TheRPGSite

You are making a bunch of assumptions here that are not true for myself and other people I role-play with.  I'll try to point the critical ones out.

Quote from: JimBobOzBasically, the "immersion" and "splitting the party" issues are, "I don't want to sit around doing nothing while someone else is having fun. I want to join in."

While I certainly prefer to play and don't want to spend an entire session sitting on the sidelines, I'm willing to let the GM take care of side scenes with other characters (my main group still plays 12-hour sessions, so we have time for that).  I don't consider splitting the party to be a disaster.  In my group, it's also normal for players to wander away from the table when their characters aren't involves so the players don't have to firewall information.  In other words, your assumptions about wanting to join in and wanting to watch are not really true in my group.  Yes, participation is important.  But we have the time and patience to let the game unfold however it should naturally unfold.

Quote from: JimBobOzThe important thing is the fun of the group. The idea that this must always be at the expense of the fun of the individual is a silly one, like the related idea that the GM is out to get the players and ruin their fun. And the fun of the group can include intra-party conflict, if the players like that. Years of comics about game groups, and the semi-parody game Hackmaster, tell us that heaps of game groups have constant intra-party conflict and love it!

Is anyone claiming that group interests must always come at the expense of individual fun?  I've never seen an immersive player make that claim.

Quote from: JimBobOzIt's all in the players' interpretations of their characters. They can interpret their characters' traits and personalities in ways which split the party and ruin the mission, or in ways which unite the party and help the mission. If you find that in every game group you're in, your interpretations always take you away from the party and the mission... that says something about you, not about "immersion," which is utterly unrelated.

This is where I think you aren't "getting" immersive play.  I don't interpret my character based on certain objectives.  I think in character and make choices in character based on what my character experiences.  That's what immersion is, at least to me.  It's thinking in character.  And, no, that doesn't mean I'm playing myself.

Perhaps the best anecdotal example I've seen about what it means to play immersive was posted by Mary Kuhner to rec.games.frp.advocacy a few years ago:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.frp.advocacy/msg/5aab1b8e54e24cd7?dmode=source&hl=en

Mary wrote, "I recall Jon coming out of a movie theater to meet me once, and saying immediately 'You're thinking about Ratty, aren't you?'  It turns out I was winding myself around a rather grubby staircase railing, something Ratty would certainly do and I normally wouldn't. (He's very touchy-feely and doesn't care about dirt at all.)"

What this illustrates is Mary, who played one-on-one games with her husband Jon, thinking in character and her husband recognizing that he was looking at the behavior of her character and not the behavior of his wife.  Mary's character Ratty was not Mary.  When Mary would think like her character Ratty, the character would just do whatever the character would do.  If Mary was simply deciding what her character would do, she wouldn't have wrapped herself around the railing.  That was a side effect of seeing her environment through her character's eyes rather than her own.

That's real deep immersion.

Quote from: JimBobOzPeople 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.

The thing that causes the problem is not necessary wanting to be a loner in the sense you are talking about.  It's simply a character not wanting to go along with what the rest of the PCs want to do.  For example, a character might meet his Yoko Ono that makes him want to leave the party.  They might get a better job offer.  They might encounter a job opportunity that sounds a lot better than the uncertain income the character gets by dungeon delving.  All of those are non-pathological reasons for real people to leave one group of friends in exchange for another, or one job for another.  Why shouldn't PCs be able to do the same thing?  When you go to the mall or a convention or whatever with your friends, do you always feel an obligation to keep the party together or do you sometimes split up and meet back together later?  Real people do that sort of things.  So do characters who are not aware of artificial game needs to keep all the PCs in the same room.

A PC that runs off with NPCs instead of sticking with the PCs isn't being a loner.  They are simply picking one group of characters in their life over another.  Why?  Because the character can't tell the difference between a PC and NPC.  They are all other characters in the setting from the character's perspective.  Thus they feel no artificial obligation to stick with PCs over NPCs any more than you have an obligation to hang out with your gaming buddies instead of going on a date with a hot woman you met and would like to get to know better.  And I'm sure you'd feel mighty strange if, after deciding to go on the date, you found yourself hanging out with your friends, instead, because some higher force had trumped your decision and simply made you go visit your friends, instead.

Quote from: JimBobOz"Offhand references" are important, because when discussing things abstractly - as you did in your LJ post about "immersion" - those offhand comments provide the applied examples of the pure ideas. If the applied examples are wrong, then that strongly suggests you need to look at the ideas themselves.

The applied examples are missing the point of roleplaying for most people, which is having social fun.

If you're interested in communication, then it's useful sometimes to ask for clarification rather than assuming a ridiculous extreme based on a three word clause in a sentence.  Let me start with some basics:

1) Splitting the party can be fun -- social fun -- even in tabletop games.  I ran a Truth & Justice game at GenCon this year which all of the players raved over.  Through the entire climax of the adventure, the PCs were split into two groups who didn't reunite until the epilog.  

Note that splitting the party does not inherently mean individual grandstanding, or a PC going off by herself.  It mean, well, splitting the party.  Having not all the PCs in physical proximity. In the case of the T&J game, two PCs went through a dimensional portal to confront some kidnappers.  The other two went after them, but were mislead and ended up in a different struggle.  

For that matter, though, PCs can also go off by themselves without being attention hogs.  In the same T&J adventure earlier, one of the PCs went home at one point because it made sense for him.  He rejoined the others later.  

2) I perfectly believe that mission-focused players who are opposed to splitting the party do so because they are interested in social fun.  Conversely, the immersive player who breaks from the mission also wants to have social fun.  The problem is that the two sides are looking for different kinds of fun, not that one side is anti-fun.  

So, a bunch of guys with beer, pretzels, battlemat, and miniatures can have a load of fun solving puzzles, overcoming challenges, and working as a team.  Conversely, a bunch of people acting out characters based on "Snow White" in a systemless larp can also have a load of fun.  There are lots of other extremes -- and there are also lots of possible games between the extremes.  However, problems can arise when you've got something in between and people operate on different assumptions.  

3) Here's the key point: for those who enjoy immersive play, it is less fun to break out of character and change the character's behavior for metagame reasons.  Following character plays to the fun of the immersive players in the group, but is likely to interfere with those who have other priorities.

Quote from: John MorrowThe thing that causes the problem is not necessary wanting to be a loner in the sense you are talking about.  It's simply a character not wanting to go along with what the rest of the PCs want to do.

That's what in-character discussion, persuasion, threats and so on are for.

Quote from: John MorrowFor example, a character might meet his Yoko Ono that makes him want to leave the party.  They might get a better job offer.  They might encounter a job opportunity that sounds a lot better than the uncertain income the character gets by dungeon delving.  All of those are non-pathological reasons for real people to leave one group of friends in exchange for another, or one job for another.  Why shouldn't PCs be able to do the same thing?

Because characters are not real people. Characters are an imaginary representation of a real person, played by a player in a group. By joining a game group, you are giving your implicit agreement to the idea that you will contribute to the fun of the group as a whole, along with your own. If that means setting aside "what my character would do," then so be it.

Let us suppose you have a character who is subject to violent rages, and who is also lustful. It may come about that one day, "what my character would do," is to rape and murder another player's character. Most game groups would agree this is no fun, and should not happen. So there exist lines which people do not cross, because crossing them will hurt the fun of the group as a whole. Most gamers agree that those boundaries exist; they only argue about where they should be set, do they include abandoning the party and the adventure?

Another boundary is the game's setting. You do not, for example, demand to play a cyberninja in a game set in medieval Europe. "But my character is a cyberninja... it's what he would do, to be a cyberninja!" You adjust your character concept to fit the setting, because this contributes to the fun of the group as a whole.

So, most gamers agree that we adjust character behaviour so as not to cross social boundaries (characters doing things players would find intolerably offensive), and so as not to cross setting boundaries (breaking the setting). What remains is the "group fun" boundary. That people do not object to the other boundaries, but object to this one, speaks to me not of "immersion", but of Attention Junkie behaviour. "Look at meeeeeee... I'm special!"  Your example of Yoko Ono is a telling one: she was a woman who didn't like it that the group (the Beatles) had a lot of John Lennon's attention - she wanted all of his attention. If he was to be a star, he had to be a star with her, not with the group. Her subsequent behaviour has shown she enjoys fame and celebrity; she's an Attention Junkie.

Quote from: John MorrowA PC that runs off with NPCs instead of sticking with the PCs isn't being a loner.  They are simply picking one group of characters in their life over another.  Why?  Because the character can't tell the difference between a PC and NPC.  

And again, we come to the issue of group fun, and the (usually unspoken) agreement that we join a game group not to have fun by ourselves, but to have fun in a group, so that we can help others have fun, too. Your example of "immersive" play leading to out-of-game feelings of "immersion" is a significant one - it came from years of one-on-one roleplaying. They could not, or would not, have that sort of play with a larger group. It's not being an Attention Junkie if you're the only player, who else could get the attention anyway? :p

Quote from: John MorrowI'm sure you'd feel mighty strange if, after deciding to go on the date, you found yourself hanging out with your friends, instead, because some higher force had trumped your decision and simply made you go visit your friends, instead.

In a roleplaying game session, what an intelligent GM would do is to roleplay out the character's date, do that briefly, switching to the other characters' actions every now and then. Alternately, the GM and player involved would simply briefly narrate what'd happened on the date, and say, "okay, the date over, you return to your friends..." So things aside from the party would still happen to the character, they just wouldn't be dealt with in as much detail. A roleplaying game, like any other kind of story, has to choose what to focus on. The story focuses on the things that the most people are going to be interested in, and glosses over the stuff that the most people are going to be bored by.

Roleplaying 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.

John Lennon was able to leave the group and live his life with Yoko Ono. But that was the end of the Beatles, they played no more songs. In the same way, a player can have their character leave the party, and live a fine life; but the group will not be a group anymore. If you choose to play in a group, then you are giving a promise that you'll interpret your character's traits in such a way as to keep them with the group. The GM is expected to help in this. My own players, for example, when the party was split because they were thrown into prison, quite rightly told me it was my fault they were split, not theirs; it was I as GM who put the prison walls there, I could as easily have put them in the same cell, or in cells with bars they could call through, and so on. My mistake hurt the fun of the group. Because separating prisoners you want to interrogate is a real police technique, their separation was more "immersionist"; but this hurt the fun of the group.

If 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.

Quote from: jhkimHere's the key point: for those who enjoy immersive play, it is less fun to break out of character and change the character's behavior for metagame reasons. Following character plays to the fun of the immersive players in the group, but is likely to interfere with those who have other priorities.

We 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?

Why would you be annoyed? Simply because by having my character kill yours, I am preventing you from participating in the actions within the game. In the same way, a player saying, "but it's what my character would do," and having them split from the group for a while or for ever - while the GM deals with that character's actions, the rest of the group is (usually) prevented from having fun (other than a spectator's fun).

When my fun prevents yours, that "metagame concern" becomes significant. If my only goal is to be immersed in my character, then I will happily separate from the group, kill other players' characters, and so on. Of course, then I would usually be harming the fun of the group. "Traditional play" says that people should have fun within the fun of the group as a whole. Not before or after it, but within it.

If I can have my character separate from the party and monopolise the GM's attention, why can't I have my character kill all the others, and monopolise the GM's attention?

"But it's what my character would do."
"Yes, because the player is an Attention Junkie."

In general, players don't have their characters kill other players' characters, regardless of whether it's what their characters would do. Players compromise their roleplaying of their characters to fit in so that the entire group can have fun together; I cannot have much fun if I am busy rolling up new characters all the time and never get to play them. Within a group, compromise is necessary. This does not mean "immersive" play is impossible. It simply means that "immersion" isn't the only thing a roleplayer should consider when sitting down to roleplay with a group. It cannot be their only aim, anymore than (say) the rules can be the only aim of the GM; other things have to be considered.

"Traditional play" does not say you cannot be "immersive." It just says you can't be a selfish wanker. "Traditional play" does not mean shallow roleplaying, as John Kim implies on his blog; it simply means that as well as roleplaying a character, you're playing a game, in a group, for the fun of everyone, not just yourself. Our hobby is not roleplaying, or a game; our hobby is a roleplaying game - roleplaying, with a game, playing a character, in a group.

Latest stuff I've seen/read says that Paul broke up the Beatles, not John, but anyway...

I think it bears mentioning that multiple parallel games is only a problem if people aren't having fun with it. The issue I mentioned in my Burning Sands game is probably partly due to the limited time per session; unlike John M., we only played about 3 hours every other week. It's also probably worth noting that immersionists and LARPS tend to go well together. Perhaps this is not only because of the more pervasive environment but also because of the freedom of individual action in many LARPS. (I say, having never played one myself.)

This is, at best, hyperbole:

QuoteThe reason can only be Attention Junkie behaviour.

Nope. Some people just don't want to be concerned with metagame issues. All that business about interpreting character descriptions is beside the point, BTW, since the wording of a description is secondary to the internal vision of the player who wants to sustain the illusion of his character as a "real" entity. Front-loading is a way to minimize the potential for conflict, but if it doesn't work out I don't see cause to argue that the immersionist is operating in bad faith.

Now I'm going to turn around and say that you're probably right to a greater or lesser degree, in some situations, that hunger for attention contributes to splitting off from the party. But even then it may not be fair to lay all the blame at the doorstep of the immersionist: I suspect in some cases it's a reaction of the player whose input is ignored or overshadowed. If none of your ideas are incorporated into the group's plans, if your character might as well be a secondary PC controlled by the group leader (who may have an in with the GM)--then there's a good incentive to split off. So don't just look to the individual to solve a group problem.

Quote from: JimBobOzBecause characters are not real people. Characters are an imaginary representation of a real person, played by a player in a group. By joining a game group, you are giving your implicit agreement to the idea that you will contribute to the fun of the group as a whole, along with your own. If that means setting aside "what my character would do," then so be it.

Let us suppose you have a character who is subject to violent rages, and who is also lustful. It may come about that one day, "what my character would do," is to rape and murder another player's character. Most game groups would agree this is no fun, and should not happen.  So there exist lines which people do not cross, because crossing them will hurt the fun of the group as a whole.

Here's the thing.  You're assuming that following these meta-game rules is somehow inherently more fun.  It's not true.  If I had a choice between role-playing with a bunch of Scandanavian immersive larpers and role-playing with a bunch of D&D players who all play for the team -- well, I might well want to play with the immersive Scandanavians.  

That's because to those who enjoy it, it's more fun to take the characters and see where they go, than to step back and plan out what they "should" do.  As you say, they're just imaginary.  No one is really getting murdered here.  

So here's the concrete example which I think I mentioned before.  So I'm playing in a variant Call of Cthulhu game in Victorian London.  It's a horror game, and we agreed at the start that we would be role-playing our characters' descents into madness.  My PC was Grimmond, who was a policeman subject to violent rages, and as his sanity ebbed was becoming more paranoid.  Jim's PC was Hayward, a professor who was becoming more delusional.  They were both dragged into a magical realm, and Hayward began trying to call to spirits which Grimmond was convinced were dangerous.  When he refused to stop, Grimmond beat him into unconsciousness and then dragged him along.  He didn't per se murder him, but didn't do anything to help him and Hayward died that episode.  

The thing is, Jim and I were both fine with this.  Another player, Cullen was similarly playing a descent into madness (his was obsessive-compulsive).  Another player, though (Mark) was shocked by this.  We were beating on each other, and failing to pursue the plot and solve the mystery.  Grimmond leaned towards burning down the entrance and warning people away, rather than going in and investigating -- while Hayward was convinced of his own (non-existant) magical powers to change everything.  Though Grimmond didn't murder him per se, Hayward died by the end of that episode.  

But here's the thing.  Jim and I were having fun with this.  I think Cullen was too.  However, Mark was annoyed and tried to help get things back "on track".  Even though he didn't witness what happened, his character completely turned off to Grimmond.  (I think the last player, Liz, was indifferent about the issue, though she seemed to lean towards Mark's side.)  So who's failing to play to the group here?  

There isn't a right or wrong side here, but we were leaning towards different types of fun.  

Quote from: JimBobOzIf you choose to play in a group, then you are giving a promise that you'll interpret your character's traits in such a way as to keep them with the group. The GM is expected to help in this.

Well, no, I'm not.  Or at least, I've never been in a game where such a promise is actually extracted.  (Do you explicitly inform players of this rule in your games?)  More often, I've played with gamers who assumed because that was the way they like to play, that everyone else was inherently promising to play the way they liked by joining.  

As I mentioned in my last post, it's not required for fun.  The party was split through the whole climax of "Bonds of Steel", my T&J game, and all the players raved about it.

-- post yanked as a waste of time --

Quote from: Elliot WilenLatest stuff I've seen/read says that Paul broke up the Beatles, not John, but anyway...

I guess musical bands must be like marriages, it's rare that any one person is entirely to blame :(

Quote from: Elliot WilenI think it bears mentioning that multiple parallel games is only a problem if people aren't having fun with it.

Absolutely. It's why I mentioned the two sessions I ran recently. In both sessions, one player's character was involved in action separately from the other characters; the players were unable to participate. But one session they hated, and the other one they loved. The differences were that in the one they loved, they were not participating as a direct result of their own characters' actions, and that the second one's action was more entertaining to watch than the first one's action. How this played out was nothing to do with "immersion" or anything else, but simply how I GMed it, to make sure they had chances at choice and fun.

Quote from: Elliot Wilenit may not be fair to lay all the blame at the doorstep of the immersionist: I suspect in some cases it's a reaction of the player whose input is ignored or overshadowed. If none of your ideas are incorporated into the group's plans, if your character might as well be a secondary PC controlled by the group leader (who may have an in with the GM)--then there's a good incentive to split off. So don't just look to the individual to solve a group problem.

I agree absolutely. More often than not, it's bad GMing. The GM is there as a mediator, to help the group have lots of chances to work together and have fun. Note that as I said, the players working together doesn't mean their characters are working together. Anyone who's played (for example) Paranoia knows that player co-operation ain't the same thing as character co-operation :D

The characters may not like each-other, or even trust each-other - but they hang out together. And if one player has their character wander off, it damn well better be interesting for the others to watch. Game sessions should not consist of hours of boredom watching others have fun, while waiting your turn to have fun.

Quote from: JimBobOzIf you choose to play in a group, then you are giving a promise that you'll interpret your character's traits in such a way as to keep them with the group. The GM is expected to help in this.

Quote from: jhkimWell, no, I'm not. Or at least, I've never been in a game where such a promise is actually extracted. (Do you explicitly inform players of this rule in your games?) More often, I've played with gamers who assumed because that was the way they like to play, that everyone else was inherently promising to play the way they liked by joining.

Yes, we explicitly inform players of this in our group. Many things are assumed by many people, you don't want to get nasty surprises where you find your assumptions are different.

When I'm GMing, I go on to say that, "Any player is free to play their character however they want. However, if you choose to play your character as leaving the rest of the party and the adventure, you won't get a greater share of the spotlight as a result. With the party, or without it, you'll get the same share. If you keep behaving as though you're in a different campaign, then that's okay, we'll give you a new campaign."

I explicitly say many things which are usually assumed, because I know there are a zillion ways to roleplay and game. Most of what I say doesn't come simply from me, but from talking to all the players beforehand. We reach a consensus on how we'd like to play, a broad agreement. I'm not there laying down The Law, "stick with the party, bitch!" That's just the consensus position of most of the different groups we've been involved in around here. When I'm planning a campaign, I talk to the players separately and together; separately in case someone in the group tends to dominate conversation and decisions, together because people usually moderate their more extreme positions when interacting with others, and consensus is more easily found when sitting around a table in person than over individual phone calls, etc.

We talk, and decide what we're going to play, and how we'll play it. The group members each expects the other to adjust the rules, setting, characters, etc, so as to fit in with the others. This does not mean the group becomes a sort of thin gruel, mashed out into blandness, because people are quite tolerant of different tastes and ideas. "I don't care if your character is Callous/Merciful, so long as mine doesn't have to be," etc.

Quote from: Keran-- post yanked as a waste of time --

I'm sorry you felt that way, Keran. I'm interested in all sorts of ideas and opinions, and didn't get to see yours. Conversations are like roleplaying game sessions - they're usually the most interesting when everyone gets to participate.

Quote from: JimBobOzIf you choose to play in a group, then you are giving a promise that you'll interpret your character's traits in such a way as to keep them with the group. The GM is expected to help in this.

Quote from: JimBobOzYes, we explicitly inform players of this in our group. Many things are assumed by many people, you don't want to get nasty surprises where you find your assumptions are different.

When I'm GMing, I go on to say that, "Any player is free to play their character however they want. However, if you choose to play your character as leaving the rest of the party and the adventure, you won't get a greater share of the spotlight as a result. With the party, or without it, you'll get the same share. If you keep behaving as though you're in a different campaign, then that's okay, we'll give you a new campaign."

I explicitly say many things which are usually assumed, because I know there are a zillion ways to roleplay and game.

First of all, it's great that you do this.  However, would you at least agree that it's common for game groups to not do this?  The 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.  

That 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?  

Those are the parts which would be different when, say, setting up a game with a group of immersive players who want to play that way.

I'm not really clear on where this thread is going.

There are few absolutes in RPGs. I have had games where the players have tried to kill each others' characters, and it was an absolute blast. I've run D&D games where the party split up, I put the two sub-groups into different rooms, and alternated between them. Again, we had a great time.

It'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?

This might have been (partly) started over on Story Games where I posted about Immersive Story and RPGs (http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=1209).  John and I have an earlier discussion on the topic there.

I think Immersion is a very overlooked quality in RPGs -- and the strength of many RPGs that aren't adequately covered by the GNS model of games...

Here's my current thinking on Immersion:

Assuming two games with equally elegant rules and talented roleplayers, the experience would be most immersive in the game where you only control your own character/protagonist, rather than when you spend part of your time controlling your character and part of your time exerting a greater influence over the game world beyond your character's responses.

Deeper Character Immersion < - - - > Greater Narrative Control

Quote from: StuartI think Immersion is a very overlooked quality in RPGs -- and the strength of many RPGs that aren't adequately covered by the GNS model of games...

I also think it's a product of great gamemastering. That's an area where GNS-derived games have issues, IME. They leave little room for a skilled GM to practice his craft.

Are there different types of immersion? I rarely become immersed in what my character feels (as opposed to what he does*), but I enjoy a game where I am immersed in the world (I can imagine my guy's armor roasting him the desert heat; I can picture the bustling streets of Waterdeep; etc.)

Along those same lines, great observation about narrative control and immersion. I think that a lot of visceral objections to narrative control stem from that. The strength of simulation lies in its ability to create immersion.

*I like my characters to have a few, well-defined traits and goals. I don't find myself reacting on a visceral or emotional level in line with what my character feels. Rathere, there's more artifice to it than that, more orchestration than organic response. With that in mind, though, I vastly prefer games where people do more than simply play themselves.

Quote from: mearlsI'm not really clear on where this thread is going.

There are few absolutes in RPGs. I have had games where the players have tried to kill each others' characters, and it was an absolute blast. I've run D&D games where the party split up, I put the two sub-groups into different rooms, and alternated between them. Again, we had a great time.

Yeah, let's not jump to universal conclusions, but let's look at these examples. In the first case the PCs are working at cross-purposes, but the players are all engaged interactively.

[Hey, John K., what would you have done if Quint had tried to stay Torin's hand? Would it have been cool or not if the conflict had escalated to death, or at least enmity between the characters? Maybe a split into an AP thread would be useful?]

In the second case, you're at least talking about sub-groups so that when the GM isn't around, the group in the non-spotlight room can plot, kibbitz, and shoot the breeze without disrupting the spotlight group. If they'd been unable to talk, I'll bet it wouldn't have gone as well. And also, was there still a common sense of group purpose--a party goal, an expectation that they'd be reuinited?

QuoteIt'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?

As long as everyone has fun, no problem. I'm starting to be convinced that having fun under this paradigm is harder than if the PCs stick together, or at least have a common focus. Now, if you go to a more nontraditional setup it's another matter. Then the key can be player engagement, not character focus. E.g., if Player A's character is wandering in isolation, Players B C & D could still be engaged if they have ways to contribute--like playing cards to aid/hinder/alter the situation. But I also agree with Stuart that those sorts of mechanics also tend to make immersion harder.

QuoteAre there different types of immersion? I rarely become immersed in what my character feels (as opposed to what he does*), but I enjoy a game where I am immersed in the world (I can imagine my guy's armor roasting him the desert heat; I can picture the bustling streets of Waterdeep; etc.)

You can be immersed in a boardgame or wargame, and imagine the units moving across the battlefield, but in an RPG there is a greater potential for immersion in the same manner that you experience in a book or film.  Having your character enter a darkened building by themself in a horror themed RPG can be a much more intense experience than you might find in an otherwise excellent boardgame of a similar theme (eg. Shadow of Dracula), or in a game where you have control over the narrative itself.  The unknown inherant in not being able to control the narrative beyond your character's reaction to it is what creates the intensity.

Quote from: Elliot WilenHey, John K., what would you have done if Quint had tried to stay Torin's hand? Would it have been cool or not if the conflict had escalated to death, or at least enmity between the characters? Maybe a split into an AP thread would be useful?

It's hard to tell whether it would have been cool or not in general -- but I wouldn't have had any metagame objections, no.  Torin would have deferred to Embran regarding what was to be done.  (To others -- Torin had formerly been of the peaceful Peonian religion, but had converted to militant Laranianism by the priest Embran.  After he was nearly killed in a climactic struggle, he discovered a possessed body and killed the possessor.)  

Quote from: Elliot WilenIn the second case, you're at least talking about sub-groups so that when the GM isn't around, the group in the non-spotlight room can plot, kibbitz, and shoot the breeze without disrupting the spotlight group. If they'd been unable to talk, I'll bet it wouldn't have gone as well. And also, was there still a common sense of group purpose--a party goal, an expectation that they'd be reuinited?

I'm lost.  Which is the second case you're talking about here?

Quote from: Elliot WilenI'm starting to be convinced that having fun under this paradigm is harder than if the PCs stick together, or at least have a common focus. Now, if you go to a more nontraditional setup it's another matter. Then the key can be player engagement, not character focus. E.g., if Player A's character is wandering in isolation, Players B C & D could still be engaged if they have ways to contribute--like playing cards to aid/hinder/alter the situation.

Yes, I'd agree to that.  The key is setting things up to keep the PC interacting -- either directly or indirectly.  The problem occurs when it is in-game logical for the PCs to leave physical proximity of each other, but some players want to force that away, by asking people to play their characters differently.  

In 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.

Hey, John. The "second case" is Mike's reference to splitting a party into groups in separate rooms. I can see how that would work fine, in fact I think it probably has in my experience, too.

The extreme which that avoids, and which I think is problematic, is where the game turns into the analog equivalent of a MMORPG, the only point of intersection between the groups is the "server/GM", and they might as well be playing separate games in the same setting. Again, I'm thinking this is a bit of a problem with the Burning Sands game I've been playing--it's not quite to that extreme, but it has that tendency (partly my fault for encouraging it, I might add).

JimBobOz has been making a lot of assumptions about what's expected in games in general that don't hold true in my campaigns.

1.  Most real people don't spend every waking moment with each other.  I'm not interested either in playing, or watching, characters who don't behave anything like real people.

In my campaigns it is not considered proof of a player's moral inferiority, of their being a selfish attention hog, if they make characters who go off and do such bizarre things as hold private conversations or undertake separate missions, whether they're developing a relationship, engaged in intrigue, or following a division of labor in a military endeavor.  I'm not about to try to build a world where these things don't happen and aren't rational and common behavior: I wouldn't believe it.  Thus, side sessions are common.

2.  In my games, we get together to enjoy each other's play as well our own.  Players who might fit into my campaigns are interested in watching the whole thing unfold -- other people's play, not just their own character's -- and generally either watch side sessions they're not playing in, or read the logs.

Someone who is incapable of taking interest in any actions but his own needs to find another campaign, because I don't have any interest whatsoever in catering to a player who feels that nothing that anyone else does has any value to him, that he has to be on stage all the time.

3.  "How dare she play her character as doing something that doesn't fit into my plans for every scene!  I don't get to control her character and mine too!  How selfish she is!"  Forge-style accusations of My Guyism are unwelcome in my campaigns, and would be viewed as control-freaking.  For one player to do it to another would, furthermore, be an infringement on the GM's turf.

A player who showed up with the idea that his satisfaction in play was more important than anyone else's, that conforming to his preferred style was somehow Standard, the Right Way, and that we ought to adapt a style in which the immersive players sacrificed their pleasure in playing in character as they see the characters, in order to make their characters take actions that please him, would be severely out of line.

The agreement in my group is not to intentionally make jerk characters, or characters who can't work with the other PCs (unless we're intentionally constructing an adversarial scenario).  However, seeing what the characters choose to do, how they react to the world, how they develop, is the adventure.  Conforming to a particular plot, whether it's the GM's or merely the desires of some other player who's decided he's in charge, is not.

Quote from: JimBobOzThat's what in-character discussion, persuasion, threats and so on are for.

Yes, but can a particular group of friends convince you to go along with everything they want you to do simpy through discussion, persuasion, threats, and so on?

Quote from: JimBobOzBecause characters are not real people.

That'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.

Quote from: JimBobOzCharacters are an imaginary representation of a real person, played by a player in a group. By joining a game group, you are giving your implicit agreement to the idea that you will contribute to the fun of the group as a whole, along with your own. If that means setting aside "what my character would do," then so be it.

If the reason why you are at the table, and the reason why other people are at the table, is to experience the characters like real people, then setting aside "what my character would do" is setting aside the entire reason for being there.  Further, if I'm playing in a game with you and you aren't having your character just do "what your character would do", you can spoil my fun (either as GM or player) because that's what I enjoy having everyone at the table do.

That said, there are ways that an immersive player can help ensure the fun of the group, if they have different or mixed priorities, by avoiding things that ruin the game for other players.  They've been suggested above:

1) Create characters that have goals that match the goals of the othe players.

2) Avoid loner and anti-social personalities.

3) Learn to recognize when situations develop that will lead your character toward decisions the other players won't find fun and deal with them early.

4) Learn how to nudge your character away from game-destroying lines of thinking.

All of these allow the immersive player to enjoy immersive play in a game with players with other goals without anyone having to sacrifice their fun.  

Simply suggesting, "Don't do that," or "Just make your character do something else," don't only not work immersively but can destroy immersion for a character.  Further, while a player is thinking in character, they simply aren't aware of game issues because the character is not aware of the group activity that the player is engaged in.  The solution is to use techniques that work with immersion, not techniques that pretend it doesn't exist.

Quote from: JimBobOzLet us suppose you have a character who is subject to violent rages, and who is also lustful. It may come about that one day, "what my character would do," is to rape and murder another player's character. Most game groups would agree this is no fun, and should not happen.

(For the record, I think most well-adjusted groups would find it not fun if another PC were off raping and murdering NPCs, too.)

That's why immersive players (and probably lots of other types of players) shouldn't create violent, uncontrolled, and lustful characters.  One would anticipate that rape and murder could be "in character" for such a character.  And wouldn't a player that forced such a character to avoid such actions essentially even though they made sense in character be playing out of character?

Quote from: JimBobOzSo there exist lines which people do not cross, because crossing them will hurt the fun of the group as a whole. Most gamers agree that those boundaries exist; they only argue about where they should be set, do they include abandoning the party and the adventure?

Why do you think it makes more sense to let players create characters who are all but guaranteed to cross the lines of fun for the group and then wrestle the character away from such activities in play rather than simply creating characters who are very unlikely to cross such lines so they won't cross the lines just playing them "in character"?

As for abandoning the party and adventure, two things.

First, it's not a problem in my group.  If a character nees to leave the party or the adventure, then they leave the party and the adventure and the player either checks out for a few sessions or creates and runs a new character.  In fact, my character abandoned the party in the other game that I'm playing in and it wasn't really a problem there, either (I did offer to change that course of action, if that's what the other players wanted).  Heck, I'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?

Second, I'd rather a player remove their character from the game if it makes sense in character than force them to stick with the game.  Why?  Because if I also have a good sense of their character after playing a few sessions, then it's likely I (through my character) will have picked up that it makes sense, too.  It's like having a friend who meets a romantic interest and then talks about dropping that romantic interest because they don't want to not see their friends.  If the romantic interest seems right for the friend and it seems like the friend has a future with that person, real friends will tell them to stop being stupid and follow their heart.

Quote from: JimBobOzAnother boundary is the game's setting. You do not, for example, demand to play a cyberninja in a game set in medieval Europe. "But my character is a cyberninja... it's what he would do, to be a cyberninja!" You adjust your character concept to fit the setting, because this contributes to the fun of the group as a whole.

Correct.  So what is wrong with my suggestion that an immersive player simply create a character likely to answer the call to adventure and work well with groups?  You said, "It's not a matter of picking character personality traits that do or don't conflict with each-other."  Yeah, actually it is.  Creating a character that's drawn to adventure and problem-solving, works well with groups, trusts other people, and shares interests with the other PCs goes a long way toward making sure that "what the character would do" isn't abandon the party and adventure.  

You are trying to stop the asteroid from hitting the Earth when the asteroid is hovering above the surface and it's inevitable that it's going to hit.  I want to stop the asteroid before it even starts on a trajectory toward Earth.  You don't create a cyberninja for a Medieval game because it doesn't fit what the group wants (a Medieval game).  You don't create a character who thinks like a murderous rapist if your group doesn't want to play through rape-murders by a PC.  You don't create loners who don't answer the call to adventure and don't work well in groups if your group has more fun if the party sticks together and goes along with the adventure.  It's the same thing as not throwing a rock at a window if you don't want to break the window.  Don't set something in motion if you aren't willing to live with the results.

Quote from: JimBobOzSo, most gamers agree that we adjust character behaviour so as not to cross social boundaries (characters doing things players would find intolerably offensive), and so as not to cross setting boundaries (breaking the setting).

Not creating a cyberninja is not "adjusting character behavior" not to cross setting boundaries.  It's not creating a character that will inevitably cross setting boundaries in the first place.  What you are saying on the social side, if you tell players to go ahead and create the violent and lusty character but censor their actions if they cross social boundaries, is akin to saying, "Go ahead and create your cyberninja for the Medieval game but don't do anything that conflicts with the setting."

If you create a character that fits within the setting, then you don't have to worry about forcing them to comply with setting boundaries.  They just fit.  If you create a character that fits within the social boundaries of the group, then you don't have to worry about them complying with those social boundaries.  "Just doing what the character would do," will automatically fit.

Quote from: JimBobOzWhat remains is the "group fun" boundary. That people do not object to the other boundaries, but object to this one, speaks to me not of "immersion", but of Attention Junkie behaviour.

The Internet.  Where anyone who can type feels qualified to psychoanalyze people they've never met.  I should turn that into an inspirational poster for the RPGnet thread.

Quote from: JimBobOzAnd again, we come to the issue of group fun, and the (usually unspoken) agreement that we join a game group not to have fun by ourselves, but to have fun in a group, so that we can help others have fun, too.

The biggest thing the GM and other players can do to help me have fun is to play all of the characters  in the game (including NPCs) with the philosophy that the chraracter does whatever they would do if they were a real person.  If that means having another PC murder my character, I'd rather they do that that turn the setting into cardboard by having their PC behave out of character.  In other words, if everyone at the table is on board with immersive priorities, the behavior you consider so harmful isn't only not harmful but can be desirable.

Quote from: JimBobOzYour example of "immersive" play leading to out-of-game feelings of "immersion" is a significant one - it came from years of one-on-one roleplaying. They could not, or would not, have that sort of play with a larger group. It's not being an Attention Junkie if you're the only player, who else could get the attention anyway? :p

Uh, no.  Plenty of people have immersive experiences with groups.  In fact, I don't really like one-on-one games as a immersive player because the NPCs run by a GM will never have the variety and depth of different PCs run by different players.

Quote from: JimBobOzIn a roleplaying game session, what an intelligent GM would do is to roleplay out the character's date, do that briefly, switching to the other characters' actions every now and then.

Correct.  If sounds like you understand how to handle split-party situations. So why do you consider this such a big problem?

Quote from: JimBobOzA roleplaying game, like any other kind of story, has to choose what to focus on. The story focuses on the things that the most people are going to be interested in, and glosses over the stuff that the most people are going to be bored by.

To make it absolutely clear, I don't role-play for story and I hate glossing over things.  To me, role-playing is like a vacation.  I'm there for the experience and to enjoy the scenery -- even the little things (I used to just walk around Tokyo to see what was out there when I lived there).  

A focussed adventure, to me, is like being on a planned tour that gives you 30 minutes to see the Lincoln memorial, 2 hours to walk around Mount Vernon, an hour at the Smithsonian, etc.  I'd rather just spend a week in Washington, DC and spend however long it takes to see what I want to see at, say, the Smithsonian without having someone tell me that I need to be back on the bus in 15 minutes to see the next focus of the tour so I can fill out a checklist of things I've briefly seen so I can say, "Yeah, i saw that sight."

And what's important to understand about this analogy is vacations aren't stories.  In fact, there are few things more boring than listening to someone else talk about their vacation if you've never been there.  Why?  Because what makes a vacation fun is the experience.  You can't convey the experience with pictures and words except to someone else who has been there.  It's not a story.  It doesn't have a plot or theme.  It's an experience, the value of which lies in doing it personally.  And as such, I really don't like rushing through it any more than I like rushing through a vacation.

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 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.

And while the Forge theory of "coherence" seems to stress emphasizing one agenda at the expense of all others, that's not the only way such play style categories can be used.  The focus of Robin Laws' Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering is helping everyone at the table have fun, even if they have different priorities.  And that's my preference.  So I agree that it's important to think about the group but that doesn't mean that the immersive player should sit down, shut up, and eat their peas for the group because that's what the group wants.

Quote from: JimBobOzIt'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.

It 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.  

Quote from: JimBobOzAll 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."

In all honestly, doesn't that go both ways?  Shouldn't the amount of screentime that is given to a particular character or player be determined on the needs of the setting and what's going on in the game rather than the needs of the players for periodic attention from the GM?  Doesn't that suggest impatient players who can't stand waiting or not getting attention all around?

Quote from: JimBobOzThe reason can only be Attention Junkie behaviour.

Given the way you are framing the problem, it's a need for attention all around.  The reason my group doesn't have the same problem, at least to the same degree, is that we assess the need for screentime based on the needs of the setting and situation, not based on our own personal need for GM attention to be tossed our way.  The reason why you see this as an attention issue is that your group has a junkie-like need for attention all around.  Yes, you can claim that it's more egalitarian when the attention is given to the group, collectively, but that's because you see GM attention in terms of something the players are competing for and because all of the players, all around, have an impatient need for GM attention.

Quote from: JimBobOzJohn Lennon was able to leave the group and live his life with Yoko Ono. But that was the end of the Beatles, they played no more songs. In the same way, a player can have their character leave the party, and live a fine life; but the group will not be a group anymore.

And what happens if a character dies?  Do you end games when a PC dies or simply not allow PC death?

Please note that I'm not suggesting that the GM keep running a single character if their life takes them away from the main group, unless the GM wants to run a separate side-game with that character.  The character just leaves the game, like a character who has died or an NPC that leaves.  My objection is to the idea that characters shouldn't have the freedom to leave if it makes sense in character.

Quote from: JimBobOzIf you choose to play in a group, then you are giving a promise that you'll interpret your character's traits in such a way as to keep them with the group.

You are assuming that every group values the need for every PC to stay with the group.  That's like assuming that every group plays to beat the GM (some groups do, other's don't) or plays to listen the the GM walk them through a story (some groups do, others don't) or so on.  Different groups play for very different reasons.  Your obligation is to try to find the middle-ground where everyone can have fun.  The group is under no obligation to ruin their fun to make one player happen, but no player should be forced to sacrifice all of their fun for the group.  And if you can't find a happy middle ground where everyone can be happy, you shouldn't be role-paying together.

Quote from: JimBobOzThe GM is expected to help in this. My own players, for example, when the party was split because they were thrown into prison, quite rightly told me it was my fault they were split, not theirs; it was I as GM who put the prison walls there, I could as easily have put them in the same cell, or in cells with bars they could call through, and so on. My mistake hurt the fun of the group. Because separating prisoners you want to interrogate is a real police technique, their separation was more "immersionist"; but this hurt the fun of the group.

So 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.

Quote from: JimBobOzIf 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 different groups find different things fun.  Frankly, I'd hate playing with a group of players who started fidgeting whenever the PCs weren't together because they can't wait for the game to get back around to them.  If it works for you and your group, and everyone is having fun, keep doing what you are doing.  But don't assume that every group has the same priorities.  They don't.

One other final suggestion.  Despite our willingness to wait for others, it's clearly better to play than to wait and there is a very simple solution that lets a group avoid waiting for split-party actions to be resolved that my group has used several times -- dual GMs.  There reason why there is an attention problem is because of the limited abilities of the GM to manage multiple contexts at once.  The solution is to increase the number of GMs, just like adding additional processors to a computer lets it do more things at once.  There is no reason why, if you have a waiting and attention problem, that a game needs to be limited to a single GM.  In fact, my preference is 1 GM for 2 to 5 players and 2 GMs for 4 to 8 players.  Of course the other way to limit the problem is to limit the number of players, too.

Quote from: mearlsI've run D&D games where the party split up, I put the two sub-groups into different rooms, and alternated between them. Again, we had a great time.

In my main playtest campaign for Fly From Evil, I don't think we had a single game session where the PCs weren't split for at least a large chunk of the action ... following up on personal matters, interviewing [witness A] while someone else spied on [unfaithful husband B] and someone else went to shake down the Assistant DA's bookie, etc. It's just the nature of small-ensemble mystery gaming that the party doesn't travel in a huddle. Half the time when the PCs talked with each other, it was via telephone (often with a desperate "you'd better get over here quick; bring guns.") :)

As a GM, I've always been comfy with split-screening ... I cut my teeth on it in D&D when I went through a "trap-heavy dungeon" phase, where you'd often have the party broken up by a sliding wall or whatnot :) The players loved it ... there was a great sense of desperate tension as they'd work to find each other, tapping on the walls, shouting into dark holes in the ceiling, and cursing themselves when it woke something up .... Great times.

(FFE devotes a fair chunk of GMing advice to split-screen techniques that keep the whole party constantly engaged, natch ...)

Quote from: Elliot WilenThe extreme which that avoids, and which I think is problematic, is where the game turns into the analog equivalent of a MMORPG, the only point of intersection between the groups is the "server/GM", and they might as well be playing separate games in the same setting. Again, I'm thinking this is a bit of a problem with the Burning Sands game I've been playing--it's not quite to that extreme, but it has that tendency (partly my fault for encouraging it, I might add).

One of the GMs in my group ran a game where all of the PCs attracted groups of NPCs that catered to their particular interested and the game turned out pretty much as you describe, with very little intersection between the PCs.  We all found that an unpleasant enough experience that we went through a "no NPCs" phase.  Not no NPCs at all but no NPCs as game regulars and character sidekicks.  So while I'm not against splitting the party, I do want my character to interact with other PCs and not simply a band of NPCs.

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.

The third alternative, which can also be used with either of the other two, is to create excuses for the character to stick with the other characters as part of the creation of the character.  If the character has a personality or past that makes them inclined to stick around with the other characters and do things as part of a group, it won't require constant groping for excuses during play to keep the characters together and won't require the GM to create (often artificial-feeling, in my experience) guardrails in the setting to force the party to stay together.

Quote from: S. John RossIn my main playtest campaign for Fly From Evil, I don't think we had a single game session where the PCs weren't split for at least a large chunk of the action ... following up on personal matters, interviewing [witness A] while someone else spied on [unfaithful husband B] and someone else went to shake down the Assistant DA's bookie, etc. It's just the nature of small-ensemble mystery gaming that the party doesn't travel in a huddle. Half the time when the PCs talked with each other, it was via telephone (often with a desperate "you'd better get over here quick; bring guns.") :)

That pretty much describes the way a lot of my campaigns have worked: we don't need, or want, every PC trying to take part in every scene and perform every function, even the ones they're not suited to.  So there tends to be some sort of common purpose or interest for the PCs, but the characters' stories weave in and out of each other as sense and circumstance dictate.

I like being on stage and actively playing, but I frequently regard watching other players' subplots unfold as being a lot of fun, too -- it's as least as much fun as reading most fiction, with a good group, as long as the PCs are connected to and engaged with each other.

Quote from: mearlsAre there different types of immersion? I rarely become immersed in what my character feels (as opposed to what he does*), but I enjoy a game where I am immersed in the world (I can imagine my guy's armor roasting him the desert heat; I can picture the bustling streets of Waterdeep; etc.)

There seem to be.  We were talking about character immersion in rgfa, and I think a good many of us -- me, anyway -- tended to assume immersion in the setting at the same time and as part of the same phenomenon, without splitting them out.  But several people have talked about immersion in the setting without immersion in the character in my hearing, so I take it that they're separable.

I see them as separate in my own practice under such limited circumstances that I didn't notice the distinction.

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 (http://jhkimrpg.livejournal.com/35487.html) and his comments on mine (http://jimboboz.livejournal.com/9715.html) 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. :p

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 (http://jhkimrpg.livejournal.com/35487.html) and his comments on mine (http://jimboboz.livejournal.com/9715.html) 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 (http://www.google.com/advanced_group_search?hl=en) (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.

Quote from: KeranUm ... 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.

John Morrow said "[...] that's not possible under conscious control," and that was the focus of my doubt ... the implication that John Morrow surrenders all conscious control of the character.

I appreciate your response (I'm a method actor myself, when perform in the theater ... I've never applied it in RPGs and wouldn't enjoy doing so), but really, only John Morrow can address my doubts on that one.

Quote from: S. John RossOf 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.

If we mean the same thing.  Sometimes it's hard to tell without examples.

I've encountered what I mean for sure once in my own campaigns, where it didn't happen to fit.  The player was playing out of character in order to stir up a kind of cinematic action that my low fantasy just wasn't meant to deliver.

It's pretty much a necessity in MUSH RP, in my experience (which is one of the reasons I like tabletop better: less OOCness).  Most of the time nobody's setting up most of the RP in a way that allows the player simply to react in character; you have to get your character to go looking for it.

I tried some of the Forge games and the narrativist crowd seems actively to think it's a good thing to push characters in particular directions to make dramatic points.

Then, I've heard several other people mention that for them a game is occasionally improved by breaking or pushing the character to do a particular thing the player is interested in.  Like Jason Corley's relating that he once brought on a really anticlimactic ending by having his character take out the enemy in an in-character rational and effective way when he'd have had more fun with the big confrontation they were driving toward, and it was a relief when he realized he didn't have to play strictly in character.

Same thing, or were you meaning something else?

Hey, Keran, do you have any advice or actual play examples to show how you and your group(s) handle "character-driven sprawl" (good term BTW)? What about the extent of the sprawl in your experience? Can you handle situations where the group completely explodes into individual characters having their own, unconnected adventures?

Quote from: KeranIf we mean the same thing.  Sometimes it's hard to tell without examples.

True enough.

QuoteSame thing, or were you meaning something else?

Something entirely different. Different hobby(ies), in fact. My apologies. My comments and experiences are not relevant to this thread at all. Disregard all previous posts of mine in this thread.

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?

The quick answer is that the character doesn't have a body and can't physically act out anything.

I'm not in conscious control of what the character thinks or how they interpret their environment.  I am in total control of their interface to the game world, though.  They are like a brain in a jar.  They can think and decide what to do but they have no power to actually do anything.

I'm going to talk about the single player as two seperate individuals in order to explain the interaction.  Yes, I know they are the same person, but it's easier to talk about the two threads of thinking going on in my mind this way.

The character runs inside of the player.  The player is the context whithin which the character runs.  The chararacter can't bypass the player because that would cause it to lose the context in which it runs.

The player provides an interface to the game where what is being said at the table get's translated into something the the character can understant.  For example, the player translates the things the the other players and GM say in character into sights and sounds of those characters speaking for the character.  The player translate roll results and action descriptions into the things the character sees, hears, feels, smells, tastes and so on going on around them. The character interprets that input, thinks about it, and acts on it in much the same way that a real person interprets the environment around them and reacts to it.

In the other direction, the player interprets what the character does verbally in a way that makes sense to the other players and GM at the table.  If the character wants to say something, the player says something in character, perhaps with emotional or vocal cues that reflect the character's emotional state and how they'd say it if they could speak directly.  If the character wants to do something, the player translates that into a description of action or, in many cases, the gamespeak required to translate the character's intent into an action in the game.  If the character thinks about attacking an NPC, the player will translate that into something like, "I swing at the NPC.  What do I need to roll?"

Since the character's body is not my body and doesn't exist without the player interpretation layer, there is no chance of the character acting out beyond the player's control using the player's body because the character isn't directly connected to the player that way.  It's a brain in a jar and without the player to provide it input and describe it's output, it's powerless to do anything.

John - thanks for the thoughtful reply. My retraction of comments applied to that one as well, but (A) good reply (B) useful for others reading who may have considered my question more relevant than it really was and (C) I figure there's at least a fair chance you were writing it while I was retracting at the same time in another window anyway :)

So either way, thanks.

One other point.  I've found that I can nudge my character to do certain things at the layer where the player translates what's being said at the table into what the character experiences and by nudging uncertainties in a certain direction.  

For example, in the D&D game I've recently been playing in, I avoided some of the problems with my character not getting along with the other PCs by feeding the character a sense of trust for the other PCs -- that unconscious sense that you can get that you should trust someone just by talking with them for a short while.  That predisposed my character to treat them like friends and give them the benefit of the doubt.  There were also instances where it was possible that my character would realize that another PC was part of an organization that my character despised, thus breaking up the party.  I purpose nudged the character to miss clues that would have helped him figure it out, and when it was not longer plausible that he wouldn't notice, he did figure it out, which did break up the party.

Nudging can work, so long as it feels like something that comes from inside the character.  What doesn't work is making the character do something that doesn't make any sense in character.  If I can't answer, "Why would my character do that?" with sufficiently plausible answer, I can't make the character do it and maintain immersion.

In the same D&D game, one of the other players was running a character with strong persuasive skills.  The player wanted to persuade my character to not hand in some loot that we found to our superiors so we could use it ourselves.  My character was a stickler for hierarchy and procedure so I explained to the other player that he couldn't directly ask my character to lie to his superior and go along with stealing (how the character would see it) the loot directly.  But he could persuade my character to make him responsible for the loot and keep it if he left my character with deniable plausibility, even if my character really knew what he was up to.  So I'm also willing to tell other players what makes my character tick so that, in character, they can persuade my character to do things.

I'd like to thank John Morrow for his thoughtful and informative replies. Keran's replies could have been summed up as "JimBobOz you are a poopyhead, and I am a legend." This is a forum where you're allowed to say these things openly, you don't have to pad it out with verbiage. So just go ahead and call me a poopyhead :p

The only thing I'd correct with John Morrow's responses, I'd said that in my games I run, I like to make sure everyone can participate directly or indirectly as much as they'd like to; that includes giving them a new character within half an hour of the death of their old. John Morrow said that wouldn't appeal to him much. Note that I said, "as much as they'd like to."

When players have choices, they like that better than when they have no choices. That includes the choice to participate. Sometimes they won't exercise that choice, but they always want the option. For example, I remember one time the characters were about to go and meet a new race. One player said to the other that she wanted him to promise not to have his character speak or act in the ensuing scene. Basically, she thought he'd fuck it up (but didn't say so openly). What it came down to was one player saying, "I want this scene all to myself." He replied that he couldn't promise that, he'd have his character interfere if it seemed appropriate for the character ("immersionist") and the situation ("tactical"). The real conflict between the players was not "immersion" vs "tactics" but rather each player wanting the choice of whether or not to participate.

I don't know whether you'd like my games in general, John Morrow. But everyone likes having the choice of whether or not to participate. You don't have to join in on any scene, and you don't have to have a new character straight away (or ever) if your old one dies. But you have the choice.

Everyone gets to join in, if they want to.

Quote from: JimBobOzThe only thing I'd correct with John Morrow's responses, I'd said that in my games I run, I like to make sure everyone can participate directly or indirectly as much as they'd like to; that includes giving them a new character within half an hour of the death of their old. John Morrow said that wouldn't appeal to him much. Note that I said, "as much as they'd like to."

And that's why I said "I wouldn't enjoy it".  I'm sure other players prefer it that way.

Oddly enough, that's how I do prefer board games.  One of the reasons why I prefer board games like Axis and Allies, Cosmic Encounters, Settlers of Catan, Kill Dr. Lucky and even a lot of card games over board games like Risk and Samurai Swords is that, normally, all of the players are in the game until the end in the former while players can be eliminated from play and have to sit the rest of the game out in the latter.  So I can and do understand the appeal of wanting to be involved and wanting to play.  I just have other stronger priorities when I role-play.

In many ways, I think most players would be happy with a game that provides it all -- verisimiltude, theme, story, challenge, adventure, teamwork, and so on.  Style conflict happens when you hit a point where you'd have to make a choice between one or the other because one is going to ruin the other.  I love to play constantly and have my characters succeed at all of their goals.  But I'm willing to sacrifice those ideals for verisimilitude and to allow other players the time they need to support verisimitude for their characters.  

I'd also prefer to play large parts of games out in real time rather than skipping over them (e.g., your prison scene) because the experience of time and nuances, in character, can be important for the immersive experience for me.  But there I do have to compromise immersion for the reality that we don't have an infinite amount of time to play.  Some things have to be skipped over and fast forwarded simply to allow the game to move along at a reasonable pace.

Quote from: JimBobOzFor example, I remember one time the characters were about to go and meet a new race. One player said to the other that she wanted him to promise not to have his character speak or act in the ensuing scene. Basically, she thought he'd fuck it up (but didn't say so openly). What it came down to was one player saying, "I want this scene all to myself." He replied that he couldn't promise that, he'd have his character interfere if it seemed appropriate for the character ("immersionist") and the situation ("tactical"). The real conflict between the players was not "immersion" vs "tactics" but rather each player wanting the choice of whether or not to participate.

I do think this was an "in character" vs. "tactical" conflict.  From a tactical standpoint, it makes sense to have that conversation at the player level, with one player extracting a promise from the other player.  From an immersive standpoint, it would have made sense to have that conversation at the character level, with one character extracting a promise from the other player.  Where control and choice come into play is that, either way, the other player should have the final call over what their character will do, unless they are breaking the social contract of the group.

Quote from: JimBobOzI don't know whether you'd like my games in general, John Morrow. But everyone likes having the choice of whether or not to participate. You don't have to join in on any scene, and you don't have to have a new character straight away (or ever) if your old one dies. But you have the choice.

I can enjoy non-immersive games and I've also learned to create immersive characters that work well in immersion-hostile games.  The key there is to create a character that's not sensitive to the verisimiltude of the setting and doesn't depend too much on it.  Basically, I create characters that don't ask "Why?" and don't really need to know why.  Characters with simple motivations and simple needs.  They tend to roll with the punches when things don't necessarily make sense in character.

Also note that it's sometimes my preference to walk away from the table if the scene covers information that is important to my character but my character wouldn't now, so they won't prejudice the way my character behaves later when they have to make decisions based on what they do or don't know about that information.  I've offended at least one GM at a casua l game club game because I walked away from the table and he interpreted that as disinterest in the game.  Actually, I walked away because I was interested.

Quote from: JimBobOzEveryone gets to join in, if they want to.

And that's fine.  If your players are happy with that, then keep doing it that way.  Because the thing that get's lost in a lot of these theory and style discussions is that it's really all about having fun.

Quote from: Elliot WilenHey, Keran, do you have any advice or actual play examples to show how you and your group(s) handle "character-driven sprawl" (good term BTW)? What about the extent of the sprawl in your experience? Can you handle situations where the group completely explodes into individual characters having their own, unconnected adventures?

The big thing is setup.  If you set up in the sort of typical plotted-adventure fashion, with characters who are only loosely connected and really don't have any good reason to be together, then if the players play in a character-driven fashion, why shouldn't they scatter?  The five random strangers who meet in a tavern and get hired by someone they don't know to do something they have no personal reason to care about don't have any strong motives for sticking together that make much in-character sense at the start, unless they all really want the money.  They might form bonds as the adventure progresses, but you can't count on that.  So you need a different kind of a setup.

At the start of a new campaign, I describe the setting and genre, and pitch a very sketchy idea for a scenario: it'll be some kind of conflict or problem in the setting.  Then we do group character creation.  Not necessarily at a session, because it takes me longer to think through a character than that; what I do is forward all the emails about the characters back and forth between the players.  We figure out how the characters are going to be connected to each other, how they might come to be involved in problems in the setting, and what conflicts they might bring into play themselves, in a process of feedback and adjustment.   I do my best to get people to make motivated, connected characters who can work together, in a setting in which there are interesting things to do.

Characters need to have niches that aren't overshadowed.  Sometimes it's the profession that's the character's main claim to uniqueness, but it can also be background and connections.  I need to balance differently for a focus on roleplayed intrigue and investigation than I would for a game focused on mechanical combat.

I don't want to see characters who can't or won't work with the others, and I don't want to see scoundrels -- hard, dangerous characters with an edge are acceptable; the amoral, the betrayers, the abusers of the innocent are not.  I'm not running narrativist games where watching the characters or the group morally self-destruct is the point, so I don't want characters who are likely to bring the group to destruction.

I don't want characters who don't have any drives or goals, passive characters who'll stand there like posts if I don't push a plot at them.

Tension among the PCs is acceptable, and can add a lot of dramatic interest to play, but it's risky and should be constructed with caution.  Particularly, it's risky if there's a significant power differential between the PCs and there isn't a pre-existing relationship of OOC trust between the players involved.  I've seen tension between the PCs work magnificently when the players were getting along.  However, if you don't know the players, particularly if one PC is likely to end up in a position of advantage with respect to the other, walk warily.  Real-life control freaks who enjoy pushing people around will gravitate to positions where they can do so under cover -- sometimes the excuse is "I'm just playing my character," but it can also be "I'm just playing by the rules" or "I'm just adding dramatic tension."   (Actually, I don't want people like this around at all, because when they're not in a position of power they spend all their time jockeying for one, which is a royal pain in a cooperative game.  You can afford to take risks with cooperative players that you can't take with players who think like social-climbing baboons.)

I tell players to make the characters they want to play that make sense in the setting -- they don't have to make a weak starting character unless they specifically want one.  The reward for play isn't getting points to try to reach the character you wanted to play all along; it's to explore whatever it is that interested you about the character and the world in the first place, and perhaps to achieve your character's objectives.

(To some extent many systems fight against the construction of some kinds of characters that are perfectly good fictional concepts.  And to some extent many systems mildly constrain overarching plot, at least if you use them in the most expected way: the assumption that characters should start weak and then advance has a tendency to channel play into a certain plot pattern -- Claw Your Way to the Top.

If you happen to be interested in characters that the system fights against, or you're interested in the sort of exploration that the Claw Your Way to the Top pattern gets in the way of, then you end up sometimes having to do odd things that don't really fit the character, and which might not really have any good in-world justification, in order to secure the right advantages to try for the play you want.  This can create a conflict for the player who really wants to do X with the character, and whose internal model of the character might be built to do X, while he's expected by the system and convention to do Y.  The expectation to conform to the system can obscure the desire and intent to do X, without removing it; and if there isn't a lot of fictional-world reason to do Y -- if it's only game-mechanical -- then it becomes more likely that the immersive player will consciously intend Y OOCly while the subconscious character model is pulling toward making a break for X.  I don't want my system doing things like this, and my rules-light homebrew is very unconstricting this way.)

After character creation, we play intro scenes for each of the characters, so the players have a chance to get into character and see a bit of the setting before they meet each other, and maybe make some adjustments.  And after that we bring the characters together and start play in earnest.

I don't worry about the characters deviating from the plot, because what the characters decide to do is the plot.   Telling the PCs what they ought to be doing isn't my job: they're supposed to figure out what they want to do and then try to do it.  They're agents.  The NPCs are agents.  Natural processes cause events.  But  preplanned plot has no presence in the fictional world.  Neither does theme or game.  They can't do anything, can't cause anything: only the characters can.  I usually have some idea of what the characters will be undertaking in the next session or so, but it's really up to them.

If the players aren't happy with what their own characters are doing, they can adjust their characters to anything reasonable and not too disconnected from the past, and which their own modelling will permit; we can figure out how to change their character's circumstances; they can make new characters; they can drop out.

Or they could go do something else in the setting.  If they interest me enough, I might be willing to run a side campaign for them; but so far I've never had the circumstance come up.  Because how many players, given the choice of still connecting to the rest of the PCs in some manner or going it completely alone, are going to pick the latter?  What's the payoff for that choice?

Mostly there isn't one.

There are circumstances in which there is a payoff.  I think you mentioned one of them earlier -- not having any significant ability to affect the group's actions, being overshadowed or overlooked.  The other one is that somebody in the group is playing a jerk character that's making associating with the group a miserable experience.

I may or may not be able to fix the overshadowed or overlooked problem while the player keeps the same character, since I'm not in control of PC social dynamics.  But I am the gatekeeper, and I have only myself to blame for a split if I tolerate a jerk character for one minute past the point where I realize that talking to the jerk's player isn't going to change the character's behavior (which is usually the case: most jerk characters are played by jerk players).

I've always played online, and it's fairly easy to set up side sessions online and log them so that other players who didn't watch or play can read them.  So we have an approach that part of the pleasure is playing, and part of the pleasure is getting to watch the whole story unfold, wherever it's going.  Good players with interesting characters can make this pretty entertaining, and it encourages people to take an interest in other people's subplots.

I'm happy to hand out some authority usually reserved for the GM to players who want it and whose creations mesh well with mine.  Often, players will take an interest in developing parts of the setting or cultures that their characters are from, and that's fine with me if they're good at it; and they may also be the ones answering questions about in during play, as well as developing it outside of play.  The setting becomes a collaborative effort, not just mine, with more people's knowledge and creativity gone into making it believable and interesting, and more people actively invested in it.  I coordinate the whole thing and make sure it hangs together, but I don't necessarily have to be tightly managing everybody else's play -- in fact, at times we might switch off informally in the middle of a session, when one of the players might take over the narrating and resolving if the PCs move into an area he developed.

In my first campaign I hadn't figured out that I needed to do some of this stuff, or how to do it -- I didn't realize at the start that I was going to be running a character-driven open-ended political intrigue instead of a specific adventure with a lot of GM-planned obstacles, and I didn't realize that while the underlying ideas behind typical game-text GMing advice were often still valid, the specific techniques would sometimes be different from standard expectations.  So that campaign had a higher dropout rate than my later ones did.  In later ones I'd figured out most of the above to some extent, and while I still wasn't great at communicating to players exactly what the structure of the campaign was, I managed to prepare more of them for the idea that it probably wasn't what they were used to.

I guess if someone isn't interested enough to stick with the main campaign, they're not interested enough to stick around at all.  So I've had people leave, but I haven't had a campaign threatening to fracture into four separate pieces or something.

Edited to add: Oh, yeah, one thing: Persistent Style Clash != Jerk Player

I've had people who were so strongly grooved into reacting to a GM-prepared plot that they never managed to make characters with the motivations to steer themselves.  These people don't actively annoy anybody else; they just wind up passive and bored in my campaigns.  Nothing wrong with wanting a plot to react to, it's just that I don't run this way and couldn't manage it longterm.  (I find it draining and I'm bad at it besides.)

I've had people whose tastes were so strongly cinematic that they always ended up playing Pirates of the Caribbean in my Master and Commander game.  They'd do things that made no IC sense because OOC they wanted Action! Now this is actively annoying, but it isn't intended to be so: it's just the player's preference and ingrained habit.  And there's nothing wrong with this preference either, but I can't make it work with my campaign worlds.

So both of the above sorts of players really need some other game than mine, but this doesn't imply anything bad about the player.

The jerk player is someone who's pleased only if he's stepping on other people, or who doesn't care even slightly if he does.  And I don't mean he wants to beat a challenge or compete in a fictional area where the group agrees that competition is a good thing.  He's generally competing in the social area where the players are supposed to be cooperating, and the roleplaying becomes a cover for some of the OOC powergaming, with the characters seen as proxies for the players.  It doesn't stay confined to the roleplaying, either.  I've seen players try to run out any other player the GM was listening to because they wanted to controlling the game by controlling the GM, and couples where the guy's character is a powerful IC bully and OOCly he behaves in such a domineering manner to his SO that she's afraid to talk to the other players openly and wants to set up secret channels of communication. Behavior that isn't desirable anywhere.

Quote from: John MorrowI can enjoy non-immersive games and I've also learned to create immersive characters that work well in immersion-hostile games.  The key there is to create a character that's not sensitive to the verisimiltude of the setting and doesn't depend too much on it.  Basically, I create characters that don't ask "Why?" and don't really need to know why.  Characters with simple motivations and simple needs.  They tend to roll with the punches when things don't necessarily make sense in character.

I've never managed this.  So far I've never built an immersible character who doesn't keep asking why, and I'm not sure if I could.

I've played some immersion-hostile games intentionally to see how they work, and I didn't actively hate them or anything, but they didn't give me what I roleplay for, or anything else that would inspire me to make steady hobby of them.

QuoteAlso note that it's sometimes my preference to walk away from the table if the scene covers information that is important to my character but my character wouldn't now, so they won't prejudice the way my character behaves later when they have to make decisions based on what they do or don't know about that information.  I've offended at least one GM at a casua l game club game because I walked away from the table and he interpreted that as disinterest in the game.  Actually, I walked away because I was interested.

Except in a very few cases, I'd rather firewall and watch.  But if the point of play is to figure out a mystery I don't want to have to firewall the solution.  I tried that once perforce (not with an immersible character), where I happened to have read the book the plot was based on, and it didn't work very well.

In the other direction, one of the experiences I had was not being able to break a firewall when I wanted to.  I had gotten exceedingly strong immersion, the deepest ever, with a character who was imprisoned.  The villain was threatening his family in an effort to coerce him into doing something morally intolerable, and he decided that the only thing he could do was to kill himself, thereby removing the villain's primary motive for specifically targeting his family.  What this felt like to experience immersively I leave to your imagination.

OOCly, the GM told me that a rescue was coming.  I thought, and he thought, that at least some consciousness of this would bleed into play.  But it didn't change the character's emotions at all.  And outside of play, when I wasn't thinking about anything else specific -- when I was trying to fall asleep -- I'd find my mind wandering back there to the cell and to the character's black anguish, fury, fear, and terrible resolve.

I often spend time thinking as an immersible character outside of play, but in this case it was proving to be a trial.  Experience suggested that I could have forced the model away from the game's scenario, moved it into another context, but if I did that I'd probably have broken it for play in the game.  Which led to me asking the GM to run the session where the character got sprung as soon as possible.

I've run a lot more than I've played, and I guess the distractions of GMing have meant that I haven't been getting as deep with immersible NPCs as I may end up getting when I'm only playing.  It's made me hang back and think hard about getting into other people's games, because your typical adventure game involves the characters doing a fair number of things that aren't enjoyable at all when done for real.  They work in books and movies because the sympathy the readers or audience have with the characters isn't complete -- there's enough sympathy for interest and enough distance to make the suspense fun.

There's less distance with immersion.  It seems that it would be easy to go beyond suspense into the harrowing.

Quote from: JimBobOzI'd like to thank John Morrow for his thoughtful and informative replies. Keran's replies could have been summed up as "JimBobOz you are a poopyhead, and I am a legend." This is a forum where you're allowed to say these things openly, you don't have to pad it out with verbiage. So just go ahead and call me a poopyhead :p

Man, if I have to listen to another one of those bloody awful ideas like "dramatism is emotional porn," "simulationists are cowards," and "traditional roleplaying causes brain damage," then if I answer at all it's not simply going to be to call you a poopyhead. :p

Feel free to have the last word.

Quote from: KeranExcept in a very few cases, I'd rather firewall and watch.  But if the point of play is to figure out a mystery I don't want to have to firewall the solution.

I enjoy vicariously experiencing the emotions that my character experiences discovering either mundane things so I'm most likely to listen to things my character ins't involved in when it won't have much impact on my character to learn it.  The other time I listen is when I know the other characters will tell me characer what happened and it's easier and saves time to watch what happened then have the other players summarize it in character.

Quote from: KeranOOCly, the GM told me that a rescue was coming.  I thought, and he thought, that at least some consciousness of this would bleed into play.  But it didn't change the character's emotions at all.  And outside of play, when I wasn't thinking about anything else specific -- when I was trying to fall asleep -- I'd find my mind wandering back there to the cell and to the character's black anguish, fury, fear, and terrible resolve.

And that's a wonderful illustration of the classic case where the character acts out of genre and can ruin a game.  This is the sort of situation I had in mind when I mentioned that an immersive player should, "Learn to recognize when situations develop that will lead [their] character toward decisions the other players won't find fun and deal with them early."  The main type of situation that I've seen that causes problems is forcing an immersive character into a desperate situation.  That's what happened here and your description helped me clarify what the problem is.

Many genres make assumptions that don't make sense in character that get carried over into role-playing games.  Among those are a faith that things will all work out  for the character (e.g., if the character is captured, they will have the opprotunity to escape).  This is why a variety of situations which require genre knowledge to ensure patience on the part of the characters tend to go very badly with immersive characters.  Among the problem situations are being captures, hostage situations, and giving the character no safe haven that they can retreat into.  These tend to make characters feel helpless and desperate and helpless and desperate people make desperate choices that often don't reflect what happens in genre fiction and movies.

And, no, this isn't easily fixed or avoided because there is a disconnect between how the situation is portrayed in the setting (as desperate) and how it is portrayed outside of the setting (nothing to worry too much about) and no way to close the gap.  Some game try to make genre conventions an integral part of the setting but this doesn't often work and can create more problems than it solves for an immersive player (by changing the meaning of danger for the whole setting).  If everyone in the setting knows that being captured and locked up in a cell would lead to the prisoner's eventual escape, why would villains even bother to do it?

Anything that treats the the PCs as inherently different than any other character in the setting can cause immersion problems, even when the difference is codified in the rules, if it is not reflected in the setting.  Making sure that PCs have a better opportunity to escape than the average prisoner is that sort of bias.

One way I handled this problem as a GM was with divinations.  I was running an adventure loosely based on the old A4 D&D module, which started out assuming the PCs had been captured and then gives them an opportunity to escape.  That's essentially the classic situation that you described.  The way I avoided desperate actions on the part of the PCs is that I knew they'd do a divination first and the answer to the divination told them that they' d be captured but, "don't despair," and that things would turn out OK.  That gave them the confidence to accept their capture and not try desperate measures to escape.  And it was pretty funny when, "Don't despair!" got shouted out by the ex-Paladin whenever things looked like they were going really down-hill. :)

Thanks, Keran, that was very interesting and useful, too.

Quote from: John MorrowAnd that's a wonderful illustration of the classic case where the character acts out of genre and can ruin a game.  This is the sort of situation I had in mind when I mentioned that an immersive player should, "Learn to recognize when situations develop that will lead [their] character toward decisions the other players won't find fun and deal with them early."  The main type of situation that I've seen that causes problems is forcing an immersive character into a desperate situation.  That's what happened here and your description helped me clarify what the problem is.

You're right.  I hadn't clearly realized before this that there's a definite and repeating pattern to the difficult situations, but there is.

In this particular case, it wasn't so much that the reaction was likely to spoil anything for anyone else as that the character climbing the wall was driving me up the wall, so I wanted to resolve it quickly.  And it was inadvertent, rather than being the way the GM had intended to set things up.  So it didn't prove to be a serious problem overall.

QuoteMany genres make assumptions that don't make sense in character that get carried over into role-playing games.  Among those are a faith that things will all work out  for the character (e.g., if the character is captured, they will have the opprotunity to escape).  This is why a variety of situations which require genre knowledge to ensure patience on the part of the characters tend to go very badly with immersive characters.  Among the problem situations are being captures, hostage situations, and giving the character no safe haven that they can retreat into.  These tend to make characters feel helpless and desperate and helpless and desperate people make desperate choices that often don't reflect what happens in genre fiction and movies.

Yup.

All the other cases I ever experienced involve the character being trapped -- not necessarily in as physically definite a way as imprisonment, but being in a position where they were in positions of disadvantage, and were subjected to serious threats delivered by other PCs.  There is no good way to escape the threat without violence to the threatening PC; worse, the threatening PC is sufficiently more powerful that the only technique that has any hope at all of succeeding is the crippling pre-emptive strike -- total surprise, and decisive and lasting disablement.  And the threatening PC not only has the power to make good on the threat, but is behaving in such a way that they seem disposed to do so.

I didn't used to worry all that much about raw powerful differential between PCs as long as mine had adequate niche protection, because I've played in games where it wasn't a problem.  Basically, as long as the more powerful PC is played in a manner so as to indicate that even if they can deliver on a threat, they don't actually want to, then it can work.  But there's no way to tell merely from looking at a sheet how the more powerful character will be played.  If you don't know the player ...

In two of the cases, the threatening characters were played by men whose out-of-game behavior with their SOs was domineering to the point where the women were afraid to speak freely to other players in front of them, in order to avoid fights, but sought out secret channels of communication.  I probably don't have to describe how they handled their more-powerful characters.  Another one wasn't so extreme as that, but he seemed to be a rampaging powergamer who spent a lot of time making verbal jabs at the GM and generally being a pain, to the point where the GM decided not to have him back in any future campaigns.

In none of these cases did my character end up executing any violence, but in the two cases with the men whose SOs were afraid to speak freely, both games broke up messily due to OOC stresses that these situations brought into the open.  In the third case, I realized before I even got into play that the particular situation was a trap, given what my character knew, didn't know, what he was likely to find out, and the way the other PC was behaving, so I didn't bring the character into play to avoid the probable campaign-wrecking reaction.

QuoteAnd, no, this isn't easily fixed or avoided because there is a disconnect between how the situation is portrayed in the setting (as desperate) and how it is portrayed outside of the setting (nothing to worry too much about) and no way to close the gap.  Some game try to make genre conventions an integral part of the setting but this doesn't often work and can create more problems than it solves for an immersive player (by changing the meaning of danger for the whole setting).  If everyone in the setting knows that being captured and locked up in a cell would lead to the prisoner's eventual escape, why would villains even bother to do it?

Again, yes.

QuoteOne way I handled this problem as a GM was with divinations.  I was running an adventure loosely based on the old A4 D&D module, which started out assuming the PCs had been captured and then gives them an opportunity to escape.  That's essentially the classic situation that you described.  The way I avoided desperate actions on the part of the PCs is that I knew they'd do a divination first and the answer to the divination told them that they' d be captured but, "don't despair," and that things would turn out OK.  That gave them the confidence to accept their capture and not try desperate measures to escape.  And it was pretty funny when, "Don't despair!" got shouted out by the ex-Paladin whenever things looked like they were going really down-hill. :)

Interesting technique.  I've never had future-predicting magic in my campaigns in part because my inability to predict what's going to happen in the upcoming session is bad enough to be a standing joke. :)