenges don't works that way, (unless Mike Mearls put out yet another variant) but that is not really important here.

Second. this is not an example of dissociative mechanic, actually that is a good example of an associative mechanic, you roll endurance checks to see if you keep running, if you fail you get tired and start losing ground, if you succeed you gain ground, there is an almost perfect correspondence between the mechanics and what actually happen in the game world, hence associative mechanic, hence immersion. Q.E.D.

Quote from: Seanchai;388438I'm actually the big roleplayer of my two groups, both as a player and (especially) as a GM. But nice try.

Kind vs. Degree.  You can be the big roleplayer of your Chess club because you name all the pieces and use voices when you move, that doesn't mean you're immersing deeply in roleplaying a character.

Quote from: Seanchai;388438We humans use the same basic pattern over and over to attack that which we dislike, fear, or don't understand.

And one of those patterns is to ignore logic entirely and to declare the objective as subjective in a means to completely skirt the argument.  Something you have been doing in this thread from the beginning, because you obviously don't get what JA and LV are consistently and repeatedly proving logically, or you don't care, and are simply arguing the reverse in the pattern of the ideologue, or even more simply, the troll.

Either way, thank you for proving my point, yet again.  

Quote from: Just Another User;388469/snip

Second. this is not an example of dissociative mechanic, actually that is a good example of an associative mechanic, you roll endurance checks to see if you keep running, if you fail you get tired and start losing ground, if you succeed you gain ground, there is an almost perfect correspondence between the mechanics and what actually happen in the game world, hence associative mechanic, hence immersion. Q.E.D.

I was thinking the same thing while I was reading.

Quote from: Just Another User;388469Two things, one, skill challenges don't works that way, (unless Mike Mearls put out yet another variant) but that is not really important here.

Second. this is not an example of dissociative mechanic, actually that is a good example of an associative mechanic, you roll endurance checks to see if you keep running, if you fail you get tired and start losing ground, if you succeed you gain ground, there is an almost perfect correspondence between the mechanics and what actually happen in the game world, hence associative mechanic, hence immersion. Q.E.D.

I'm glad I'm not the only person who had that feeling reading Pseudoephedrine's rambling story. Skill challenges don't work that way, but the choice he was describing - the choice to just keep running (making another Endurance test) or try to pull out something crazy - was very much an in-character choice. The character knew he was sneaky (had a high Stealth) and also knew he couldn't keep running forever (had a low Endurance). No inputs into that decision were outside the character's experience, nor were they outside the logical expectations of the world.

But yeah... skill challenges aren't opposed rolls, nor do individual characters fail them on their own. The team successes / failures obviously weren't being tracked, and the entire situation doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to any skill challenge rules that were ever actually printed.

-Frank

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;388447I'm not saying there's isn't a fact-of-the-matter when it comes to specific experiences. But whether a rule promotes disassociation or not is highly contextual based on the experience.

Here's an example from a 4e game I was in where what you might think of highly "disassociative mechanics" were quite immersive, and something you might think of as "immersive" was actually the opposite.

We were wandering along having been teleported to a strange land and trying to find our way home. We started hearing some noises, and it turned out some Umber Hulks were pincer-ambushing us. We fought two, and they were way more powerful than us, so we started running. This became a skill challenge.

The skill challenge was that each round, everyone rolled an appropriate skill (Endurance and Athletics, mainly), as did the hulks. We needed to build up 8 successes of difference to have gotten far enough away. Each round, the difficulty of the check went up as we got more tired. If the hulks catch up to the number of successes you have, they catch you and Bad Shit [tm] happens.

So, narratively, it's this hectic chase, and the cleric in our party can't make it. He drops back, the hulks grab him, and he gets torn to shreds in a short combat. I'm playing a rogue at the time, and my rogue has really shitty Endurance, so I'm proposing all sorts of alternate checks to Curtis, some of which go off, some of which (Acrobatics to leap over obstacles is cool, Perception to find a place to hide isn't).

Finally, I'm something like two checks away from succeeding. I'm the last guy in this chase, one PC having gotten away and the cleric having been eaten. There's a bridge up ahead over a stream.

So I think to myself "OK, tremorsense isn't going to work in water, so I just need to dive over the side of the bridge". I fail the check that round, get to the bridge, and dive into the water just as the hulks catch up.

Now, the bridge is a curved / arched footbridge spanning maybe fifty feet, so I figure that if I roll over the side, hit the water, and swim under it, I'll be out of sight, and can make some wicked hide check.

This leads to an hour long argument with the DM over whether or not I actually broke line of sight with the Umber Hulks when I dropped over the side, with the calculation of sight lines using geometry, etc. I've got a couple other PCs on my side here (it was one of them who was doing the geometry), and basically things grind to a halt because of a difference in the imagined world (the DM goes back on the bridge being curved, and instead claims it was flat, etc.)

Anyhow, I end up getting killed by the hulks in the end, but for me, the more immersive part of that situation was fleeing from the Hulks, gradually tiring, and having to try something crazy to get out of that situation, and the least immersive part was dickering over the exact set-up of bridge, stream and water level.

It's experiences like that (and I've had similar experiences with many different systems over the years) that lead me to believe that what counts as "disassociative" and "immersive" are not found in the rules of an RPG, but derive from the actual play experience.



The second experience I would relate regarding this point is the "long IC conversation between the DM and another PC" experience that I'm sure we've all sat through at one point or another. My buddies Curtis and Rob, in the Iron Heroes Dessinger campaign that's partially written up on this site, once had an hour and a half long IC discussion which went from fascinating to kind of boring b/c no one else was in the scene. While it was kind of important to the story at the time, and both are excellent roleplayers (they are in fact the best people at portraying RPG characters I have ever met, which is why I continue to RP with them to this day), it wasn't particularly immersive for me or my buddy Chris, who were just kind of sitting on our hands the entire time.

That experience had nothing to do with mechanics or the specific ruleset we were using, and yet it bore directly on our feelings of immersion at the time.

Actually, I love the session-story, and those particular skill mechanics are not dissociative, since they don't include any metagaming.  It sounds like an epic rundown/escape....the part I'm talking about is not subjective, since there is an absolute, black-and-white litmus test.
The skill checks in question are not requiring metagaming/out-of-character thinking and they are not reducing in-game logic.  So they are not dissociative.

I love the whole hectiv chase thing, well designed.  And the way you tried to find other answers...

Quote from: Just Another User;388469Two things, one, skill challenges don't works that way...

Skill challenges work however the DM or group wants them to work.

Seanchai

Quote from: CRKrueger;388473You can be the big roleplayer of your Chess club because you name all the pieces and use voices when you move, that doesn't mean you're immersing deeply in roleplaying a character.

Gotcha. Immersion and roleplaying are not related. In one, you figure out how a character would act and respond and in the other, you figure out how a character would act and respond. Totally different things...

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;388488Skill challenges work however the DM or group wants them to work.

Seanchai

Mmh, that is true for every single rule for every single RPG ever created , so unless you are trying to say that every rule ever is a skill challenge I don't see what is your point.

Quote from: Just Another User;388491Mmh, that is true for every single rule for every single RPG ever created , so unless you are trying to say that every rule ever is a skill challenge I don't see what is your point.

My point is that the rules for Skill Challenges are pretty damn flexible. There's nothing about what Pseudoephedrine described that can't, using the RAW, be a Skill Challenge if that's how the DM set up the Skill Challenge.

For example, on page 85 of the DMG 2, there's a section for group check.

Seanchai