Wow, lots of responses. Obviously this touches on topics which are important to people, interesting to see! Sorry if I miss some stuff...

Quote from: jhkimFirst of all, it's great that you do this [ask new players what they want, work it together with what everyone else wants, then lay it out explicitly]. However, would you at least agree that it's common for game groups to not do this?

I agree that there's often a lot unspoken, but I think a lot more is understood without being spoken than you're giving credit for.

Quote from: jhkimThe cases of conflict that I was talking about are where you don't have a group of players who all explicitly agree and extract a promise from a new player. They're cases where you've got a few players who are into it, a few players who are unsure, and a few players who aren't.

We don't extract any promises. We ask everyone what they want, and mix it together into a big gaming stew. Whoever's GMing says, "given what everyone's said, this is how I'll run the game. Everyone happy with that?" I call it the Jean-Luc Picard style of leadership - you know how he'd have those conferences, asking everyone what they thought, then make decisions from their recommendations? Same sort of thing. No-one's promising anything; people are just agreeing (or not) that this is the way it'll go.

Heaps more stuff we never thought of comes up in play. That's the "unsure" part you're talking about. Problems pop up which never occurred to you at the beginning of the game. People surprise you. For example, someone chooses "Cowardice" as a trait for their character, then gets upset when they can't enter combats.

As GM, I'd said, "you realise this will mean you'll miss out on a lot of the action. Not because I'm going to throw combats at you, but we have two out of four characters in the party oriented towards combat. They'll make fights happen. So you'll spend some of your time just watching."
"That's okay."
Later... "I'm bored. Hurry up you guys."

Now, whether this player really absorbed what I'd said in the beginning, or whether they thought they'd be okay with it, but once they actually tried it, found they weren't, I don't know. It all comes to the same thing - even though it was all laid out clearly, still there were surprises. I think that sort of thing's inevitable. Some stuff you never know until you try, and some other stuff you just plain never think of until it comes up.

So no group's going to be able to balance everything perfectly all the time, however clearly they spell things out in the beginning.

Quote from: jhkimThat said, though, could you elaborate what you mean by "leaving the adventure" or "behaving as though you're in a different campaign"? Some hypothetical or real examples, perhaps?

I could as easily have said, "different story." I mean that the events of the two or more groups are utterly unconnected. If we sit down to play Tour of Duty, and one of the characters goes off to roleplay out Everybody Loves Raymond, okay they are leaving the adventure, the campaign, the story. Whereas if we sit down to play Tour of Duty, and one guy goes Rambo on us, then though it's a somewhat different story, it's a related story, and they can easily be in the same campaign. Rambo comes back to base to get more ammo from time to time, and maybe talks to the guys there.

If the stories are utterly unconnected, then you have to wonder why we're in  a game group. Wouldn't it be easier to play in different sessions?

Between the extremes of the "stick together at all times" team, and the "party of loners zapping off in different directions," there's a lot of variation.

I simply mean that if you join a game group, you should not reject the entire thing. If you've said you want to play Tour of Duty, why are you having your character ask for leave to go back home and play Everybody Loves Raymond? You're rejecting the entire thing. "But it's what my character would do."

Again, the social aspect of gaming. Are you here just to roleplay your character, or to contribute to the fun of the group as a whole? That's not a "metagame consideration", the fun of the group - that's the whole point of a roleplaying game group.

Quote from: mearlsIt's all about expectations. If I play in a game with four players, and we each get one hour of spotlight time while the other three PCs have nothing to do in the game, but we all have fun and we agreed that's how we wanted the game to function, what's the problem?

None at all. It's why I said that splitting the party isn't inherently bad. The point is that each player should be able to make the choice as to whether to participate in what's about to happen, and that whether they get to choose or not, if they can't be involved they should be entertained. I point again to my examples of two game sessions I had recently where the party split, and all enjoyed themselves in one session but not the other.

Quote from: jhkimIn general, I think it's much better to have built in outside forces (physical, social, or otherwise) which keep the characters together -- rather than trying to make it a duty of the players to find excuses within their characters.

I don't. Both the GM and the players are responsible for keeping the game entertaining for everyone. The PCs are not pawns to be mvoed around by the GM.

Quote from: John MorrowThat's where I think you are missing the objective of immersion. While that's strictly true, the objective of immersion is to think in character and even feel emotions in character so that the character is as real as possible. As such, immersed characters can behave exactly like real people.

"Immersed" players have characters which feel real within the context of the unreal game rules and setting. The rules and setting act as boundaries restricting the "reality" of the character. I am just adding the players' social boundaries to it. The most "immersed" player must make compromises; no GM, no rules or setting, are going to grant the player their every whim. I just add the compromise of dealing with other players.

The other things you wrote about how to set up a good game experience I agree with, they are very wise. They're the best kind of advice, the kind that is obvious - but only once someone else has said it

Quote from: John MorrowWhy do you think it makes more sense to let players create characters who are all but guaranteed to cross the lines of fun -

The thing is, I don't think any characters are guaranteed to do anything at creation. The character is always under the control of a player (either the player running them, or the GM who takes them over with an NPC's spell or whatever). A real person is always controlling the character. Yes, I know that the "immersed" player (or writer, or whatever) feels that their character has a separate reality; but in fact, they are always under your control. Any character is an expression of the player. We are incapable of creating or playing a character that is not in any way an expression of something in us. We're responsible for what our characters do.

Quote from: John MorrowI've purposely pulled characters that don't fit myself, after consultation with the GM and other players. So have other people in my group. It's not really that different than having a character die, or do you think PCs shouldn't die, either?

I think that players should always be able to participate in the game session if they want to. If playing a new character will help you participate better, go for it. If us changing the setting or system will help you participate better, let's do it. If your character is killed, then I will make sure that you've the chance to play some other character, either an NPC or a new character, within 30 minutes, if that's what you want.

Everyone gets to join in if they want to. That's what it means to be in a game group. You're talking a lot about characters - but characters are just the tool for joining in the game. The player comes first, and the player controls what their character does.

Quote from: John MorrowIf sounds like you understand how to handle split-party situations. So why do you consider this such a big problem?

The problem, as I've said, isn't the party splitting as such. It's the player rejecting the entire game world, and the other players and characters. I consider that a problem, and it's what was referred to in John Kim's LJ post and his comments on mine after it.

John Kim said, "my experience has been that player focus on a unified mission is strongly correlated with non-immersive, thin character play where the players emphasize solving tactical/problem-solving challenges over deep characters."

So he obviously considers this sort of thing a problem.

Quote from: John Morrowt's also not a hobby where you ignore your own needs and grimly play to make your friends happy with no concern for your own preferences. You need to balance the needs of the player against the needs of the group. It's a recreational hobby that people do for fun, which means that everyone at the table needs to figure out how to have fun together.

Absolutely agreed.

Quote from: John MorrowIt only means that if the rest of the group can't tolerate waiting for the game getting back to them. That makes your accusations that only the immersive players are "attention junkies" rather ironic. It sounds like you are describing a table of attention junkies because my group manages to wait for players to finish their side activities in quite a bit of detail without whining about the lack of attention they are getting from the GM.

I think you missed the bit where I specifically said that often players are quite happy to have the party split, so long as they chose it, and the actions of everyone are entertaining to watch.

Quote from: John MorrowSo you are willing to remove all of the solitary jail cells in your setting and change police procedures because your players are too impatient to not have the GM's attention focussed on them for more than a short period of time? I'm beginning to understand why you see everything in the context of a need for attention. It sounds like you play with a very needy group of players if they can't tolerate being split up for a single session like that.

Nope. All I had to do was narrate it out, "Okay, you spend two days in the cells, and -" rather than going through each hour. Lots of things I could have done, instead of boring two out of three players.

Nobody should ever be a dick at the gaming table.

Uh.

That's all I got.

Quote from: JimBobOzI simply mean that if you join a game group, you should not reject the entire thing. If you've said you want to play Tour of Duty, why are you having your character ask for leave to go back home and play Everybody Loves Raymond? You're rejecting the entire thing. "But it's what my character would do."

Is there some reason you're taking one single phrase of description of immersion out of the context of all other description, and isolating and exaggerating it to the point where it's most difficult to read it as anything but a vicious caricature?  Some reason you're not bothering to ask how immersionists handle character clashes, but assuming that the only way we behave is to demand that everyone else fulfill our every whim?  Some reason you're assuming that we don't do take other players into consideration, like this? --

Quote"Immersed" players have characters which feel real within the context of the unreal game rules and setting. The rules and setting act as boundaries restricting the "reality" of the character. I am just adding the players' social boundaries to it. The most "immersed" player must make compromises; no GM, no rules or setting, are going to grant the player their every whim. I just add the compromise of dealing with other players.

Some reason you think we don't we know our characters are fictional, or that we're responsible for our own actions, that you feel compelled to tell us this? --

QuoteThe thing is, I don't think any characters are guaranteed to do anything at creation. The character is always under the control of a player (either the player running them, or the GM who takes them over with an NPC's spell or whatever). A real person is always controlling the character. Yes, I know that the "immersed" player (or writer, or whatever) feels that their character has a separate reality; but in fact, they are always under your control. Any character is an expression of the player. We are incapable of creating or playing a character that is not in any way an expression of something in us. We're responsible for what our characters do.

If I didn't play in a particular fashion, and I wanted to communicate with people who do in a civil manner, I wouldn't be spending my time implying that they were a) social retards with no notion whatsoever of give-and-take in social interaction, or b) psychotics who can't tell the difference between the real world and fiction, or c) irresponsible moral defectives who won't.  I would approach it more like this: "Hey, it looks to me as if what you're describing could very easily produce this effect, which I wouldn't find fun.  If my impression is correct, how do you deal with it?  If it isn't correct, why am I wrong?"

Instead, this is sounding much like the typical Forgey deprecation and caricature of character-centered playstyles.  Is there any reason why I shouldn't dismiss it as irrelevant, as I dismiss the Forge posters who don't bother to ask how one copes with the challenges of a playstyle before assuming that it's antisocial and broken?

Quote from: JimBobOzRoleplaying isn't a hobby where you get to tell everyone else to go to hell and just roleplay your one character by themselves - unless it's a one-on-one game. It's a hobby where we are social in a group. That doesn't mean that our characters can't do things outside the group, it just means that those outside-group things will be dealt with in less detail than the inside-group things.

All rolepalying has constraints, as I said. Some are constraints of the comfort of the other players, some are constraints of setting, some are constraints of in and out-of-character knowledge. Few seem to object to those, and indeed some of them are held to support "immersion". The only constraint consistently complained about is the constraint of the activities of the group getting more screentime than the activities of individuals who decide to walk away from the group, and this is held to be bad for "immersion." The reason can only be Attention Junkie behaviour.

I assume you're intentionally being offensive, since I have no reason to believe you're socially clueless enough not to realize that this Attention Junkie rhetoric is insulting.  And I don't bother to speak softly to people who demonstrate that they don't give a rat's ass about being courteous to me.

First: in my games we often follow the activities of individual characters in as much detail as we follow the activities of the whole group.  I expect players to be interested in things other than their own screentime; if they're not, they're in the wrong game.  I have no intention of satisfying an attention hound who's going to insist on crushing the important events that would really unfold for other characters into the particular pattern that caters to his desire to be front and center at all times, no intention of preventing other players from seeing what would "really" happen because Mr. Self-Centered with Short Attention Span can't stand to be offstage for a while.  It doesn't fit the group's purpose to let this kind of constriction occur: we like character-driven sprawl.

The idea that a group of people who like character-driven sprawl should have to conform to a game contract where action is plot-constricted or mission-constricted has no merit whatsoever.  Your way is not The One Right Way to Run a Game.  You are not displaying Obviously Superior Social Fu That Will Produce the Campaign Beautiful For Everyone, Unlike Those Immersive Dicks Over There Who Never Think About Anyone Else.  You're just satisfying your own preference at the expense of conflicting preferences -- exactly the same as all the rest of us do.

I don't cater to powergamers, butt-kickers, or Story Now! types.  You don't cater to the method actors.  Fine, OK, no problem -- but don't expect me to believe for a minute that you're somehow doing something morally elevated, demonstrating superior social sensibility, by playing the way you want to play instead of the way I want to play.

As far as a character walking away from the group altogether goes: just what the blazes is supposed to be the big horrible problem with this?  So what?  All that means in that the character is written out of play, and I may have to write characters out of play for all sorts of other reasons.

"I don't think my character can continue to be a viable part of this group" is a legitimate reason for exit, and I really don't care whether the player reached this conclusion because his character modelling process is subconscious, because the game isn't going in the direction he was expecting, or because he misdesigned the character.  I can deal.  His choices are to drop out or to make a new character.  He gets a side campaign focused on his old character only if I'm interested enough in the old character to run one.

And I've been playing with immersives since 1989, and I have yet to see any of them take their character off alone and then demand that the GM run a special campaign just for them.  I haven't had anyone ask, let alone demand.  The very closest thing I've ever seen to campaign split with immersion as a possible contributing factor (and I don't think it was the cause) had the GM suggesting a split when a collision between two characters was obviously coming and one of the players was suggesting dropping out to avoid the clash.  I have never seen anything like this Horrible Typical Immersive Attention Junkie Problem where the player demands to be the star of his own solo show.

I suppose somebody, somewhere, has done it: there's nothing about immersion that precludes narcissism.  But I haven't seen it at all yet, and I certainly don't have any reason to think that it's a typical problem.

QuoteIf you put anything before the fun of the group as a whole, then you're failing at the main purpose of a social hobby. Roleplaying is not about you being a star and navel-gazing, it's about the group having fun together.

And everybody has fun exactly the same way, so we should all build groups that work just like yours.  Whenever interests clash, we should all make exactly the same choices you would, when we choose what kind of pleasure to sacrifice in order to preserve another.

Quote from: JimBobOzWe could consider another example of a character's actions being changed for "metagame" reasons.

"My character kills John's character. It's what my character would do."

In having my character kill yours, I have sought an "immersionist" goal, expressing my character's personality in terms of actions which seem reasonable to my character. Should I now expect you to admire my 1337 roleplaying skillzorz? Or would you perhaps be annoyed?

You should knock off the snark about admiring 1337 roleplaying skillzorz and start adding some context.

If you designed your character so that his attempting to kill my character is foreseeable at the start of the game, then either:

• The game contract is adversarial; PvP is considered part of the fun.  (Not my taste, but some people like it);
• You think the game contract is adversarial, but you're mistaken;
• You're a jerk player who's made a jerk character to express his antisocial tendencies, and the smartest thing the GM can do is toss you out on your ear as soon as this becomes apparent.

If it was not foreseeable at the start, and the game contract is not intentionally adversarial, then there are a bunch of things that could be true:

• The clash could be a natural result of what's going on in play: it could be situation-driven.
• Somebody accidentally badly designed at least one of the characters.  Maybe the potential killer is too hot a reactor; maybe the potential victim is built to trespass in a way that naturally provokes such a response.
• I'm a jerk player and I think my character should be able to push around, provoke, trample on, and threaten yours, but I don't ever expect you to react adversely because I have the Divine Right of Bullies and expect your character to submit.  The smartest thing the GM can do is toss me out as soon as this becomes apparent.

What should happen with 1 and 2 is case-dependent.  Immersive play takes 'adjust the character model directly' off the table as one of the possible solutions, but that's only one option.  If I thought you were actually interested in discussing how to handle something like that I'd go into it, but at present I have the impression that this thread is all about demonstrating the moral and social superiority of your style over that of anyone who can't preserve get what they want out of play if they break their character models.

Quote from: JimBobOz"But it's what my character would do!" is a weak defence, because characters, if they're meant to resemble real people, they won't be entirely consistent and predictable. The thing that made me spin out in anger yesterday may not make me do so today. The kind of woman I lusted after, the religious beliefs I had, how much violence I thought was morally right to catch some murderer - these things all change, not simply over years, but from day to day. Humans do have consistency, but they're consistent within a broad range. For example, I am essentially a "loner", being introverted, and preferring individual action over group action; I'd rather take care of things myself. But in several years involved with the military, while in the field, I never once wandered away from the section, except to take a crap. Though essentially a "loner", I am quite capable of group action. I tend not to go to parties, but when I do go, I bring a slab of beer for everyone to share, and I talk to everyone there if I can.

People have personality traits, but unless those traits are pathological, unless those traits are so extreme as to be a mental illness, people can from time to time ignore them and act against them. Personality traits tell us what you usually like to do, and feel most comfortable doing; they don't tell us what you'll do each and every day.

This description indicates that you do not know how immersion works for a large number of immersive players.  You're not even on the right page.  This is all irrelevant: it has no bearing on any possible problem that immersion might occasion.  In order for it to have any bearing, it would have to be possible for most immersive players to make conscious alterations to the character model, and to then resume immersion as if nothing happened.  But this is not possible in many cases.

I expect you to come back and tell me that my immersing doesn't work the way I say it does.  Right now, I have the impression that your attitude likely to turn out to be "I've never sat at your gaming table, but I know more than you do about what's going on inside your head when you're playing.  I know that this experience you're reporting doesn't work the way you say it does, and doesn't occur under the conditions you say it does, and isn't rendered impossible under the conditions you say it is.  You are either an incompetent observer, or a liar."  And if that's the case there's no point in trying to explain anything about how it actually works or what I'd do about any practical problem that turns up.

If these things are not true and this is not your attitude, if you want a constructive discussion about technique and practice, then stop writing in a patronizing and insulting fashion that suggests that the other side consists of people who do not have the first idea about consideration for others, who need to be told that, hey, if you're playing with other people, you need to think about what they want occasionally.  I do not find this to be a revelation.

Quote from: JimBobOz"Immersed" players have characters which feel real within the context of the unreal game rules and setting. The rules and setting act as boundaries restricting the "reality" of the character. I am just adding the players' social boundaries to it.

Correct.  However, there are two kinds of limits that can be placed on a character by the rules, the GM, and the player: (1) rules that derive from the game setting and imaginary reality and (2) rules external to the game setting and imaginary reality.  "I can't be a cyberninja because there are no cyberninjas in the Medieval setting we are playing in," derives from the game setting.  "I can't play a thief because Bill is already playing a thief and Bill is afraid I'll step all over his screen time," is external to the game setting and imaginary reality.

One can apply rules that reflect the game setting or imaginary reality to an immersive character because they will make sense to the character.  "You can't kick through the steel door because a hand-to-hand attack can't overcome the door's armor" [a hypothetical game mechanic] translates into a character understanding that he's getting nowhere kicking at the door and, possibly, an understanding that it's impossible before the character even tries.  "You can't kill Bill's character because it will upset Bill" cannot readily be translated into something the character can understand, especially if my character has very good reasons within the imaginary reality to kill Bill's character.  

If my character tries to kick through the steel door and can't, the in character interpretation is that the door is just too strong to kick through (even if it's not entirely realistic, the game rules act as a sort of physics proxy for the imaginary reality).  If my character has a good reason to kill Bill's character and decides to kill Bill's character and then doesn't, I'm left wondering why.  It doesn't make any sense to the character who has no understanding of Bill and no need to keep Bill from getting upset.

There are ways around this.  Characters can be nudged and excuses can be made in certain situations.  But change a characters mind too often without an internal reason that make sense, in character, and the coherent mindset of the character that allows immersion becomes inconsistent and immersion fails.  This has been described as having the character turn to cardboard.  The player can't climb into their mind and think in character because the character's decisions don't form a sensible mind.  In some cases, it destroys immersion and in others, it causes the character to go insane (which often leads to even more game-breaking decisions in character).

Quote from: JimBobOzThe most "immersed" player must make compromises; no GM, no rules or setting, are going to grant the player their every whim. I just add the compromise of dealing with other players.

Correct.  But for such compromises to be compatible with immersion, those compromises must be framed in terms of something that makes sense in character, not externally imposed for out of game reasons.  There are ways to do that, but "just make your character do something else" isn't it.
 
It's like making a dinner for some friends. Three friends want vegetables and the fourth friend doesn't need vegetables and hates broccoli, spinach, peas, and zucchini.  You can start throwing broccoli and peas into your dish to provide what the three friends want, ruining it for the fourth or you can make green beans, instead, which makes the dish acceptable for all four.  

There are ways for immersive players to play well with others who have different priorities.  I've been suggesting them.  It's not as simple as just saying, "Make your character act  some other way," unless you don't care whether the immersive player enjoys the game or not.

And, no, those suggestions won't work for an inconsiderate player who is purposely trying to disrupt the game using immersion as a cover.  Nothing is going to prevent them from being disruptive because that's their goal.  

Quote from: JimBobOzThe other things you wrote about how to set up a good game experience I agree with, they are very wise. They're the best kind of advice, the kind that is obvious - but only once someone else has said it

In addition, they work with immersive players and help get the objective you are looking for -- group play.

Quote from: JimBobOzThe thing is, I don't think any characters are guaranteed to do anything at creation.  The character is always under the control of a player (either the player running them, or the GM who takes them over with an NPC's spell or whatever). A real person is always controlling the character.

Yes.  But unless the game drives them away from the personality that they've created (e.g., the other players create characters who are such jerks that the immersive player ultimately can't think of any reason, in character, to stay with them) or the game drives them toward some other way of thinking, that's rarely going to happen.  And to guard against that during play, just in case, I suggested that players learn to recognize when their immersive characters are headed toward trouble.

Quote from: JimBobOzYes, I know that the "immersed" player (or writer, or whatever) feels that their character has a separate reality; but in fact, they are always under your control.

Not in the sense that I think you think.  I can't make an immersive character do anything without breaking the character, just as I can't set the memory values in a computer to anything and have it run.  An immersive character requires a consistent frame of mind or the character can't be played immersively.  If you've established, in real life that you hate hot dogs and Brittney Spears and suddenly found yourself going along with your friends to a Brittney Spears concert and ordering  a hot dog, you'd wonder, "Where the heck did that come from?"  And if it happens regularly enough, I suspect you'd find it difficult to know who you were and why you were doing anything you were doing.

The actions of an immersive character flow from thinking in character.  Thoughts and actions that don't flow from thinking in character are inexplicable to the character and, as such, can prevent further thinking in character because there is no way, in character, to explain why the character is behaving the way they are.  The internal mindscape of the character falls apart.

Quote from: JimBobOzAny character is an expression of the player. We are incapable of creating or playing a character that is not in any way an expression of something in us.

Correct, because the character uses the same wetware that the player does and borrows a variety of elements of the player as a foundation.  But that doesn't mean that the character can't be quite distinct from the player and think independently of player control.  I've intuited in character.  I've had epiphanies in character.  Heck, I've had characters behave in ways that I didn't understand until I psychoanalyzed the character outside of the game.  Why?  Because whether you want to believe it's possible or not, the process of thinking in character creates a "virtual person" that I can tap into and think as, with their own distinct view of the game, set of memories, and interpretation of what is going on.  

If you don't think it's possible for multiple conscious states to occupy the same brain at the same time, I have to ask if you believe that multiple personality disorders are real because that's an even more extreme example of the same basic idea.

Quote from: JimBobOzWe're responsible for what our characters do.

Absolutely.  That's an entirely different issue.

Quote from: JimBobOzI think that players should always be able to participate in the game session if they want to. If playing a new character will help you participate better, go for it. If us changing the setting or system will help you participate better, let's do it. If your character is killed, then I will make sure that you've the chance to play some other character, either an NPC or a new character, within 30 minutes, if that's what you want.

I wouldn't find that terribly satisfying.

Quote from: JimBobOzEveryone gets to join in if they want to. That's what it means to be in a game group. You're talking a lot about characters - but characters are just the tool for joining in the game.

If I don't get a satisfactory experience role-playing with a character, why am I role-playing?  I role-play for the in-character experience.  No in-character experience and I might as well be playing Axis and Allies or hanging out and talking.

What you are saying is very much like saying the purpose of going to a restaurant is to fill your stomach.  Well, yes, that's true.  But that doesn't mean I'm going to be happy if I get a plate full of slop since whatever they slop on a plate is simply a tool to fill my stomach.  And even if you are happy with a plate full of slop because you are eating it with friends, don't assume that everyone else is going to be satisfied if they are served slop.

Quote from: JimBobOzThe player comes first, and the player controls what their character does.

An immersive player does not control what their character does in the sense that I think you mean this statement.  The character controls itself, or at least that is my perception of what's happening.  I've had characters do things I did not understand.  I've had character feel emotions that I don't understand.  That's not possible under conscious control.

We can nit-pick over how complete the "virtual person is", how much it reflects me, if this is really simply an illusion of subconscious control, and so on.  I think that's irrelevant.  The experience, as a player, is that my character behaves independently of my direct control.  I don't tell me character what to do.  I think in character and just do what the character would do, just as I live my daily life by thinking as myself and just doing what I would do.  And I'm not the only person who has this experience.  Maybe it's all an illusion, but the experience to me is that the character has autonomy and I don't know how to assert conscious control without destroying that experience of autonomy that allows me to be surprised by what my character does.  I've seen some evidence that some people can reconcile the two.  I can't.

Quote from: JimBobOzThe problem, as I've said, isn't the party splitting as such. It's the player rejecting the entire game world, and the other players and characters. I consider that a problem, and it's what was referred to in John Kim's LJ post and his comments on mine after it.

You are confusing "rejecting the social contract" with "rejecting the game world".  Not the same thing. The problem is when the social contract makes as much sense in the game world as zoo dungeons filled with monsters that lack any in-game explanation for them being there.  Never split the party and always follow the GM's adventure are not "game world" issues.  In fact, they rarely make any sense from within the game world, which is the whole source of the problem.

Quote from: JimBobOzJohn Kim said, "my experience has been that player focus on a unified mission is strongly correlated with non-immersive, thin character play where the players emphasize solving tactical/problem-solving challenges over deep characters."

So he obviously considers this sort of thing a problem.

Yes, for the reason I stated above.  A player focus on a unified mission is rarely justified in game world and character terms and often exists simply as an artificial social construct.  The D&D party that ignores the obvious contradictions of having a Paladin merrily adventure with an Evil Assassin and a Chaotic Neutral Barbarian because those are the PCs that the players want to play isn't doing so for game world reasons.  They are doing so because they are putting group dynamics before game world logic to avoid PC-PC combat or the disintegration of the party.  That  sort of thing is common enough in "mission oriented" games where character class capabilities trump any and all role-playing or game world logic considerations.

Quote from: JimBobOzI think you missed the bit where I specifically said that often players are quite happy to have the party split, so long as they chose it, and the actions of everyone are entertaining to watch.

No, I got that.  So long as they are being entertained, they are happy.  But that's still needy and impatient.  They don't strictly need your attention as a GM but they do need you to keep them entertained or they will get bored and start whining.

Quote from: JimBobOzNope. All I had to do was narrate it out, "Okay, you spend two days in the cells, and -" rather than going through each hour. Lots of things I could have done, instead of boring two out of three players.

And doing so leaves no opportunity for the players to try anything or for things to develop.  No chances to try to escape.  No chances to bargain with the guards or try to extract some information from them.  No chances to talk to other prisoners or for the authorities to let something slip during the questioning.

QuoteThe character controls itself, or at least that is my perception of what's happening. I've had characters do things I did not understand. I've had character feel emotions that I don't understand. That's not possible under conscious control.

What happens when your character attacks someone? What prevents you from acting it out physically, if not conscious control on your part?

For the sake of anyone reading this who doesn't play immersively and doesn't get what the fuss is over: there are some absurd stereotypes that have absolutely nothing to do with immersion floating around this conversation being waved about as if they were typical problems resulting from immersion, and also some suggestions that immersive players are being selfish attention hogs for not wanting to do things that are likely to permanently destroy their enjoyment of a game.

First thing, about the nature of immersion: there are a couple of different things that are described as immersion these days, which are fairly natural uses of the word; but the earliest use in roleplaying that I know of, and the commonest one, is character immersion, or deep IC.  This is a state of mind where the player is deeply engaged with the character, and where the character modelling is subconscious rather than conscious.  The immersed player doesn't consciously decide to have the character react in a particular way: they experience the character reacting in that way.  They think as the character thinks, and to some extent feel as the character feels.  It is, for at least some of us, the best and most satisfying way to experience roleplaying, often by a very wide margin: I do not find roleplaying worth the effort without it.

The things that people find help in assisting and maintaining immersion, or hinder it, differ, but there are some fairly common tendencies. -- Note well that I am describing common tendencies, as I experience them and as they're reported by many other immersionists.  They're not necessarily universal ones.  (It seems to be rash for anyone to say, with respect to roleplaying, that it's impossible for anyone to get effect Y out of technique X.)

• There is a strong emphasis on making both the fictional character and the fictional setting as believable and convincing as possible.
• There is a strong emphasis on avoiding thinking in an out-of-character manner.  Simple distraction is somewhat bad, but it's a momentary problem, usually.  
• Writing things into the fictional action that don't follow from anything in the setting -- making characters behave in an arbitrary manner, having events happen for conspicuously metaworld reasons -- tends to be bad for immersion, as it leaves lasting 'scars' in the fiction: things that have been written into play that aren't what "really" would have happened, that don't fit the subconscious models.  In my experience, these things are mild problems if they don't produce a major divergence between what really should have happened and what was portrayed -- if they don't happen at a major decision point, it's possible for the models to 'heal' around the scar.  For example, perhaps I only realized something about the character after a scene was over, so that the way I played wasn't completely accurate; but if I didn't make any decisions with the character that have large lasting effects based on my mistake, I can deal with it.
• Trying to make immersive characters behave in an arbitrary manner for metaworld reasons with respect to major issues -- where the character has often reacted strongly -- tends to be very bad for immersion, and can permanently destroy the player's ability to immerse with a particular character.  In my language, it breaks the model: one has forced enough divergence between the subconscious modelling process that produces immersion and what's being depicted in play that there is no longer any way to reconnect the modelling process to the events in the game.  The character is internally dead: the subconscious mind no longer cooperates in producing reactions for them.
  

This, for immersive players, sucks raw eggs.  Playing a zombie is no fun at all: I don't think I've ever heard an immersive player describe playing a zombie as preferable to dropping out of the campaign altogether, or making a new character.  So this kind of damage to immersible characters is to be avoided if at all possible, particularly for people who don't make characters easily.

Playstyles in which players are expected to consciously force alterations into their character models as play progresses are thus generally hostile to immersive play.  It usually simply does not work for the immersive player to try to change the character's reactions, particularly on the sort of major issue that might be a campaign wrecker.  That is the one disadvantage that immersive play has with respect to the player's, or GM's, toolbox: it frequently removes the ability to make adjustments to the character's behavior for metaworld reasons, at least if continuing to play immersively is the goal.  If you want to keep an immersive character from reacting it a particular way while keeping them playable, you usually need to reach for indirect approaches.

The other typical risks are the reverse of immersion's upsides:

• The strong character connection tends to intensify the player's perception of the character's experiences; and while often this is good and adds interest, occasionally if the particular experience is unpleasant or disturbing it can be an unenjoyable thing to play.
• That the immersive character is modelled subconsciously means that, just as one can't necessarily consciously predict or determine one's own reactions, one can't necessarily consciously predict or determine the character's either (without breaking the model, that is).  This is usually a good thing, usually part of the satisfaction of playing immersively: I am not interested in any character whose reactions I can completely foresee or determine, such plainly being a boring and unreal oversimplification.  However, it has the downside that, just as my own reactions are occasionally darned inconvenient, so may be the character's.  In any game, a player may be surprised by their own reactions ("I thought this would be OK and it isn't"); immersive character modelling adds an extra layer of potential surprise.

Quote from: KeranPlaystyles in which players are expected to consciously force alterations into their character models as play progresses are thus generally hostile to immersive play.

Well, they annoy the fuck out of every kind of gamer, last time I checked.

Some reactions to the things in my previous post:

-- "Man, that's weird and psycho." Well, OK.  Provided you also say that method acting is weird and psycho.  There are differences in the process, because the actor isn't usually generating as many of the character's reactions as the immersive roleplayer, since they have a script to follow;  but there's also a fair amount of similarity in some respects.  They're both using drawing on one's own experiences to step very far, imaginatively, into the mind of a fictional character.

-- "Man, I don't care, I have no intention of trying to run my games to suit something like that."  Sure.  No quarrel.  Those of us who do it habitually find the payoff in intensity, emotional connection, and exploring points of view not our own worth the effort, but tastes differ.  It may get in the way of what you're trying to do.

-- "It's all right to play immersively, provided you play under strictures that make immersion difficult or impossible for many immersive players.  But it's selfish and unsocial to play under the conditions that make it easy and likely." That's a lot of what JimBobOz has been saying in this thread in practice, whether he appreciates that that's what it works out to or not.

And, yeah, OK, I'll admit to half of that: selfishly, I roleplay under conditions in which I think I'm likely to get the experience which makes roleplaying worth doing in the first place, and I rarely intentionally roleplay under conditions in which I don't.  No, I'm not interested in joining a group where one of the expectations is that, in order to make things fun for everyone else, I will attempt to adjust my character in play in a manner likely to utterly destroy what makes playing fun for me.  They can have their fun without me, and I'll go off and have mine with people who can deal with my style.

That make me a selfish attention hog?  OK, then I'm a selfish attention hog.

-- "I can't get what I want out of play if you're doing that." -- Yeah, maybe you can't.  I'm not saying that I agree completely with any of the tradeoff roleplaying theories (like the Threefold); but I will say that they came into existence because some people have discovered that they cannot completely satisfy every possible desire in a game: some people have found that sooner or later if they want X to the fullest they're going to have to sacrifice Y.  It's common as dirt, for example, for people who want exciting and dramatically structured plots to find that they can't get the kind of plot they want out of a game operating under the character-driven strictures many immersionists favor; and there's nothing wrong with deciding that you'd rather sacrifice immersion to plot than plot to immersion.

What impresses me as grade A government inspected ridiculous, however, is for someone to maintain that the particular sort of pleasure that they favor most is Fun, the Obvious Right Way to Play, the morally and socially superior way to game.  I don't see that character-driven play is innately superior in any way to plot-centered play, or mission-centered play, or theme-centered play, or tactical simulation, or whatever it is that somebody else may favor; but equally, I am not about to let anyone tell me that because he prefers something else to my style, that he somehow has the moral or social high ground.

-- "But immersionists don't take responsibility for their actions." -- I imagine there are people of all sorts who don't take responsibility for their actions, and I'm sure there are immersionists among them.  But at least some of this seems to be the result of reading attempts at metaphorical descriptions of a subjective state of mind as if they were supposed to be literal statements of physical fact.  It's like hearing a writer say, "I couldn't get the characters to follow the plot" and thinking that this is a literal assertion that the writer was incapable of typing words depicting the characters taking the actions in her outline, when what she means is that her sense of the characters as she was writing developed in a direction incompatible with her outline, and she found it better to follow the characters as developed than the outline.

The kind of language immersionists tend to use among themselves, which they understand perfectly well because they can match it to experience, isn't terribly well adapted to explaining the experience to someone who hasn't had it yet.  What I have to say about this is a) there are good explanations and descriptions of immersion in the rec.games.frp.advocacy archives (search for posts with the word 'immersion' by Mary Kuhner and Sarah Kahn), and b) language like this isn't going to disappear, for the same reason that writers aren't going to stop saying "I couldn't get the characters to follow the plot."  We know what we mean, and we can't deliver a full-blown description every time we want to compare notes.

-- "Because an immersive player's focus tends to be on the character's internal state, that the player is therefore wholly selfish and self-absorbed, uninterested in whether anyone else has a good time.  Also, they're incapable of depicting what's going on in the character's mind in a fashion that might be of any interest to anyone else."  Non sequiturs both.   The method actor, while practicing his craft, focuses on the character's internal state for the very purpose of interestingly and convincingly portraying the character to the audience.  And do you believe that this internal focus means that such an actor necessarily cares nothing for whether anyone else on the set is happy?  Does someone cease to entertain an intent if the thought is not always at the foreground of consciousness?  If I'm concentrating on writing MUSH code, does that mean I've stopped caring about my mother?

You will note that I have not discussed the antisocial loner, the jerk character who was intended to wreck the fun of the other players, the bullying character, the character who shafts the party in what's supposed to be a cooperative game, and other fauna that sometimes get blamed on immersionists because someone may say "I'm just playing my character!" as an excuse.

That is because these have nothing whatsoever to do with immersion.  Nought.  Zip.  Zilch.  Not a blessed thing.

They have to do either with bad character design or bad gatekeeping.  Either someone constructed a character who won't work by accident, or the GM is tolerating someone who purposely constructs characters no one else will enjoy playing with.  It is immaterial whether someone who's built a character that doesn't work plays that character by subconscious modelling or conscious authorial direction.

Quote from: KeranSome reactions to the things in my previous post

For an actual reaction, see my post above

Quote from: S. John RossWell, they annoy the fuck out of every kind of gamer, last time I checked.

I wouldn't say that in the sense that I meant it.  There are people who want and expect players, including themselves, to steer their characters in particular directions, for the sake of getting some other kind of pleasure than that which some of get from seeing what the characters do naturally.

Which raises the question -- how is the character's nature defined?

People don't necessarily arrive at the definitive version of their characters the same way.  Some of JimBobOz's posts give the impression that for him character modelling proceeds by taking a list of traits in words, and then consciously interpreting those traits in particular ways; he also seems to think (so far as I can tell) that everyone does it this way, or at least in a sufficiently similar manner that everyone can push the character into a particular interpretation of a verbal trait.

But for me the process of creating or playing an immersive character bears no resemblance to this.  The apprehension of the character's nature is wordless, and I seek for words to express what I already know of the character: the words don't define the character.  I am playing out of the wordless sense of the character's mindset.  (I can't think of how to put this any better at the moment.)

Quote from: S. John RossWhat happens when your character attacks someone? What prevents you from acting it out physically, if not conscious control on your part?

Um ... in my case, I'd say that it's that I'm doing something that bears some resemblance to method acting, rather than experiencing a psychotic delusion.

I play online, and I don't, when I am immersed, have the fact that I am expressing my character's reactions by typing in the foreground of consciousness; nor do my foreground thoughts include concentration on the fact that the other characters' actions are being presented to me as text on a screen.  In the foreground is my imaginative rendition of what's going on in the fictional world.

But that doesn't mean I'm not aware of the real world on any level at all, that it's not part of the background.

QuoteThere are people who want and expect players, including themselves, to steer their characters in particular directions, for the sake of getting some other kind of pleasure than that which some of get from seeing what the characters do naturally.

Of course there are. But in my experience, they are so rare that they deserve comment only as curiosities. Your post seems to imply that you consider them more common than that, and if that's the case then (on that point) our experiences contradict.