John Kim writes in his LJ, "Immersively played characters will frequently break the rules: by splitting the party, by questioning other PCs, and by failing to follow the meta-game cues for the direction of the adventure."

I smell an Attention Junkie.

It's interesting that when people speak of "immersion", they speak of an individual acting against or tangentially to a group, and seeking their own individual story separate to others.

That is nothing intrinsic to "immersion" in this character acting individually; it's simply a character who is more loner than gregarious, who believes that their destiny can best be found alone, rather than in a group.

If you find that you prefer to immerse yourself in characters who act individually rather than with groups, that says something about you and your choices in character creation and roleplaying, and says nothing about "traditional play". Where John Kim says "traditional play... is not at all character-immersive", I would say, "traditional play encourages teamwork rather than one character being the star of the show."

It's entirely possible to be "immersed" in a team. For example, is it truly possible to roleplay a character on their own? For a bit, perhaps - but the opportunities for expression of personality are limited. Navel-Gazing, the RPG?

Personality is expressed by interactions between a person and the environment and people around them, in fine:

• reactions to events - what the GM presents
  
• to NPCs - again, presented by the GM
  
• and to other player characters - presented by other players.  

The first two allow for roleplaying in a one-on-one game, or in a game where the party gets split up. The third requires that the party stay together, more or less.

Why is it that in speaking of "immersive play", you think only of the first two? Why do you not think of how your character's personality might be expressed by way of other player-characters? Do you only immerse yourself in loners? Are you never immersed in gregarious, sociable, team-oriented characters?

"Traditional play" assumes that roleplaying is a social hobby. Social hobbies require other people, interacting with other people. "Traditional play" assumes that as you are, so will your character be; if you are being social, you will want your character to be social. If you are not social, then roleplaying is a strange hobby to take up.

When you're wandering away from the party and the plot, are you really being "immersive", or are you just being an Attention Junkie? "Look at me! Look at me! I'm walking away from the party and the adventure! So either the GM will run a one-on-one game with me and ignore everyone else, or the whole party will chase after me and beg me to stay! Wooohoo! Attention!"

Thoughts? Am I being too harsh? So many descriptions of "immersive play" sound like some player saying, "look at meeeeeee!"

Actually when you present it that way I find myself agreeing with you.

I think attention craving probably has something to do with it. Not just "pay attention to me, I'm avoiding the adventure", but there's also a certain amount of "check out my performance and see how awesome I am when I act in character".

It makes sense to me. It's really not far from players who think "playing their alignment" = being a disruptive jerk. Regardless of the level of one's immersion in their character, player motives will always be paramount.

I play with a group that consists of extremely individualistic gamers, what you might describe as "attention junkies."  They all want to be at the forefront of the battle.  They all want to be in the limelight.  They all want their characters to shine.

They have all learned that I, as GM, do not like split parties. At one point there was a joke amongst us that split parties were a surefire path to character death.  Very occasionally, I will split the party.  

What this has lead to is a high amount of inter-party intrigue.  Lots of sidebars.  Lots of subtle actions.  Lots of hastily penned notes.  (Which I actually enjoy, by the way.)

How would you classify my players in this situation:

The player is presented with an option for his character.  He sidebars with the GM and says, "Given the options, my character would leave the party behind and pursue a life without them, immersing himself completely in this option.  But that's not what I want to do, is there any way of modifying it in this way to allow my character to stay on?"

Is that an "immersive" player or an "attention whore?"

Quote from: VellorianHow would you classify my players in this situation:

The player is presented with an option for his character.  He sidebars with the GM and says, "Given the options, my character would leave the party behind and pursue a life without them, immersing himself completely in this option.  But that's not what I want to do, is there any way of modifying it in this way to allow my character to stay on?"

Is that an "immersive" player or an "attention whore?"

Since the player is trying to create IC options that would keep him with the party that would be immersive, it's not necessarily attention grabbing. Whatever these options are, they don't have to tie up time or attention.

Immersion is a boogey man in a lot of RPG conversations. I believe this is because:

1. "Playing your character" is upheld widely as a laudable goal. In other words: if I say "That's Bob, he's a great roleplayer--he really gets into his characters and plays them with high fedility" then, IME, a large percentage of people go "Cool."

2. "Playing my character" has therefore often been used as a reason to do attention-grabbing things. This has created a real problem for groups where this power-struggle exists. It's the "perfect alibi!"

There have been two canonical (extreme) responses to this:
(a) Anyone playing immersed is a jerk!
(b) There's no excuse for being a jerk!

There's probably wiggle-room for both of these responses in their pure form--but, yes, I agree with the OP: the negative aspects of immersion are usually actually complaints about attendant behaviors.

-Marco

This seems rather strange to me, because "immersion" as I've experienced it is something that happens to everyone playing, not just one person.

Quote from: GabrielThis seems rather strange to me, because "immersion" as I've experienced it is something that happens to everyone playing, not just one person.

Yup, exactly. All this shows to me is that JHKim doesn't seem to have a real idea of how immersion works.

Because typically, you can't have one guy experiencing immersion while everyone else is just playing a game. Immersion is a group phenomenon that happens in the moments where the group synergy and the GM's game is so good/running so smoothly that you "forget" that you're only in a game.

RPGPundit

I certainly don't think all immersion falls into this category, but I can see this as an example.

I think that if you expect team oriented play wherein inter-party conflict is limited to flavor, that is an expectation that needs to be spelled out up-front. I think the many D&D groups that specify "no evil" are sort of trying to get at this exact issue.

That's a really interesting point. To attempt to answer JimBob's question, I think that we see the first two points talked about the most because they are the most likely to cause frustration. Players want to engage in those forms of immersion, can't do it within the framework of a typical game (or at least do it in a way that potentially sidetracks a game), and then seek out designs and games that support that need.

People who immerse themselves in a way that's conducive to group play are likely happy with their games, since that's what most RPGs support.

The funny thing to me is that, as JimBob points out, we're trained to think of someone who gets into character as a good roleplayer. It's the old, "Well that's what my character would do!" excuse. The attention whore end of things is perhaps the ultimate expression of that belief.

I think it's hasty to label all "solo immersion" as bad. Some people get into roleplaying, other people just want to hit stuff. The thing is, when a player decides that his dwarf is going to sit and sulk in a boat while the rest of the party on shore fights a band of lizardmen, that player might be doing exactly what years of player advice and RPG rulebooks have told him he is supposed to be doing.

Quote from: JimBobOzThoughts? Am I being too harsh? So many descriptions of "immersive play" sound like some player saying, "look at meeeeeee!"

What John Kim is talking about is not necessarily what you are talking about.  There are certainly dysfunctional gamers who use immersion as as a justification for all sorts of disruptive behavior.  But there are plenty of other examples that don't fit with our analysis.  For example, Mary Kuhner describe her immersive role-playing extensively in the context of one-on-one games that she played with her husband, running multiple immersive characters.  When she had immersive problems of the sort John Kim was talking about, it ruined the game for nobody but her.  In my own personal experience, immersion problems that made my character incompatible with the game or other characters generally resulted in me pulling my character out of the game so I'm not seeing the "Attention Junkie" issue there.

The problem is that immersive characters behave like real people because they are played like real people.  Just as you might decide to stay home rather than go to the movies with some friends, an immersive character might decide that they want to do something different than the rest of the party.  It has nothing to do with attention and everything to do with internal character logic.

That said, role-playing is a group activity and it's helpful for immersive players to learn how to assert some omniscient control over their characters to avoid game-wrecking choices and it also helps to create characters that are inclined to work with the group of characters in the game and engage the scenarios provided by the GM.  That's why I ask the players in my group to create characters who will "answer the call to adventure" (rather than having to constantly be dragged kicking and screaming into the action) and have learned how to spot some of the early warning sights of game-wrecking decisions in my characters before they get out of hand.  

I've also been experimenting with players creating three different characters and letting the GM pick which one he wants the player to play.  That gives the GM some control over making sure that the characters fit well together and what he has in mind, even if the players aren't entirely successful in creating cohesive parties on their own.  That way, a GM could reject, for example, loner characters that won't fit.  And if the player hands in nothing but anti-social loner characters, that suggests there will be problems up front.

Quote from: John MorrowThat said, role-playing is a group activity and it's helpful for immersive players to learn how to assert some omniscient control over their characters to avoid game-wrecking choices and it also helps to create characters that are inclined to work with the group of characters in the game and engage the scenarios provided by the GM.  That's why I ask the players in my group to create characters who will "answer the call to adventure" (rather than having to constantly be dragged kicking and screaming into the action) and have learned how to spot some of the early warning sights of game-wrecking decisions in my characters before they get out of hand.  

That's a good piece of advice for GMs. A GM has to be prepared to say no to a player's choice of character. Especially when it has "spoiler" written all over it. Immersion can be great fun, but if it gets too antagonistic, then why bother? That kind of negative energy easily spills over to between people.

John hits it bang-on: if you are going to play immersively then you take responsibility for making "fit characters" (meaning characters that will enthausitically engage with the adventure). This is sometimes called front loading (where there is a lot of work done before play starts to help ensure that it goes in a certain direction) and it's, IMO, a very, very valuable concept.

D&D did this effortlessly: you make an adventurerer and, hey, there's an adventure!

The broader the game though, the more carefully you need to narrow down the character generation choices if you want people to reliably and in-character agree to do something.

-Marco

I had a weird thought about this: how many games include systems for creating your character's personality? Would it hurt a game to include a list of personality traits, all tailored to the game's purpose, that players must choose from?

Quote from: mearlsI had a weird thought about this: how many games include systems for creating your character's personality? Would it hurt a game to include a list of personality traits, all tailored to the game's purpose, that players must choose from?

Well, White Wolf has their natures, where you're supposed to pick what's supposed to be a defining personality trait, like judge, leader, or thrillseeker. Playing up to your trait nets you points for your Willpower stat.

However:
1) They don't seem to be tailored. They're just the same personality archetypes that pass on from game to game.
2) It seemed when I ran a WW game, the Will point was not a strong enough carrot for PCs to play up their natures, or maybe I was just to stingy with them.

I get that well built rules will provide incentives to play the type of game the designers had in mind, but how well can that be done concerning a PC attitude or personality?