I typically play in mild 1st person, but nothing as immersive as LARPers.

Does that make me bad?

Quote from: silva;567685Come on Ben, cut off this “deep immersion” bullshit. We sit to play a fucking game, not to reach nirvana or have a fucking spiritual journey inside a fucking alter-ego or some crap like that. Tell me: when you play soccer or basketball do you also seek to be “one with the ball” or some nonsense shit like that ? Because I play to have fun with my friends and sweat a little bit. Stop making this seem like a spiritual experience or shit like that.

This is a fucking game, caralho!

Soviet, here's a case in point.  Attempt to talk about this and out come the bichas.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;567693I typically play in mild 1st person, but nothing as immersive as LARPers.

Does that make me bad?

Nope, just a




Case in point #2. Example of the mocking response.

OK, you lost me.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;567699OK, you lost me.

Are you being serious and actually asking if not playing "Deep IC" is bad?  The answer is no.  Asking that, and tossing out LARPer sure makes it sound like you're just trolling, which as I mentioned to Soviet earlier is the usual response when people start talking about experiencing roleplaying in different levels of immersion.

Quote from: gleichman;567605To bring this back to Story-Games and their like, I'm of the following opinion.

The Forge and the resulting Story-Games intended in large part to avoid the condition of Disengagement with the Game so common with D&D and WoD players. They sought to do this by creating systems that directly linked the game mechanics to player intent.

Where this went off the rails is that they focused almost solely on the creation of Story, which later evolved into a vague thing called Narrativism. Such an intent represented only a limited number of RPG players and they lost touch with the larger hobby.

The other result is that they replaced Disengagement with Game with Disengagement from the Character, locking out immersive and character PoV play.

That they managed this with such ill will toward other methods made it all that much worse.

Yup.

Quote from: Benoist;567634You're basically telling us that you are always playing from a 3rd person point of view, here.

I'm going to largely agree with soviet here: It is possible to make decisions as if you were the character (and, thus, roleplaying) without deeply self-identifying with the character.

An essentially identical argument can be found in acting theory among those who feel acting only occurs if you self-identify with the character and those who feel more presentational styles of acting are acceptable. Marlon Brando stands on one side of that argument; Laurence Olivier stands on the other.

And, frankly, I don't accept a definition of acting which says that Laurence Olivier isn't an actor.

Similarly, I don't accept a definition of "roleplaying" which says that people who are doing nothing except making decisions as if they were their characters are not roleplaying.

Benoist: There are two distinctions here. One between deep immersion and casual play. The other between roleplaying (making decisions as a character) and narrative control (making decisions as a storyteller).

You are conflating the two of them by thinking in terms of describing actions in first person vs. third person. But the first person vs. third person distinction is actually almost entirely tangential to the distinctions under discussion. I've seen people play STGs while narrating the actions of their character token entirely in the first person. And I've seen people forge incredibly deep emotional and immersive connections with their characters while still communicating that connection to the rest of the table through third person descriptions.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;567631GDQ - linear or not?

It's been years since I looked at the D and Q modules in detail. My assessment for the G modules would be that the campaign structure is very linear but the individual scenarios are not linear at all.

This is not unusual. Linearity usually proceeds like this. (It's rare to find linear scenarios linked together in a non-linear fashion.)

Quote from: Justin Alexander;567727I'm going to largely agree with soviet here: It is possible to make decisions as if you were the character (and, thus, roleplaying) without deeply self-identifying with the character.

An essentially identical argument can be found in acting theory among those who feel acting only occurs if you self-identify with the character and those who feel more presentational styles of acting are acceptable. Marlon Brando stands on one side of that argument; Laurence Olivier stands on the other.

And, frankly, I don't accept a definition of acting which says that Laurence Olivier isn't an actor.

Similarly, I don't accept a definition of "roleplaying" which says that people who are doing nothing except making decisions as if they were their characters are not roleplaying.

Benoist: There are two distinctions here. One between deep immersion and casual play. The other between roleplaying (making decisions as a character) and narrative control (making decisions as a storyteller).

You are conflating the two of them by thinking in terms of describing actions in first person vs. third person. But the first person vs. third person distinction is actually almost entirely tangential to the distinctions under discussion. I've seen people play STGs while narrating the actions of their character token entirely in the first person. And I've seen people forge incredibly deep emotional and immersive connections with their characters while still communicating that connection to the rest of the table through third person descriptions.

Would you say that shared narrative games retain any significant element of surprise?

Quote from: Justin Alexander;567727I'm going to largely agree with soviet here: It is possible to make decisions as if you were the character (and, thus, roleplaying) without deeply self-identifying with the character.

I agree with this, too.  Further, if a person is doing a good job of making decisions as if they were their character, the results can be largely indistinguishable from a player who is more closely identifying with their character to other people playing in the same game.

Quote from: gleichman;567675Others (like John Morrow) have standards that I likely couldn't meet.

My primary standard for other people in the game with me as a player (and to a large degree, as a GM) are that the behavior of their character makes sense in the game world.  Whether you do that by thinking in character, thinking about your character, playing an avatar of yourself, or even use some storygame methodology that I don't notice in character isn't important to me.  And while I prefer the other players talk in first person in character, I'm willing to play with people who talk in third person about their character.

From the descriptions of your games that I've seen, I would guess that I wouldn't have much of a problem with how the characters are played in your games.  What's not clear to me is how often you and your players have characters make non-optimal or even tragic choices because it makes sense in character, even if it's tactically foolish.

Quote from: soviet;567661I think this is how I roleplay, whether in a storygame or something more traditional. I am imagining myself in that situation and reacting to the events as though they were happening live. What I can't do, and maybe some of you can, is turn off that little part of my brain that says 'this is what's tactically advantageous, or this is what would be most dramatically interesting'. I can ignore what it says, but I can't stop the signal (no, I'm not hearing voices).

I don't necessarily object to players playing for those things in a game with me.  What I object to are players doing implausible things with their characters for a tactical advantage or to make things dramatically interesting (e.g., acting on knowledge that the character doesn't have, behaving in a way that conflicts with existing characterization, etc.) and I also object to games that have mechanics that force me to think in terms of tactical advantage or what's dramatically interested at the expense of thinking in character, instead.

Quote from: soviet;567661That's all that I see when my group plays a storygame. We're imagining ourselves in the situation, we're reacting to events, but at the back of our mind there's that thought 'what would be most dramatically interesting?'. Which we can act upon or not. And yeah occasionally there's a bit of metagame discussion about stakes or something, but it's only a minor part of the session and it's not enough to break that fundamental experience of imagining ourselves in the situation and reacting to events.

Then why restructure and reframe the resolution mechanics to require a metagame or out-of-character consideration of the game?  I'm less bothered by mechanics that give the players points that they can use to alter setting elements or events if they want to than mechanics that require me, for example, to tell you why and/or how my character fumbled.

Quote from: soviet;567523In which storygames do you get to decide whether or not you succeed, and by how much? Because I haven't seen them.

Am I mistaken that there are games where the player can make sure their character succeeds by accepting negative consequences, even if the dice would otherwise make them fail?  There is other advice that is also problematic, including "Say 'yes' or roll", which assumes that the player wants a "yes" answer when they ask the GM a question and, again if I'm not mistaken, doesn't Dogs in the Vineyard advise the GM to let the players just have information about what's going on?

Of course maybe I'm wrong because I just don't get what those games are doing.  Like I've said, every time I read an actual play thread about a storygame, what I see are people writing about playing abstract dice games or using rules to handle things I'd just role-play through in character.  Seriously, it looks like someone is interrupting their role-playing to play a game of Yahtzee to me.

Quote from: gleichman;567480It's been a while since I read the specific rules, but as I recall Psych-lims don't have rolls to determine if they're triggered or not, they have rolls to determine if you are able to force yourself to not continue acting according them (you always spend one phase reacting if the trigger comes up in play).

That's pretty much what I meant -- rolling to see if you have to act according them or not.  I tend to just pick advantages and disadvantages that makes sense for my character and role-play them.

Quote from: silva;567685Come on Ben, cut off this "deep immersion" bullshit.

I for one have not been talking about "deep immersion". I'm talking about immersion, and that's it. The "deep" qualifier has been added on by other people, not me. And I'm not arguing for playing in-character 100% of the time or anything like that either. Actual play is made of more than just being immersed in a situation at any given time. There is the socialization, the Monty Python references, the Cheetos, the dice rolling and all that. But if there isn't an attitude to play what is in the game world as actual events as they occur, as opposed to "something else" (story, boardgame, whatever), then this isn't a role playing game to me. That's about it, really.

Quote from: silva;567685We sit to play a fucking game, not to reach nirvana or have a fucking spiritual journey inside a fucking alter-ego or some crap like that.

That's a construction of your mind right here. I haven't been saying any of those things myself. I play role playing games as an entertainment, to have fun. I don't play them to "reach Nirvana", nor do I play them to "build stories" because I wouldn't have the balls to take up a pen and write one on my own. I just ... have not been saying that at all in this thread.

Quote from: John Morrow;567742From the descriptions of your games that I've seen, I would guess that I wouldn't have much of a problem with how the characters are played in your games.

I'm more concern with how you'd react to the World. It's not a sandbox as described at therpgsite or a self-driven world contruct (like Warren Dew used to speak of). It's basically Middle Earth even if a Middle Earth in modern or future Ages.

As such, it (or rather the forces behind it) is telling a story and it has a plot.

Galdriel telling Frodo that "This task was appointed to you, and if you do not find a way, no one will." is a true statement in Middle Earth. The conventions of its genre are in sense law, and breaking the law has results both in-game and at the table.

In past conversations on r.g.f.a Deeply Immersion players often expressed problems with such a world ran by genre conventions and hidden hands. I recall both Warren and Mary claiming it would drive their characters insane (a rather easy task in Mary's case)

Meanwhile here at therpgsite I recall many a post that would call such a campaign railroaded trash, and I know know many of those types of comments from from those here are now claiming Immersion as their RPG calling.

Quote from: John Morrow;567742What's not clear to me is how often you and your players have characters make non-optimal or even tragic choices because it makes sense in character, even if it's tactically foolish.

But we're not big fans of tragedy or foolishness, and don't seek it as player goal or a badge of honor indicating that someone is playing correctly.

It does happen (there was a recent case this year in the sister campaign in KC that resulted in the death of one PC and the sparking of a war by the rest of the group against the PC who caused it).

But you're more likely to encounter self-sacrifice (which killed two of the 8 characters in our last Morrow Project campaign), honest tactical mistakes, failed judging of the danger, and "yes, that was dumb but I'm not leaving Joe behind" type things.