Quote from: TristramEvans;418717Hackmaster used a variation of the AD&D 1st edition, I was unaware of any LARP variation. What is "thespy crunchy"?

Hackmaster has been referred to as a "postmodern LARP". That is, you're not really roleplaying the characters, you're roleplaying your 13 year old self playing a viciously homebrewed version of AD&D1e. Given its derivation from a cartoon strip which parodied homebrewed versions of AD&D1e... this makes sense.

"Thesp" is the opposite of "hack". A thespian is a theatrical dramatic actor; thus, a "thespy" game is one which is, well... as White Wolf put it, "more roleplaying, less roll-playing". Hack, I assume you know what that means.

A "crunchy" game is one with quite a lot of detailed rules for this and that. Historically, thespy games are rules-light, hack games might be rules-light or might be crunchy.

Burning Wheel is a notable exception as a thespy crunchy game.

QuoteSo you blame the games themselves?

To a great extent, yes.

In the end it always comes down to the people involved. But game systems are like alcohol. Alcohol doesn't create impulses in people, it just makes it more likely that they'll give in to them. Likewise, no rules system can possibly force anyone to play any particular way. But if a person has certain inclinations, this or that game system can encourage or discourage them.

One of the inclinations encouraged by thespy play in general, and thespy crunchy play in particular, is a pretentious contempt for gaming and gamers. "Roleplaying, not rollplaying" leads to people giving up gaming entirely. A game system is like anything else: it can encourage the best in you, or the worst in you. Joke games like Violence and nasty games like Poison'd encourage contempt for gaming and gamers, as does GNS theory in general.

If you begin by looking down your nose at the people around the game table there's just no good place to go from there.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;418716No Russ, not your group at all.

Kyle, don't compound a falsehood with another falsehood. I just want people to be aware that the specific allegorical example you mentioned was invented, so they can make their own decisions based on the truth. That is all.

Hmm, so an Australian Forger drops in for his first post to attack Kyle, defending his groups choice of Forge games.  What website are you guys using to coordinate your attacks I wonder?

Quote from: Tanuki;418720Kyle, don't compound a falsehood with another falsehood.

Believe it or not, I have known more than one game group aside from my own.

And CRK, Russ is no "Forger". A very sensible and decent person, as were all in his group who I ever met. They just liked to experiment with lots of different games, definitely a counterpoint to my example game group who did fizzle out. Just a bit far to get to for me at the time.

I went with Burning Wheel and I am still gaming, more so than ever in fact. My experience with it is totally opposite to what Kyle describes. I used to play standard games like the WoDs, Shadowrun, The Dark Eye, some AD&D, some Earthdawn and was deeply unhappy with how all the games did for me was that someone made up a story and the others played through the story - for a lack of a better description. I do not want to say anyone is doing anything wrong. That is just my experience.
Then I found Burning Wheel and everything clicked. As far as my group is concerned, their attendance record is nearly spotless now and people are a lot more engaged. Start to flex their wings even and think about gamemastering themselves.
I am not sure if Thespy crunchy is an apt description of the game though. Or even one people besides Kyle use for RPGs. For me Burning Wheel is a mid crunch game which focuses on the characters. Nothing more, nothing less.

Quote from: John Morrow;418448That's irrelevant to my problem with it.  My problem is that I simply do not want that control.  It's not a decision I'm interested in making.  If my character runs out of a building and I want to know if there is a car on the street, I'm simply looking for information.  I don't care if the GM says yes or no or rolls a die.  It's simply not a question I want to answer.  And because I don't care, I have no preference to use to pick one choice or the other, so I'd probably roll a die if forced to decide (in fact, I do that when I GM).  So you may be speaking for yourself when it comes to the psychology at play here, but you are not speaking for me.

While all of your post probably bares quoting, I think this nicely sums up why games that put narrative decisions beyond the character's perspective in the player's hands don't appeal to me.

Anything that forces me to drive the story from a standpoint beyond my guy takes me out of the "role" -- and I'd argue that playing a role is what rpg's are all about (which is not to say that story games aren't rpg's as well, but if the game emphasizes collaborative story telling, that's a different focus from playing a role).

While I don't have statistics or anything to back this up, I believe that the vast majority of people who enjoy RPG's like the aspects of roleplaying that allow them to stay in a particular character's PoV and expect the GM to facilitate this.

The predicted outcome of this preference would be the market dominance of the traditional model, which is what we see in reality.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;418394Excellent post, possibly too good to be slumming in this thread.

You might find this link of interest, although it basically connects into a spaghetti-tangle of related posts & threads here, there, and everywhere.

Interesting link, thanks!

Quote from: John Morrow;418448... That people who played "immersively" (thinking in character) were well-represented in those discussions (which predated Forge use) and had no problem self-identifying with "Simulation", I think there is nothing inherently negative loaded into that word.  The problem with it's use in Forge theory (and this is quite clear if your read the whole thread that I pulled the Ron quote that I posted earlier from) is that Ron never really understood what it meant or the purpose it served in the r.g.f.a discussions.  As such, it carries a lot of baggage, but that's no an inherent problem with the word or why it was originally adopted.

I guess whether a word is loaded or not is a subjective thing, but for me at least, and I'm confident for many people, the word "simulation" suggests the notion of modelling something. That in turn suggests attention to accuracy and detail. I'm not saying that accuracy and detail are bad things - often they are very good things. But they are not what the game is about. They are not what immersion is about. They may help immersion. But if you just talk about the process of simulation, you give the impression of something very dry, perhaps scientific or mathematical. Now, the word "simulation" may not strike all people that way. People who are very familiar with RPG jargon in Internet discussions instead read into the word "simulation" all kinds of junk they've picked up in those discussions. But that's not the way the word will necessarily be interpreted by people who are new to the discussion. By saying that Ron Edwards misunderstood what "simulation" was being used to mean in this context, you are in fact confirming my point. The point is that the word in its plain ordinary usage has connotations which make it misleading to adopt that word as a term of art meaning something else.

QuoteDo I want to create characters and play in a setting likely to produce interesting adventures, experiences, and even moral quandaries?  Absolutely.  Do I need the system to drive the game forward for my character?  No, not really.  My characters can drive themselves forward.

To an extent I agree, but I want the ref, at least, to have a conscious agenda of driving the game forward dynamically towards excitement, adventure, intrigue, mystery, suspense, horror or whatever. Sometimes I will do so as a player. I don't see any harm with mechanics which encourage that, as long as they are light-touch. Crass, blunt mechanics forcing that down my throat I don't want, but light-touch mechanics which I can easily circumvent if I prefer, no problem. I think on balance they probably make the game more exciting.

QuoteWhen I'm immersed and thinking in character, my attention as a player in the real world is on my character.  I want to experience the impact of the game through my character, not independently from my character.  As such, catching my interest as a player in the real world only distracts from that.  Terrify, challenge, or amuse my character and I'll experience the terror, challenge, or amusement through them.

We're not very far apart here. Even on your own version of how this works, it is YOU who experiences the terror, challenge or amusement.

It's no good saying "my character is terrified" if you do not feel terror. That's no good even if your character has a Bravery stat of 0, a Terrified stat of 20 million, a Condition of "utterly terrified" and behavioural restrictions requiring him to run away and poop in a corner. If you're not immersed in the character's world-view and have no sense of ownership of the character, you won't feel terrified, so the game is empty of experience.

Now, thus far I think we're in agreement. Because I can certainly accept that feeling these things through your character because he would be feeling them and you have a sense of ownership and immersion - that's great. I also believe that when the game-world gets into the sort of shape which makes your character feel those things, that's a great way to get you to experience them in the real world, probably the best and most reliable technique for doing so.

Where we differ is that I think that it is acceptable if the game produces experiences for you even if they are not shared with your character.

IMHO it's perfectly good if you feel, say, terrified or mystified by the game-world, even if your character does not have the necessary knowledge to do so, because he cannot for instance anticipate the GM's game in the way you can, or does not have the intelligence to work things out as easily as you can.

Now you might be an ultra-purist and disagree with me on this, but I would encourage you to be a bit more open-minded about it. People can play for the sake of mystery, terror etc. and as long as they get that sense of mystery, terror etc., does it matter if it comes directly from the character or not? No doubt it is heightened by their sense of ownership of the character, but it does not have to be a feeling that the character would necessarily share.

Classic example is the sense of horror you might get playing a vampire who is slowly losing his humanity. The vampire himself might not share your sense of horror, because his humanity, drained as it is, desensitises him to that. But you feel that sense of horror. Mission accomplished, if that's your kick.

QuoteImmersion isn't a part of the path.  It's how the path is experienced.  As I said before, the destination is largely irrelevant.

I'm not sure about the point you are trying to make here.

I think you're using the words path and destination in different ways than I am. By destination, I mean the outcome of a sense (which you experience in the real world, whether through your character or not) of mystery, horror, tragedy, triumph or whatever. By path, I mean the process of achieving that experience. Immersion (in the game-world at the very least, if not in the mind of the character) is key to achieving those kinds of experience.

QuoteNon-sequitur because the issue isn't about what the player or character can do but what they can decide to do and make happen with a decision.  A person can decide to swing a sword.  A person cannot make the sword hit or not hit its target simply because they decide it should.

I don't think you're contradicting anything I said there. What I'm saying is that the fact that a person cannot make the sword hit or not hit its target simply by deciding that it should, and that therefore it is generally unrealistic for a fantasy character to have that power, that fact is not closely causally connected to the fact that giving the player that kind of narrative power is counter-immersive. The "realism" of what the player (rather than the character) can do is simply not a relevant consideration, as the player is not a part of the game-world. However, I do go on to say that giving the player that kind of power is counter-immersive from a different point of view, because it requires the player to step aside from the character's PoV.

QuoteIf you truly want to understand the what immersion (i.e., "thinking in character") feels like and why awareness of the metagame is toxic to immersion, I suggest watching two movies:

In both movies, characters become aware of things that they can't become aware of without destroying the verisimilitude of their settings.  This is why there are parodies of genres and specific shows and movies.  

Not that I mind being patronised outrageously on the Internet (I do KNOW what immersion is all about), but I have to correct you here. I will use the term "counter-immersive" to mean "contrary to immersion in the character's perspective" (rather than "contrary to immersion in the game-world as a whole").

The player having narrative power has nothing to do with the character having unbelievable knowledge. Just because the player can decide if the character's sword hits or not, it does not follow that the character can do so, or knows that fact. Just because the player can decide that there is a hitman hiding in the closet, it does not follow that the character knows that there is a hitman hiding in the closet. Of course, if the player then gets the character to shoot the hitman, he could have the character explain "I just had this weird hunch". In some settings that might be believable. But if the player then has the character say "in fact really I decided that the hitman was in the closet, and so it became reality", that would be unbelievable. So unbelievable that it would break my immersion or nearly anyone's. But that's not a question of the player having narrative power. It's a question of how he uses it.

You can do exactly the same thing by having your character give a rendition of a genre-inappropriate song, or start quoting genre-inappropriate comedy sketches about dead parrots. You don't need narrative power to do that.

So, categorically, player narrative power does not make the game-world unbelievable and the effect (if any) of player narrative power on the believability of the game-world is not the reason why player narrative power is counter-immersive. The way that the player uses player narrative power, but equally the way that the player simply plays his character, could be outrageously unbelievable, and that would be counter-immersive. But any level of player narrative power is counter-immersive simply because it requires you to step away from your character's point of view and consider a global point of view. By counter-immersive, I mean "contrary to immersion in your character's perspective". More or less by definition this is true.

It is not necessarily true, of course, that something which is counter-immersive in that specific sense is necessarily going to hinder your immersion in the game-world (rather than in the character's specific perspective). But I think on the whole it will because the two are linked.

QuoteThe only case where I find it useful to consider the entire game rather than the perspective of a single character is when the decision the character is going to make is going to essentially cause the game to crash for everyone.  Other than that, I see no problem with players making decisions entirely from just their own character's perspective.  In fact, I prefer it that way.

I also see no problems with players making entirely immersive decisions. But I also see no problem with players making decisions which have some dynamic agenda, such as driving the game forwards to expose poignant themes or to develop horror, mystery or whatever. I don't think we're disagreeing here, except that we're expressing different preferences.

QuoteAnd carrying around an extra 50 pounds of lead in a vest doesn't necessarily make it impossible to walk, but it's probably going to make your life a lot less pleasant.  The issue isn't simply whether it's possible to do something but whether it makes doing something harder or less pleasant.  For me, out of character information makes it more difficult to immerse because it makes me second guess my character's decisions because I wonder if the out of character knowledge is seeping through.  Can I firewall the information?  Of course I can most of the time.  But it make things more difficult.  I don't get any benefit from the out of character information, so it's simply easier for me to walk away from the table and not hear it than to go through the hassle of firewalling it.

Obviously the issue is not simply whether something is possible, but also whether it is substantially easier or harder. But I think your experience here is very subjective. Sometimes excessive out-of-character information will make it harder for me to immerse myself in a character, but often it won't. We're burdened with huge amounts of out-of-character knowledge all the time in any game system, even if it's just knowing that X is a PC and therefore of central importance to the game, Y is an NPC likely to be of lesser importance and the game has lots of magic (which my character probably wouldn't understand yet). So please don't exaggerate the problems inherent in a small amount of extra in-character knowledge as an impediment to immersion as such. Of course it is an impediment to the sense of the unknown which is key to horror, fear, mystery etc. but that's a separate issue.

QuoteThe overall problem with your analysis is that you keep assuming that the player experience is primary.  It's not.  When a player thinks in character, the primary experience is the experience of the game world as the character.  I don't care if I'm challenged, surprised, horrified, or whatever as player.  I care if I experience that in character.  And, no, it's not the same thing.

This is just illogical nonsense. As I explained with my earlier example, it DOES NOT MATTER A JOT HOW TERRIFIED OR MYSTIFIED OR TRIUMPHANT YOUR CHARACTER IS IF YOU THE PLAYER HAVE NO SENSE OF TERROR OR MYSTERY OR TRIUMPH for instance because you have no sense of ownership of the character and no sense of suspension of disbelief or immersion. And it's FINE if you want to convince yourself that your own sense of terror, mystery or triumph is irrelevant unless shared by the character, and plainly generally you won't experience those things very often during the game unless your character would. But there CAN be times when your out of character knowledge means that you experience terror, mystery or triumph even when your character wouldn't. Personally, I'm happy to enjoy that when it happens. If you're not, that's your problem.

But those propositions can be summarised as follows. It doesn't matter what the character feels unless that feeling is shared by the player. If the feeling is felt by the player, it doesn't necessarily matter to most people that that may be a feeling that the character cannot strictly logically share. Therefore you are utterly wrong and it IS the player's experience of the game which is paramount. Believe me I have analysed this plenty, and it is NOT a mere assumption.

QuoteThat's irrelevant to my problem with it.  My problem is that I simply do not want that control.  It's not a decision I'm interested in making.  If my character runs out of a building and I want to know if there is a car on the street, I'm simply looking for information.  I don't care if the GM says yes or no or rolls a die.  It's simply not a question I want to answer.  And because I don't care, I have no preference to use to pick one choice or the other, so I'd probably roll a die if forced to decide (in fact, I do that when I GM).  So you may be speaking for yourself when it comes to the psychology at play here, but you are not speaking for me.

You may not want that control, but can you rationalise why? I share your preference for not having that level of control as a player, and I can rationalise why, or at least give several sound reasons (there may be others). First and foremost, almost by definition, exercising global narrative power requires me to adopt a global point of view which by definition is counter-immersive in the sense of being contrary to immersion in my character's perspective. It is also generally contrary to immersion in the game-world as a whole as a result of being contrary to immersion in my character's perspective. I would go further. I think that these statements are true of many players much of the time, probably most players most of the time, but almost certainly not all players most of the time. I don't think that most players would necessarily analyse it in those terms at first, but if that point of view were explained to them at length they might eventually come round to it... Secondly, the very possibility of the player exercising global narrative power (rather than the fact of exercising it) dispels the illusion of a fully fledged pre-existing game-world and therefore damages the sense of the unknown which is so critical to creating fear, horror, mystery and suspense. Again, I think that that would be true for many players much of the time, although some may not care.

In your reply, you assure me that you know what "immersion" is (in the sense that I'm using it -- "thinking in character") yet you call a description of it "illogical nonsense" and make comments that show that you don't really get it, probably because you don't experience it.

Quote from: Omnifray;418803It's no good saying "my character is terrified" if you do not feel terror. That's no good even if your character has a Bravery stat of 0, a Terrified stat of 20 million, a Condition of "utterly terrified" and behavioural restrictions requiring him to run away and poop in a corner. If you're not immersed in the character's world-view and have no sense of ownership of the character, you won't feel terrified, so the game is empty of experience.

I do not feel terror directly.  My character feels terror.  I don't decide that my character is terrified.  The character, through their experience of the situation, feels terror.  And I can feel the character feeling terror, even if I don't understand it.  I may feel something or not but it generally won't be the same thing the character experiences.  I'll try to give you an example to see if it makes any sense to you.  Don't try to interpret what I'm saying as really being something else.  Take it at face value because I mean what I'm saying the way I'm saying it.

Years ago, I played a character who had bonded with an NPC, who he was in a relationship with, and a PC while engaged in illegal activity.  At a point in the game, that character opted to have his memories of the illegal activity he'd engaged in erased so he could pass a mind scan to determine if he knew anything.  I successfully reached into the character's mind and firewalled the information from the character that was erased.  As play proceeded, the character started to get distrustful of the PC and NPC and I, as the player, didn't understand why.  Let me repeat that so you are certain that I mean exactly what I'm saying.  The character was feeling the emotion of paranoia and panic the player, observing the character's mind, felt confusion.  

Out of the game, I psychoanalyzed my character and realized that the problem was that without the bonding experiences that had been erased, my character couldn't understand the familiar comradery between the NPC and PC nor why they were trying to push my character into doing certain things together, so he interpreted it as them doing something behind his back and, combined with jealousy, he became paranoid and panicked.  This was not something I decided.  It wasn't something I even understood until I analyzed it.  It was the way the character reacted to the situation and those were the emotions that the character felt.

Yes, I am intentionally talking about the character as a distinct and very real person independent of the player.  I experience it that way and am intentionally talking about it that way.

Thinking in character is like running a virtual machine consciousness inside of my brain that has it's own distinct perspective, thoughts, and emotions from me as the player.  Much as a virtual machine has adapters to talk to the outside world through the interfaces of the machine it's running on, the character experiences their world through the player translating the table talk, rules, dice rolls, and conversation into things that the character experiences as if they were experiencing it directly.  Like a virtual machine, the character shares my brain with me as the player, and the more mental attention I put on being the player, the less attention is available to run the virtual personality.  

So, when I say that my character feels emotions, I mean the character, not me.  It's distinct.  If you are appealing to me as the player with a technique, you are aiming at the wrong target and by making me engage the situation as a player, you are drawing away the mental attention I need to maintain the character's mind, and I'm frankly not interested in it.  If I wanted to experience emotions from a detached perspective like that, I'd read a book or watch a movie.

Quote from: Omnifray;418803Now you might be an ultra-purist and disagree with me on this, but I would encourage you to be a bit more open-minded about it. People can play for the sake of mystery, terror etc. and as long as they get that sense of mystery, terror etc., does it matter if it comes directly from the character or not? No doubt it is heightened by their sense of ownership of the character, but it does not have to be a feeling that the character would necessarily share.

This has nothing to do with being "open-minded".  I'm not trying to tell you how to play.  I wish other people would stop telling me how to play, what I like, and what I'm really doing, as if they know what's going on in my head better than I do.  Yes, it matters a great deal where the emotions come from.  It has nothing to do with "ownership" or "sharing".  What I experience vicariously through identification or imagination is nothing like what I experience thinking in character as the character.  I can tap into what the character is directly experiencing as if they (and I) were actually there.

Now I'm going to ask you to be open-minded and not tell me that I'm talking nonsense or I don't understand what I'm doing.  I know exactly what I'm doing, and have talked to plenty of other people who do the same thing.  For example, I posted this quote from an old rec.games.frp.advocacy post from Mary Kuhner in one of the other threads:

Quote from: Mary KuhnerWhen I'm playing I'm not generally aware of the body posture/voice mannerisms/adrenaline reaction stuff; I'm not a good actor and I have a terrible time doing this on purpose. I know I do it because I've tried watching myself to see what "getting into character" means. I got curious when my husband walked into a room once, looked at me, and before I said a word said "Hi, Ratty." How did he know? Ratty is a street kid, doesn't care about dirt, and is timid; the combination means that he's generally touching things with his whole body in a way I wouldn't normally do. When my husband saw me I was wound around a grimy stairway railing, trying to think what Ratty was going to do in that night's game...

This was an example of the character occupying so much of her mind that it bled through into her physical behavior and mannerisms.  The character was thinking things, feeling things, and deciding to do things distinctly and independently of the player.  That's not the same thing as saying "My character does X" or "My character feels Y" nor is it the same thing as "immersion" in the sense of identifying with a character or world.

Quote from: Omnifray;418803Just because the player can decide that there is a hitman hiding in the closet, it does not follow that the character knows that there is a hitman hiding in the closet.

That's not the point of the scene.  The point of the scene is that after coming home and being surprised by a ninja in the closet time and time again, the smart thing for a character to do would be to assume there is a ninja in the closet.  When an author does things for story-based reasons, they often create unrealistic patterns that are obvious enough for the audience to notice them.  For example, the red shirt technique in Star Trek.  But if the characters in the story recognized the story conventions that affected them, it would change their behavior in unrealistic ways and raise uncomfortable questions about how the universe they inhabit works.  But when thinking in character, the character does notice these techniques and it has disastrous consequences for the game.  In practice, characters notice that they can't die, that their plans always fail, that even though they are supposed to be the greatest swordsman in the land they always just barely win fights.  And it can drive them to the sort of behavior exhibited by Truman in The Truman Show, when he realizes that his world exists specifically to respond and react to him.

Quote from: Omnifray;418803Obviously the issue is not simply whether something is possible, but also whether it is substantially easier or harder. But I think your experience here is very subjective. Sometimes excessive out-of-character information will make it harder for me to immerse myself in a character, but often it won't. We're burdened with huge amounts of out-of-character knowledge all the time in any game system, even if it's just knowing that X is a PC and therefore of central importance to the game, Y is an NPC likely to be of lesser importance and the game has lots of magic (which my character probably wouldn't understand yet). So please don't exaggerate the problems inherent in a small amount of extra in-character knowledge as an impediment to immersion as such. Of course it is an impediment to the sense of the unknown which is key to horror, fear, mystery etc. but that's a separate issue.

That it causes problems at all is a reason to want to minimize it and avoid it, not embrace it.

Quote from: Omnifray;418803This is just illogical nonsense. As I explained with my earlier example, it DOES NOT MATTER A JOT HOW TERRIFIED OR MYSTIFIED OR TRIUMPHANT YOUR CHARACTER IS IF YOU THE PLAYER HAVE NO SENSE OF TERROR OR MYSTERY OR TRIUMPH for instance because you have no sense of ownership of the character and no sense of suspension of disbelief or immersion. And it's FINE if you want to convince yourself that your own sense of terror, mystery or triumph is irrelevant unless shared by the character, and plainly generally you won't experience those things very often during the game unless your character would. But there CAN be times when your out of character knowledge means that you experience terror, mystery or triumph even when your character wouldn't. Personally, I'm happy to enjoy that when it happens. If you're not, that's your problem.

I am not sharing the emotions with my character.  The character is sharing their emotions with me.  The problem, again, is that you assume that everything derives from the player and player's perspective directly and that the character has no independent perspective or emotions.  When a player is thinking in character, that is not true.  I don't want to experience emotions through some sort of vicarious identification with the character or situation.  I want to experience the character experiencing emotions directly.  If I wanted to vicariously experience emotions through identification with a character, I'd read a book or watch a movie.

Quote from: Omnifray;418803But those propositions can be summarised as follows. It doesn't matter what the character feels unless that feeling is shared by the player. If the feeling is felt by the player, it doesn't necessarily matter to most people that that may be a feeling that the character cannot strictly logically share. Therefore you are utterly wrong and it IS the player's experience of the game which is paramount. Believe me I have analysed this plenty, and it is NOT a mere assumption.

You ask me to be "open-minded" and then insist that I'm wrong.  It's surprising how often being "open-minded" is a one-way street that really means "shut up, stop complaining, and agree with me already".  And if you want to appeal to authority, I have a BA in English, have read dozens of books on writing fiction, and have also analyzed this plenty.  Feel free to put my name into Google Groups for the group rec.games.frp.advocacy or do searched of my name on RPGnet, here, or even the Forge.  What you are assuming is not why I play.  Maybe it's why you play but it's not why I play.

A lesson that I learned years ago, in a 600+ message thread on rec.games.frp.advocacy, is that sometimes you just have to accept that someone else is doing what they say they are doing even if you think it's impossible or can't imagine how it could be true.  I know that the idea of having a distinct character personality running around in my head making decisions and feeling emotions sounds quite nuts to a lot of people.  I've even described is a controlled multiple personality disorder.  But enough other people share the same experience, limitations, and so on that I know I'm not simply imagining it.

Quote from: Omnifray;418803You may not want that control, but can you rationalise why?

I want the game world to react to my character the way the real world reacts to me with the same basic interface.  I want the experience of thinking in character to be like my experience interacting with the real world.  I'm not asked to decide those things in the real world and have no interest being asked to decide those things in the game world.  If I wanted to decide what happens, I'd be writing fiction and the reason I don't write fiction, despite having a background that should be ideal for writing fiction, is that I really have little interest in making stories happen and deciding how things turn out.  There is actually research that shows that when people don't have an unconscious preference for certain choices that it's nearly impossible for them to make a choice.  When I GM, which I enjoy far less than playing, I roll dice quite a bit to help me decide what happens because I really have no preference for the game going in one particular direction over another most of the time.  And when I'm a player, I similarly don't care in the sense required to make a choice whether my character should succeed or fail at a task.  I want whatever would happen if the game world were a real place to happen.  And in that sense, "simulation" is exactly what I'm looking for.

Quote from: John Morrow;418843In your reply, you assure me that you know what "immersion" is (in the sense that I'm using it -- "thinking in character") yet you call a description of it "illogical nonsense" and make comments that show that you don't really get it, probably because you don't experience it.

Let's have a look again at the quote of yours which I described as illogical nonsense.

QuoteThe overall problem with your analysis is that you keep assuming that the player experience is primary. It's not. When a player thinks in character, the primary experience is the experience of the game world as the character. I don't care if I'm challenged, surprised, horrified, or whatever as player. I care if I experience that in character. And, no, it's not the same thing.

Now I accept at face-value your description of a virtual machine running in your head which enables you to think as your character thinks and feel as he feels. I have a friend who I LARP with regularly who recently described to me how when her character becomes agitated, she herself becomes so agitated that she often has to break character and crack a joke out-of-character to lighten the mood or she can't cope with it - she described it as excessive immersion. Sounds very similar to your experience if a little more out of control.

Plenty of the time, especially in boffer LARPs and to a lesser extent in tabletop, I myself directly think as my character thinks and feel what he would feel. Obviously I can distinguish fiction from reality, and most of the time I guess I experience those emotions slightly less strongly than I would if it were literal real life. But I certainly get what you're talking about.

But the passage of yours which I criticised is still illogical nonsense. Because that virtual machine which you refer to inside your head is still a part of the real world, a part of you. Now it may feel totally distinct to you, like a separate person. I accept that and it doesn't contradict what I said at all. The point is that what gives you enjoyment is the way things are happening in YOUR head, OK, compartmentalised into a special virtual machine which only exists for your character, but the physical BRAIN where it is actually happening is YOURS. And the person whose enjoyment of the game keeps you coming back to the game time and time again is YOU, so it's YOUR experience of these emotions which matters, whether they originate in your own normal thoughts, in a virtual machine running in your head simulating your character or in Timbuktoo. That's all I meant.

There really is no need for you to go assuming that I am somehow denying your experience of immersion or incapable of understanding it. What I was arguing with was how you sought to characterise it and analyse it, not your fundamental experience of it. The actual character, as you well know, is fictional. He exists in the fictional game-world which is shared by you, the GM and the other players. There may be a real part of your brain which is devoted only to him and where in a sense he has a parallel "existence" as a "real" part of you, but scientifically speaking and as a matter of common sense, that's something which is going on in YOUR brain.

You do not even have the complete and final say over what the actual character in the fictional shared game-world (as opposed to the parallel version of the character in your virtual machine in your head) thinks or believes. Let's suppose the GM tells you you are magically controlled to fear the pure dark. You, unlike everyone else at the table, somehow mishear that as simply a magical fear of the dark. Your virtual machine starts running a certain way and you find your character fears shadows. But when you give expression to that during play, the GM (who is a bit of a jerk) pedantically corrects you. It's not the shadows you fear, but only total darkness. Now, maybe a cool GM would let you run with your fear of shadows. I probably would, unless I were feeling hung up on game balance or something. Maybe letting you run with your fear of shadows from your virtual machine in your head would be better GMing. But in trad RPGs, it's the GM who has final say over that. So the virtual machine in your head could be WRONG, in the sense that the parallel version of the character who exists in that virtual machine is not experiencing what the actual character is said to be experiencing in the fictional shared game world. (This does make sense, if you read it carefully. I appreciate what I'm saying is a bit convoluted. But it makes very clear sense.)

What your character technically was feeling at a particular time (a fear of the pure dark alone) didn't affect how you felt. Rather, what the virtual machine inside your head represented the character as feeling at the particular time (a fear of the shadows) - that affected how you felt. To you, that WAS what the character felt, but to the GM, to everyone else present, the character felt a fear of the dark. So, analytically speaking, the true CHARACTER felt a fear of the pure dark. YOU felt the character feeling a fear of the shadows. The parallel version of the character in your head may have felt a fear of the shadows. But the one in the shared fictional game-world did not.

What matters for YOUR enjoyment of the game, of course, is what YOU feel the character feeling, or in other words, what's going on inside YOUR head, be it in a virtual machine or not. In the example I've given the GM stomps over your immersion by correcting it, which to you I suspect comes across as a retroactive change and ruins your immersion. But even so, for the rest of the group at the table, the GM is the one with the final authority, and what he says your character felt is what your character in fact felt.

QuoteI do not feel terror directly.  

The virtual machine in your head creates a feeling of terror which you attribute to your character, but it is still YOUR brain which creates it and YOU experience it. Call it indirectly if you will. It is still YOUR feeling of terror which matters, even if you can compartmentalise that part of your brain.

QuoteI don't decide that my character is terrified.  

Generally speaking, I agree. But what if an enemy casts a fear spell upon you? Then you have to imagine that state of fear and cause your character to feel it. I have done this myself, for instance recently playing a Cthulhu LARP. The fear starts off as something I consciously imagine, then, to a certain extent, takes on a life of its own. It becomes the character's emotion which he then shares with me. But it is the emotional experience of (perhaps echoed) terror in my own head which enhances my enjoyment of the game.

QuoteYears ago, I played a character

Quite probably you regularly experience immersion more intensely than I generally do. But I DO get where you're coming from and I DO experience the same general kind of immersion even if usually more lightly. I'm not dictating to you how you may or may not experience immersion. What you're describing is a very intense experience and that's great, as long as you're mentally stable and healthy and can tell reality from fiction. But I maintain, even if you had a whole separate BRAIN which ONLY functioned as a proxy brain for your character, it would still be YOUR feeling of terror or mystery which motivates YOU to play the game.

Let's do a thought experiment. Put science to one side and imagine for a moment that your character is ENTIRELY PHYSICALLY real. He exists in a separate physical world which is twinned to ours by a spiritual link. (As an aside, that is in fact alluded to in my own forthcoming RPG as a possible basis for one of the main faiths of the game-world.) And imagine that by some eldritch link between his brain and yours, you DIRECTLY experience the feelings that he ACTUALLY (not fictionally) experiences, just as he does.

For the purposes of the roleplaying game in OUR REAL WORLD, it is still YOUR experience of horror, mystery, etc. which matters, not his. Because it is YOUR experience (even if borrowed from him) which motivates you to play the game and which helps you to enjoy it. THE CHARACTER's emotions are of only EXTRINSIC importance to you. They only matter to YOU because YOU feel them. Unless I suppose you really care about your character's fate, in which case you would want him to be happy even when you're NOT playing him... but now we really are venturing into the realms of fantasy.

Now, having said all that, if you easily experience immersion to this rather special level of intensity even in a tabletop game, but not as an outside observer of a piece of fiction, I get why you would not be satisfied with a game which causes you to feel mystery, suspense or horror as an outside observer of the game-world rather than as something you share with a character who has a virtual machine running inside your brain to intensify how you experience his emotions. Emotions you share with him are more intense than emotions you feel as an outside observer of a fictional world.

But I think you are, if not unique, at least in a very small minority in that regard. Me, I experience immersion quite easily, especially in LARP. But I do not constantly analyse how I am feeling. I might be feeling fearful, anxious, mystified and so forth, but I may not have articulated to myself exactly what mix of emotions I am feeling. And far less will I necessarily have articulated to myself why I am feeling exactly that mix of emotions and whether they are shared with my character or not, or originate with him or not. I can analyse these things if I spend time doing so. Generally I would say, in a boffer LARP at least, and to a lesser extent in other RPGs, I do experience the emotions my character would experience, for the same reasons that he does, essentially because those are the emotions he would experience and because I am consciously or subconsciously thinking his thoughts for him, more or less the same way you are with your virtual machine. Perhaps I experience these emotions less intensely than you do - but that's probably only generally, and not always, the case. Sometimes I might realise on a careful analysis that the emotions I am experiencing as a reaction to the game are influenced by out of character knowledge or anticipation which my character would not realistically share. When that is the case, it is not puristically immersive, but I don't think it's any less enjoyable, legitimate or valid for it. And it very much DEPENDS on immersion and the suspension of disbelief because that's what makes the character and game-world REAL for me and therefore capable of producing those emotions.

For me, I can achieve intense emotional engagement with a film in the same way. Believe me, it's an intense enough experience for me. I don't feel I'm missing out on anything here.

But as far as your own case is concerned, will it really get in the way of your immersion if the way the game-world is described is such that if you were observing as an outsider you would feel what you describe as vicarious emotions, which are not paralleled by your character's emotions?

For instance, you play Call of Cthulhu. Your character has no knowledge of the occult. The ref alludes to the Necronomicon and Cthulhu using subtly menacing language. Your character probably wouldn't be worried by that as he is ignorant of the awful truth. You on the other hand might find there is a gradual build-up of suspense and horror given your knowledge of Cthulhu mythos. Does this interfere with your immersion? I don't think it interferes with mine, but I could be wrong I suppose.

QuoteThat's not the point of the scene.

I don't think that I was saying that that was the point of the scene. As you explain, the scene you linked to on YouTube is an illustration of totally unrealistic actions and dialogue breaking the viewer's immersion, with a quality of farce or parody. I think that was obvious. Because it is unrealistic that there is always a villain hiding in the closet. Just as it is unrealistic that the best swordsman in the land always just barely wins fights. And it is even more unrealistic to imagine a character who knows these tropes and can predict how his world will go which implies he essentially knows he is fictional. And drawing blatant attention to that breaks your suspension of disbelief and therefore your immersion.

But I was making the different point that it is NOT a lack of realism inherent in player narrative power which makes it break immersion. Because player narrative power is no more unrealistic than GM narrative power. Rather it is the very fact of having to take a global standpoint in order to USE player narrative power which takes you the player out of your character's point of view and therefore breaks immersion. Honestly, I am right about this.

QuoteThat it causes problems at all is a reason to want to minimize it and avoid it, not embrace it.

Not necessarily, if at the same time as causing problems, it also creates opportunities and advantages. They have to be weighed in the balance. This may not work for you, but it certainly works for me.

QuoteI am not sharing the emotions with my character.  The character is sharing their emotions with me.  

First off, I think when I talk of "emotions you share with your character", I simply mean "emotions which you have in common with your character". It is not a comment on their provenance, but only on their commonality between you and your character. Secondly, if by saying that your character shares his emotions with you you mean that the virtual machine in your head running a simulation of your character shares emotions with the rest of your head which runs your actual main personality, of course I agree. But I think it's misleading to say that that means that your character is sharing emotions with you. Really what is happening is one part of your brain is sharing emotions with another part. You may think of that part of your brain as "your character", but really that part of your brain is a part of YOU and at best a parallel version of the character. The GM and other players may not be aware of the apparent separate existence of this brain within a brain. To them, the actual character is the one described at the table, not the one in your head. The one in your head comes from (a compartmentalised bit of) YOUR brain and has no direct role in the game except via the filter of YOU and the rest of YOUR brain.

QuoteThe problem, again, is that you assume that everything derives from the player and player's perspective directly and that the character has no independent perspective or emotions.  When a player is thinking in character, that is not true.  

Even with the virtual machine in your head which you describe, the actual CHARACTER himself (who exists as a fictional construct shared by the GM and players in the fictional game-world described at the table) has no ACTUAL OBJECTIVE independent perspectives or emotions. The most you can say is that a PARALLEL version of him existing in a compartmentalised part of YOUR BRAIN has independent perspectives or emotions which you are aware of. But what that really means is that YOUR BRAIN creates independent perspectives and emotions for him. Even if that is a compartmentalised part of your brain which appears to work very differently to the rest of your brain, it is still fundamentally a part of YOUR BRAIN. But I was not talking about the precise way your brain simulates your character.

It is misconceived of you to assume from the way I analyse and characterise the character's emotions versus yours that I do not understand or experience what it means to think in character.

Look, when I play boffer LARPs, I largely forget about my own ordinary sorts of emotion. I mainly experience, at least when the game is going well, simply what my character would be experiencing. That isn't totally a constant situation. My own ordinary thoughts and concerns and emotions do at least sometimes intrude. Often the intrusion is necessary/welcome. But when my own ordinary thoughts and feelings are essentially put to one side and I am feeling what my character would feel because he would feel it, that is me thinking in character, that is immersion and there's no reason at all for you to assume that I don't get that. I might switch rapidly back and forth between immersive thinking and ordinary thinking, but I definitely do experience in-character thinking and it's really not up to you to tell me that I don't, just because I'm not claiming to be consciously aware of some "virtual machine" running in my head.

QuoteI want the experience of thinking in character to be like my experience interacting with the real world.  ...  I want whatever would happen if the game world were a real place to happen.  And in that sense, "simulation" is exactly what I'm looking for.

Fair enough. But how far do you take that? For instance:- suppose I GM a game for you and it is TOTALLY immersive. But all you do in character is sit in a garden looking at different trees and flowers and insects, moving around and interacting with them in a very peaceful way. That's all that ever happens. There are no challenges for you to face. There are no poignant themes exposed - even the insects are remarkably contented. There is no mystery, horror, suspense, tragedy. There is only the garden. How long would you keep coming back to that game for?

If the answer is not very long, then I think you are wanting the ref to drive the game somewhere interesting. Maybe you don't want to shoulder that burden yourself because doing so is counter-immersive. Fine. But you are still interested in more than the experience of immersion itself.

If on the other hand you would keep playing that game over and over then fair enough. I think people with an interest in recreational hypnosis might enjoy a similar kind of thing. But I also think that that is truly a minority interest. And also one which is relatively easy to please. No reason why you shouldn't enjoy games which give you fate points and the power to ask for plot events if you want to. You can just put the fate points to one side, or ask the ref to control them for you. In fact, in the game I'm writing, it's specifically an option written into the game to let the ref use your fate points. Mostly, that would be with the player's permission at the time, but you can just give the ref general permission. He can use fate points on your behalf and you don't even need to think about it. You wouldn't have a problem with that, would you?

For the record, I'm now convinced that you understand the type of play that I'm talking about so I'm going to take that as a given.

Quote from: Omnifray;418876But the passage of yours which I criticised is still illogical nonsense. Because that virtual machine which you refer to inside your head is still a part of the real world, a part of you. Now it may feel totally distinct to you, like a separate person. I accept that and it doesn't contradict what I said at all. The point is that what gives you enjoyment is the way things are happening in YOUR head, OK, compartmentalised into a special virtual machine which only exists for your character, but the physical BRAIN where it is actually happening is YOURS. And the person whose enjoyment of the game keeps you coming back to the game time and time again is YOU, so it's YOUR experience of these emotions which matters, whether they originate in your own normal thoughts, in a virtual machine running in your head simulating your character or in Timbuktoo. That's all I meant.

The point is that the physical reality of the situation is irrelevant to what I experience.  How I perceive the interaction between the components is what's relevant.  And the reason why I'm insisting on framing in in terms of the character being important and the player being irrelevant is to make it absolutely clear that I want to interact with the game through my character and do not what mechanics that circumvent the character and appeal to the player directly.  What I want to feel and experience is through the eyes of my character, not as a player directly.

Quote from: Omnifray;418876There really is no need for you to go assuming that I am somehow denying your experience of immersion or incapable of understanding it.

Well, given how often that happens and when a person doesn't seem to be getting some key points, I assume a person doesn't get it until they give me reason to believe that they do.  You've done that now.

Quote from: Omnifray;418876What I was arguing with was how you sought to characterise it and analyse it, not your fundamental experience of it. The actual character, as you well know, is fictional. He exists in the fictional game-world which is shared by you, the GM and the other players. There may be a real part of your brain which is devoted only to him and where in a sense he has a parallel "existence" as a "real" part of you, but scientifically speaking and as a matter of common sense, that's something which is going on in YOUR brain.

People with multiple personality disorders can have many distinct personalities inhabiting the same brain and philosophically speaking, "cognito ergo sum".  The character thinks, therefore it is, even if it's not a distinct or complete separate individual.  Sure, the character and the world isn't real, but the experience I have of the character and their setting is very real and the experience matters more to play and my enjoyment of the game than the reality, so what's the point of dwelling on the reality?

Quote from: Omnifray;418876So the virtual machine in your head could be WRONG, in the sense that the parallel version of the character who exists in that virtual machine is not experiencing what the actual character is said to be experiencing in the fictional shared game world. (This does make sense, if you read it carefully. I appreciate what I'm saying is a bit convoluted. But it makes very clear sense.)

This actually happens from time to time.  It's a bug, not a feature and I deal with it when it happens.

Quote from: Omnifray;418876What your character technically was feeling at a particular time (a fear of the pure dark alone) didn't affect how you felt. Rather, what the virtual machine inside your head represented the character as feeling at the particular time (a fear of the shadows) - that affected how you felt. To you, that WAS what the character felt, but to the GM, to everyone else present, the character felt a fear of the dark. So, analytically speaking, the true CHARACTER felt a fear of the pure dark. YOU felt the character feeling a fear of the shadows. The parallel version of the character in your head may have felt a fear of the shadows. But the one in the shared fictional game-world did not.

The character that I care about is the one in my head, not the one shared with everyone else at the table.  It's not uncommon for their to be variations in how the players perceive what's happening in the game and this is, again, a bug not a feature.  But it doesn't change the focus of attention for anyone involved.

Quote from: Omnifray;418876What matters for YOUR enjoyment of the game, of course, is what YOU feel the character feeling, or in other words, what's going on inside YOUR head, be it in a virtual machine or not. In the example I've given the GM stomps over your immersion by correcting it, which to you I suspect comes across as a retroactive change and ruins your immersion. But even so, for the rest of the group at the table, the GM is the one with the final authority, and what he says your character felt is what your character in fact felt.

It's possible to step out of immersion, reach into the virtual machine, retroactively change what the character knows and thinks, and start it back up again.  Sometimes it's necessary but it's not desirable.  But that I care about the character being right with the setting is why I'll make such corrections.  I don't really see how this changes my point.

Yes, as a player I enjoy the game by sharing things with the virtual machine character.  My point is that I don't want rules and techniques that appeal to me as the player.  The distinction I made about the character sharing emotions with the player rather than the player sharing emotions with the character is important and relevant.  I want the emotional impact I get from the game to derive the the experiences of the character, not the player.  I want to see the game through the eyes of my character, not directly.  That's not entirely possible because the medium requires that I manage the game as a player for my character, but that's the ideal.

Quote from: Omnifray;418876The virtual machine in your head creates a feeling of terror which you attribute to your character, but it is still YOUR brain which creates it and YOU experience it. Call it indirectly if you will. It is still YOUR feeling of terror which matters, even if you can compartmentalise that part of your brain.

Again, this is an example of trying to erase a distinction that is very important to how I experience the game.  Why is it so important that you squash that distinction and insist it doesn't exist rather accept that it exists?  Why are you trying to insist that there are no trees, only a forest?  This is exactly what annoys people and makes them so hostile.

Quote from: Omnifray;418876Quite probably you regularly experience immersion more intensely than I generally do. But I DO get where you're coming from and I DO experience the same general kind of immersion even if usually more lightly. I'm not dictating to you how you may or may not experience immersion. What you're describing is a very intense experience and that's great, as long as you're mentally stable and healthy and can tell reality from fiction. But I maintain, even if you had a whole separate BRAIN which ONLY functioned as a proxy brain for your character, it would still be YOUR feeling of terror or mystery which motivates YOU to play the game.

It's more complicated than that.  Really.  As a player, I experience different emotions than my character does.  I've had a character descend into a self-destructive addiction that killed them (handled entirely through role-playing, not mechanics) and the emotions the character had and the emotions I had watching the character go through that were distinctly different and less intense.  What motivates me to play is what the character experiences, not what I experience as the player.  If you want to enhance the quality of play for me, support the character in the virtual machine and don't try to appeal directly to the character.  That should make sense from a LARP perspective, too.

Quote from: Omnifray;418876For the purposes of the roleplaying game in OUR REAL WORLD, it is still YOUR experience of horror, mystery, etc. which matters, not his. Because it is YOUR experience (even if borrowed from him) which motivates you to play the game and which helps you to enjoy it. THE CHARACTER's emotions are of only EXTRINSIC importance to you. They only matter to YOU because YOU feel them. Unless I suppose you really care about your character's fate, in which case you would want him to be happy even when you're NOT playing him... but now we really are venturing into the realms of fantasy.

As you've pointed out, the character exists entirely in my own brain and, as such, I full access to its conscious thoughts and emotions so the experience is both intrinsic and extrinsic.  By the key point is that what I want to get out of playing come from and through the character and trying to bypass that and appeal to me directly as the player is the wrong way to enhance my enjoyment of the game.  My focus is on the character, not the player, even if the player gets enjoyment through the character.  

Quote from: Omnifray;418876But I think you are, if not unique, at least in a very small minority in that regard.

I'm not unique and there are people who can do it better than me.  Mary Kuhner, who I've quoted, can do multiple characters in the same game, for example.  And there are people who convincingly say that they can readily think in character and switch into other contexts effortlessly.

Quote from: Omnifray;418876Sometimes I might realise on a careful analysis that the emotions I am experiencing as a reaction to the game are influenced by out of character knowledge or anticipation which my character would not realistically share. When that is the case, it is not puristically immersive, but I don't think it's any less enjoyable, legitimate or valid for it.

For me, I find that detrimental to the overall experience.  I want to avoid that, hence my avoidance of OOC knowledge when I can.

Quote from: Omnifray;418876For me, I can achieve intense emotional engagement with a film in the same way. Believe me, it's an intense enough experience for me. I don't feel I'm missing out on anything here.

While I can get an intense experience from a movie, there is a distinct difference between identifying with a character and being a character, and that's one of the reasons why movie conventions and techniques aren't always good for role-playing games.  Watching a character get stalked in a movie can be an intense but enjoyable experience.  Experiencing the emotions of being stalked as the character is fairly unpleasant, and not something I'd want to seek out more of.

Quote from: Omnifray;418876But as far as your own case is concerned, will it really get in the way of your immersion if the way the game-world is described is such that if you were observing as an outsider you would feel what you describe as vicarious emotions, which are not paralleled by your character's emotions?

I generally don't have the processing power to devote full conscious thought to player and character at the same time, thus anything that draws in my attention as the player tends to happen to the detriment of character.  And my point is that I'm not really interested in enhancing that.  It's not why I'm playing.  That's the point I was trying to make.  It's a distraction more likely to hurt the experience than enhance it.  It's kinda like asking whether your Medieval LARP experience might be enhanced by boom boxes playing dramatic heavy metal music.  Maybe you'd find that appealing on some level if you like heavy metal music, but I would think it would detract from the experience that you are there to get.

Quote from: Omnifray;418876For instance, you play Call of Cthulhu. Your character has no knowledge of the occult. The ref alludes to the Necronomicon and Cthulhu using subtly menacing language. Your character probably wouldn't be worried by that as he is ignorant of the awful truth. You on the other hand might find there is a gradual build-up of suspense and horror given your knowledge of Cthulhu mythos. Does this interfere with your immersion? I don't think it interferes with mine, but I could be wrong I suppose.

In the most recent CoC game that I played in, my character was blissfully ignorant and a bit foolish and was among the first to die.  If I experience horror in the game, I want it to be through the character.  If I wanted to experience the sort of horror you are talking about, I'd go to a horror movie.  Seriously.  Not why I'm there.

Quote from: Omnifray;418876I don't think that I was saying that that was the point of the scene. As you explain, the scene you linked to on YouTube is an illustration of totally unrealistic actions and dialogue breaking the viewer's immersion, with a quality of farce or parody. I think that was obvious.

No, what I'm suggesting is to interpret the scenes in that movie and The Truman Show from the perspective of the characters.  Why does Slater shoot into the closet and assume a ninja is there?  Because there is always a ninja in there.  It makes sense for him to to that, even if it's absurd.  That's a side effect I see of GM techniques meant to produce drama at the expense of verisimilitude, especially when used with repetition so the pattern becomes visible to the characters as well as the players.

In other words, it's OK for the GM to hide a ninja in the closet once.  If there is a ninja hiding in the house ever time the PC comes home, the PCs will stop going home or will start shooting up their own house.  There are story-focused players who purposely want to emulate cheesy genre conventions like red shirts and so on and those things just kill verisimilitude for players who want the game world to seem real.

Quote from: Omnifray;418876But I was making the different point that it is NOT a lack of realism inherent in player narrative power which makes it break immersion. Because player narrative power is no more unrealistic than GM narrative power. Rather it is the very fact of having to take a global standpoint in order to USE player narrative power which takes you the player out of your character's point of view and therefore breaks immersion. Honestly, I am right about this.

Correct.  I was making a different point and I think we are talking past each other here at this point.

Quote from: Omnifray;418876Not necessarily, if at the same time as causing problems, it also creates opportunities and advantages. They have to be weighed in the balance. This may not work for you, but it certainly works for me.

In my experience, the benefits rarely justify the costs.  There are a few exceptions.  For example, I've learned to recognize when my character is about to drive a game to self-destruct (the reason why "I'm just doing what my character would do" has a bad reputation) and gently steer the character away from those decisions.  But I'd rather handle that myself.  As for guaranteeing the game will be more interesting than watching the paint dry, I think much of that can be handled by setting up the setting and characters so that won't happen.  There is some genuine good insight in some of the Forge narrativism commentary about how to set up a dramatic situation that could easily be taken as GM and player advise and used with a traditional RPG.

The key to tolerating other techniques is that I can't notice them in character.  In practice, that means that GMs can use dramatic techniques sparingly and I probably won't notice them.  For example, I probably won't notice script immunity once unless it's really absurd, but if it's used again and again, it will be noticed by the character.  But in many ways, I'd just prefer the GM let the scenario play out naturalistically.

Quote from: Omnifray;418876First off, I think when I talk of "emotions you share with your character", I simply mean "emotions which you have in common with your character". It is not a comment on their provenance, but only on their commonality between you and your character.

Often the emotions are different, thus I think the context and source matters a great deal.  Like I keep pointing out, you are trying to erase a distinction that I think is important.  

Quote from: Omnifray;418876Secondly, if by saying that your character shares his emotions with you you mean that the virtual machine in your head running a simulation of your character shares emotions with the rest of your head which runs your actual main personality, of course I agree.

Correct.

Quote from: Omnifray;418876But I think it's misleading to say that that means that your character is sharing emotions with you. Really what is happening is one part of your brain is sharing emotions with another part. You may think of that part of your brain as "your character", but really that part of your brain is a part of YOU and at best a parallel version of the character. The GM and other players may not be aware of the apparent separate existence of this brain within a brain. To them, the actual character is the one described at the table, not the one in your head. The one in your head comes from (a compartmentalised bit of) YOUR brain and has no direct role in the game except via the filter of YOU and the rest of YOUR brain.

I honestly don't care what really happens.  That's how I experience it, and describing it as all being my brain doesn't capture how I experience it.  Again, you are trying to erase a distinction that's very important in understanding how I experience playing a character by thinking in character.  As for the GM and other players, I honestly don't play to entertain them.  I play for what I experience in my own head.  That's why I think descriptions of how I play that assume I'm playing to entertain others or create something totally miss the boat.  And all I expect of the other players is that they support verisimilitude, which is why I have no problem with the passive players that drive those looking for entertainment nuts.  I'd rather play with a passive player than a player that breaks verisimilitude being dramatic.

Quote from: Omnifray;418876Fair enough. But how far do you take that? For instance:- suppose I GM a game for you and it is TOTALLY immersive. But all you do in character is sit in a garden looking at different trees and flowers and insects, moving around and interacting with them in a very peaceful way. That's all that ever happens. There are no challenges for you to face. There are no poignant themes exposed - even the insects are remarkably contented. There is no mystery, horror, suspense, tragedy. There is only the garden. How long would you keep coming back to that game for?

If all I do is create a character that sits in a garden looking at different trees and flowers and insects, moving around and interacting with them in a very peaceful way and I'm not happy with that, it's my fault for creating a character that's that boring.  That's why I don't create characters like that.  Fortunately, most of the people I role-play with create characters that don't have to be dragged kicking and screaming to adventure.  If the GM created a setting that consists of nothing but a peaceful garden and my character can't leave it, then it's either the GM's fault for creating such a boring setting or my fault for agreeing to play in it.

Nobody I know who plays by thinking in character has problems with purposely creating a dramatic set-up for the characters and an adventure-rich setting.  That's a given.  And if you want to restrict your techniques to the set-up, I'm fine with that.  I could probably have a lot of fun with the Dogs in the Vineyard setting and set-up as an adventure using traditional rules.  The problem is with play-time techniques.  

Quote from: Omnifray;418876If the answer is not very long, then I think you are wanting the ref to drive the game somewhere interesting. Maybe you don't want to shoulder that burden yourself because doing so is counter-immersive. Fine. But you are still interested in more than the experience of immersion itself.

Now you are shifting gears and describing two different things.  Your proposed boring situation demands both the player create a boring character and the GM create a boring setting.  If the player doesn't create a boring character and the GM doesn't restrict the setting to the boring garden, then the character isn't going to sit there gazing at his navel.  He's going to get up and find something interesting to do, and I don't need the GM or setting to keep driving things forward.  The characters will do that.  In fact, that's true of good fiction, too.  Characters should drive stories, not deus ex machina.

Now if your point is that I'm more interested in immersing in interesting characters doing interesting things than in boring characters doing boring things, there is some truth in that (though I've had a lot of fun with some characters I'm sure most people would find close to being as boring as your example).  But the GM forcing the game to be interesting can ruin it and I'd rather things play out naturalistically.  

In a D&D game I played in a while back, the GM set up an intricate setting with a backstory and disturbing events unfolding around the characters, who were hired as guards for the town.  Instead of aggressively investigating the countryside, the PCs settled into the town, pursued romances, got to know the town people, engaged in petty personal conflicts, performed practical jokes, with a very rare fight here and there, and so on and we had a blast for it, even though the planned adventure largely happened around the characters rather than because of them.  In fact, my own PC basically left the game before the last session because that's where the flow of events naturalistically took the character.

Quote from: Omnifray;418876No reason why you shouldn't enjoy games which give you fate points and the power to ask for plot events if you want to. You can just put the fate points to one side, or ask the ref to control them for you. In fact, in the game I'm writing, it's specifically an option written into the game to let the ref use your fate points. Mostly, that would be with the player's permission at the time, but you can just give the ref general permission. He can use fate points on your behalf and you don't even need to think about it. You wouldn't have a problem with that, would you?

I have much less of a problem with optional mechanics like Fate points than mandatory dramatic mechanics that I must use.  My group has used Fudge quite a bit.  We give one Fudge point per session and limit use to two per session.  In practice, nobody uses them even that often and, most of the time, people forget to use them.  In fact, the first Fudge game I played was at a convention with Ann Dupuis as the GM and the scenario she ran pretty much required Fudge points for the PCs to succeed.  We were all having so much fun in character speaking in silly French accents for our Musketeer PCs that everyone forgot to use them and the bad guy wiped the floor with the PCs.  And, sure, a GM could use Fate or Fudge points for my PC but what's the point in doing so?

As I said above, the general rule is that it's OK if I don't notice it in character.  The danger is that the GM can't always predict what I'll notice in character.  People find certain books and movies predictable because the author is following story conventions and the same thing can happen in games where the GM runs using story conventions.  But if they are subtle enough about it, I probably won't notice it in practice.  Unfortunately, most of the times I've seen story conventions written into the rules of the game, the results aren't very subtle.

Quote from: John Morrow;418919Again, this is an example of trying to erase a distinction that is very important to how I experience the game.  Why is it so important that you squash that distinction and insist it doesn't exist rather accept that it exists?  Why are you trying to insist that there are no trees, only a forest?  This is exactly what annoys people and makes them so hostile.

NO! I am NOT trying to ERASE your distinction!

What I've been talking about is - whose feelings/experiences actually determine YOUR enjoyment of play? Yours, or the character's?

I'm just quibbling with the LANGUAGE you use in saying that it's the character's feelings which are primary because taken very literally it is confusing and not strictly speaking accurate! You are saying that it is the character's feelings which matter. Taken literally, which seems to be more or less how you mean it, that suggests to the reader as a matter of ordinary language that the character is a real, separate individual and that the reason you play the game is simply so that he can experience things. And that is inaccurate. The reason you play the game is so that YOU can experience things, albeit in some sense through the medium of the character inasmuch as you have a compartmentalised virtual machine in your head running a simulation of the character.

But if you were cut off from that virtual machine and couldn't feel the things the character feels, you would have no interest in playing. Likewise if you experienced them in a greatly weakend form because of a weakening of the link between your virtual machine and the rest of your brain, your enjoyment would be impaired. So QED, it's NOT what the character feels which determines your enjoyment of play. It's what YOU feel which determines your enjoyment of play.

Where those feelings come from originally is a separate matter. Yes, it's very interesting that to you they seem to come from the character. But it's still YOUR enjoyment of those feelings which makes YOU come back to the table. EVen if they literally WERE the character's feelings as a literally separate individual, it's still YOUR experience of them which makes you enjoy play. And as a separate point technically speaking, even when the feelings SEEM to come from the character, they are in fact coming from somewhere INSIDE YOUR HEAD. So in no real, literal sense is it the character's feelings which determine your enjoyment of the game.

Obviously the way this virtual machine in your head runs is a distinct and important phenomenon for you. It is intimately connected with how you experience the game and with how you play. But it does not follow that it is the character's feelings which are primary to your enjoyment of the game.

Obviously you can say "the character's feelings are paramount" in a figurative sense. But it can only sensibly really be meant as a shorthand for "the way I experience the character's feelings is paramount". I think my example about how your play would be affected by the impairment of the link between the virtual machine in your head and the rest of your brain is pretty much proof positive of that. You might mean it in a more literal sense, but your analysis is just inaccurate.

QuoteBy the key point is that what I want to get out of playing come from and through the character and trying to bypass that and appeal to me directly as the player is the wrong way to enhance my enjoyment of the game.

You've made that point plenty. I think you're in a small minority. I think most players can enjoy the game both as an audience and as a participant at (more or less) the same time, by which I mean both from their in-character perspective and from an out-of-character perspective. I am NOT saying that they should be FREQUENTLY encouraged to think ACTIVELY in an out-of-character way. That to my mind detracts from BOTH kinds of immersion - it primarily weakens their immersion in the character's perspective as a participant, but as a result of weakening that kind of immersion it also secondarily weakens their immersion in the game-world globally as an audience. I do think, though, that for most players, an occasional element of that sort of thinking is not harmful, but can be beneficial. Obviously, that is subjective.

QuoteThere are story-focused players who purposely want to emulate cheesy genre conventions like red shirts and so on and those things just kill verisimilitude for players who want the game world to seem real.

And they call it cinematic play... such a positively loaded word!

QuoteThe key to tolerating other techniques is that I can't notice them in character.  In practice, that means that GMs can use dramatic techniques sparingly and I probably won't notice them.

Well, obviously! Although I would phrase it this way:- the key to tolerating techniques other than simply letting things happen as they naturally would is to do so subtly, so that they don't jar, and in particular so that the player isn't forced to think that the character would notice them. Which in your case means so that the virtual machine in your head doesn't throw up an anomaly.

QuoteI honestly don't care what really happens. ...
If the player doesn't create a boring character and the GM doesn't restrict the setting to the boring garden, then the character isn't going to sit there gazing at his navel.  He's going to get up and find something interesting to do, and I don't need the GM or setting to keep driving things forward.

If your character is realistic, even if he's a hero, he'd probably rather be at home with his wife and kids than off killing people if it doesn't need to be done. And he would spend a lot of time doing things like sit on the toilet having a shit. You don't very often feel the need to roleplay that, do you? In other words, someone (you or the GM or whoever) is (consciously or subconsciously) busy actively casting the spotlight only on the interesting bits of your characters' lives. That's a given. But it's also a technique of story.

Even things as trivial as the GM introducing an NPC to start a conversation instead of dwelling at very considerable length on the different types of ale available in the tavern, even things as trivial as the GM talking about the atmosphere in the tavern rather than the smell of shit in the latrine and dwelling at length on the difficulties of wiping your bottom with no toilet paper in a medieval world, these are instances of the GM, consciously or subconsciously, directing the process of play towards more interesting or palatable things.

It's not a question of simply watching events unfold naturally. It's just not accurate to try to make out that that is just a natural simulation of what would naturally happen. It's more than that. SOMEONE, whether they do it consciously or subconsciously, is ACTIVELY directing play to a more interesting outcome. It happens all the bloody time (I don't mean literally constantly - but the game won't go half an hour without it happening, I can almost guarantee).

QuoteBut the GM forcing the game to be interesting can ruin it and I'd rather things play out naturalistically.

Obviously if the GM uses techniques which come across as contrived, then that's just crass and terrible for immersion. But the key here is simply subtlety. When you handle this sort of thing with your subconscious impulses, it's often very subtle. But of course one person's subconscious impulses may be another person's contrived tropes.

QuoteAnd, sure, a GM could use Fate or Fudge points for my PC but what's the point in doing so?

Because if other players have Fate points and WANT to use them, then why should your character be disadvantaged and his role in the game curtailed because that is not your preferred playing style? In other words, the game is OPEN to you without REQUIRING you to use your Fate points, and game-balance is maintained. For me, that is important because everyone should have their fair share of the limelight, and because most players tend to prefer to feel that they are being treated fairly.

QuoteAs I said above, the general rule is that it's OK if I don't notice it in character.  The danger is that the GM can't always predict what I'll notice in character.

Fine.

The point is though that the GM is CONSTANTLY using basic techniques of story even if he does so subconsciously. To speak of the game as if it were a pure simulation is simply inaccurate and misleading. The game has basic elements of story technique, conscious or subconscious, whether you want them or not. So it's got to be a question of degree how much of that sort of technique you want.

Obviously in your case, not very much. In my case, slightly more, but let's not get carried away here. Most of the techniques which you find crass and contrived I probably also find crass and contrived. Most of the techniques which you find ruin your immersion I probably also find ruin my immersion. But I think there is room for SOME conscious use of techniques to inject dynamic direction into the game, CERTAINLY on the part of the GM, and to a FAR LESSER extent on the part of the players.

My own limit on this is that I think all player plot input should be GM-filtered, and that player plot-input should be the exception rather than the norm. But to me, in small amounts it's fine.

Now for you to say you don't share my preference is fine. But for you to claim that in your games there is simply NO use of story technique by ANYONE strikes me as simply unrealistic, almost to the point of an unwillingness to engage with reality. You're exaggerating the difference between our two positions to the point of absurdity.

I'd like to say, these discussions are, at least to my warped and twisted mind, very interesting. I like trying to understand what I enjoy most and what other people enjoy most about roleplaying games to see if it opens up avenues to raise my game.

What concerns me in this sort of discussion on this site is that when people characterise what we do when we're roleplaying as simply letting things happen naturalistically, they are playing up to the Forgie stereotype of immersive players as engaging in some kind of directionless simulation.

I get that people don't want Forgie terminology of narration and story to take hold as propaganda starting a slippery slope which leads to "Player Narrative Authority". Player Narrative Authority is not conducive to immersion. It's not what we want in immersive roleplaying games. I agree wholeheartedly.

But taking things to the extreme of denying that immersive roleplayers, especially the GM, consciously or subconsciously direct play towards more interesting aspects, using what are essentially no different to subtle techniques of story, seems to me to be just simply unrealistic. To deny that players generally can get any kind of enjoyment out of the experience of play which is not simply a matter of sharing [what would logically be] the character's feelings and immersing oneself in the character's perspective seems to me to be likewise unrealistic. We are simultaneously participant within the game and, to a generally far lesser degree, external audience of the game's events as they unfold. We are simultaneously immersive roleplayers and, to a generally far lesser degree, consciously or subconsciously, actively directing play in more interesting directions, using what can fairly be called techniques of story.

Sure, the focus is on immersion and participation, not on actively directed story and not on externally witnessed events. I think that focus is very important and is defining of our hobby.

But it's like Yin and Yang. You don't get one without some small element of the other.

To maintain the contrary is just as bad as the Forgite denial of the possibility of immersion. RE implies in one of his articles that there is no such thing as immersion. Some people on this site imply that immersive roleplaying games do not use story techniques and do not even incidentally create a story. These extreme positions are equally untenable.

Adopting an extreme position tends to make your argument unpersuasive.

Denying any possibility in the context of immersive RPGs of story techniques or of enjoyment of the game's events as an external audience just plays up to Forgie stereotypes of bland directionless simulation with no dynamism which isn't story-driven and is going nowhere. In a sense we're handing a victory to that kind of propaganda when we play up to that image, IMHO YMMV.

That's why I think it's so important to be really careful and accurate about these things. Immersive RPGs necessarily create [what at least closely resembles, and I think as a matter of ordinary language is] a story incidental to play. Not one with any artistic pretensions or literary merit! But it still ends up as a story after a fashion. Immersive RPGs necessarily use [whether consciously or even purely subconsciously, or a mix] techniques to drive the action forward and focus the participants' attention on the interesting aspects of the game's events, and those can legitimately be called techniques of story.

Sure, the focus is on immersion and not on story. But there's no need to adopt the extreme view that the one has no place at all in the other, or vice-versa.

OK, it's a convoluted rant, sorry.

Quote from: Bill White;418399Sigmund -- I have to duck out of this conversation for a while to finish something for work, but I want to apologize to you publicly for pushing your buttons. I was just playing, fucking around in what I thought was a good-natured way, but I see that you take issues of civility and community pretty seriously, so I'm sorry for jerking your chain. -- Bill White

I appreciate that. I don't agree with much of what you say, and don't share your preferences, but when you're not being offensive or dismissive you are much more interesting to engage in debate with.

OK, I spent some time replying to this one tonight.

Quote from: Omnifray;418986I'm just quibbling with the LANGUAGE you use in saying that it's the character's feelings which are primary because taken very literally it is confusing and not strictly speaking accurate! You are saying that it is the character's feelings which matter. Taken literally, which seems to be more or less how you mean it, that suggests to the reader as a matter of ordinary language that the character is a real, separate individual and that the reason you play the game is simply so that he can experience things. And that is inaccurate. The reason you play the game is so that YOU can experience things, albeit in some sense through the medium of the character inasmuch as you have a compartmentalised virtual machine in your head running a simulation of the character.

It's more accurate than you seem to be willing to accept.  When I can run a virtual personality in my head that has a subconscious and acts on that subconscious without me understanding why, I think that character is pretty "real", "separate", and "individual", even if you don't.  

No, I don't simply play so that they character can experience things but you are heading into the same tautological "No duh!" land that leads people to claim that there is no such thing as altruism because an altruistic person gets some enjoyment out of helping others at their own expense.  Of course people "get something" out of everything they do, but what do we gain by dwelling on that instead of going one level past that given to what the person gets out of it?  I play to experience things as the character.  I don't play to be appealed to directly as a player.  Why is that so difficult to accept?

Quote from: Omnifray;418986So QED, it's NOT what the character feels which determines your enjoyment of play. It's what YOU feel which determines your enjoyment of play.

And nobody can ever be altruistic because there is no such thing as a selfless act because a person wouldn't do something if they didn't get some positive return for doing it.  And down the post-modern rabbit hole we go.

Quote from: Omnifray;418986Obviously the way this virtual machine in your head runs is a distinct and important phenomenon for you. It is intimately connected with how you experience the game and with how you play. But it does not follow that it is the character's feelings which are primary to your enjoyment of the game.

YES IT DOES.  THE PRIMARY ENJOYMENT THAT I GET OUT OF THE GAME COMES FROM THE THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS OF MY CHARACTER.  

Saying, "No, it's really the enjoyment you get from observing those things," is something that only a person suffering from terminal post-modernism poisoning or academia-induced delusions would seriously say.  

If a person tells you that the primary enjoyment they get out of watching a NASCAR race is the sound of the cars, would you insist, "No, it's not the sound of the cars you enjoy but your enjoyment of the sound of the cars?"  If someone tells you that they like Jazz, would you tell them, "No, you don't really like Jazz but you like the enjoyment you get out of hearing Jazz?"  Seriously, this is nuts and the sort of thing that gives game theory discussions a bad name.  Would you start pontificating about how their enjoyment of a NASCAR race would be effected if the cars were orbiting Jupiter or their enjoyment of Jazz might change if they were underwater?  Why are you even going there except as an esoteric philosophical or semantic exercise that creates more confusion than clarity?

Quote from: Omnifray;418986Obviously you can say "the character's feelings are paramount" in a figurative sense. But it can only sensibly really be meant as a shorthand for "the way I experience the character's feelings is paramount".

NO, THEY ARE PARAMOUNT IN A LITERAL SENSE, BECAUSE MY ENJOYMENT IS CORRESPONDS DIRECTLY TO THE QUALITY OF THE CHARACTER'S THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS.   MY ENJOYMENT DEPENDS ON THE QUALITY OF THE CHARACTER'S FEELINGS AND THOUGHTS.  IN STANDARD ENGLISH THAT MEANS THAT THAT'S WHAT IS OF PARAMOUNT IMPORTANCE TO ME WHEN I PLAY AND IT'S WHAT I ENJOY ABOUT PLAYING.

As a result, if you try to appeal to me directly as the player, the quality of the character running in my head will suffer, and my enjoyment of the game will be reduced.  If you want to improve my enjoyment of the game, appeal to the character, not the player.  Why is that so difficult to accept?

Quote from: Omnifray;418986You've made that point plenty. I think you're in a small minority.

I don't care if I'm the only one.  I'm talking about what I enjoy and do.

Quote from: Omnifray;418986I do think, though, that for most players, an occasional element of that sort of thinking is not harmful, but can be beneficial. Obviously, that is subjective.

Just about anything done in moderation is fine because it won't even be consciously noticed.  The problem is that once the camel's nose gets into the tent, the whole camel soon follows.  If you want it to be used occasionally and sparingly, then it's important to spend as much time warning about he potential harm as dismissing it.  If you aren't wary of the camel coming in, it will.

Quote from: Omnifray;418986And they call it cinematic play... such a positively loaded word!

To me, cinematic play is with exaggerated physics.  That, however, is entirely tangental to this discussion.

Quote from: Omnifray;418986Well, obviously! Although I would phrase it this way:- the key to tolerating techniques other than simply letting things happen as they naturally would is to do so subtly, so that they don't jar, and in particular so that the player isn't forced to think that the character would notice them. Which in your case means so that the virtual machine in your head doesn't throw up an anomaly.

The problem is that things that are naturalistic in isolation can look artificial with repetition or in context.  If the most logical explanation my brain can come up with for why something happened in the game that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense is the deus ex machina of the GM, then that will collapse my suspension of disbelief and the virtual machine.  That's why I talk about verisimilitude rather than realism.  What feels real isn't necessarily what's real.  People have survived falls out of airplanes without a parachute and from 40+ story buildings but if my normal human character survived a 40 story fall in a game, it would be difficult to ignore the deus ex machina explanation and impossible if it happened more than once in a game.  Strictly unrealistic as a matter of physics?  No.  Unbelievable?  Yes.

Quote from: Omnifray;418986If your character is realistic, even if he's a hero, he'd probably rather be at home with his wife and kids than off killing people if it doesn't need to be done. And he would spend a lot of time doing things like sit on the toilet having a shit. You don't very often feel the need to roleplay that, do you? In other words, someone (you or the GM or whoever) is (consciously or subconsciously) busy actively casting the spotlight only on the interesting bits of your characters' lives. That's a given. But it's also a technique of story.

This is nonsense.  Plenty of people lead lives far more exciting than yours.  If that weren't the case, the world wouldn't have mercenaries, terrorists, revolutionaries, police officers, repo men, carnies, and so on.  Don't want a boring game, don't create a boring character that would rather be sitting home with the wife and kids.  All of that can be handled during setting and character creation.  If you use "story techniques" to create an interesting setting and interesting characters, you don't have to use "story techniques" during the game to make the game interesting.

I read several actual play write-ups for Forge games that people raved about and could never understand what they were seeing that was so special because they looked like normal games to me.  And the problem was that they were.  The dramatic and interesting things the Forge Narrativists were crafting special systems and standing on their heads to achieve was the sort of thing my group just does by creating interesting settings and characters and, for the most part, letting it roll.  If the players create interesting and skilled characters with goals, they'll even come up with their own adventures.

Does that mean that the GM and players don't focus on the interesting stuff rather than the characters going to the bathroom?  Of course not.  But if the player wants to slow down and smell the crap in the tavern's latrine, the GM shouldn't force the game on to what they think is more interesting. I've frequently said, when playing, that things should take as long as they have to take.  I honestly don't mind an entire game session that consists of the PC's sitting around a table deciding what to do next, a day of training, or a PC roaming the countryside looking for flowers for an NPC he wants to impress.  And a GM trying to speed up the game to "get to the killing" generally makes the game less enjoyable for me.  And whether I'm a minority in that preference or not is irrelevant to me.  It's my preference regardless of how many people share it.

Quote from: Omnifray;418986It's not a question of simply watching events unfold naturally. It's just not accurate to try to make out that that is just a natural simulation of what would naturally happen. It's more than that. SOMEONE, whether they do it consciously or subconsciously, is ACTIVELY directing play to a more interesting outcome. It happens all the bloody time (I don't mean literally constantly - but the game won't go half an hour without it happening, I can almost guarantee).

How often it happens is irrelevant to the way I'd like it to happen.  I prefer sessions to pay out naturalistically and I REALLY MEAN IT.  I don't mind if the entire session is spent on really mundane stuff.  I played in an entire D&D campaign with all sorts of conspiracies and mysteries and the four players and GM spent the vast majority of time on incredibly trivial and mundane stuff and we had a blast doing it.  We spend part of a space game that I ran with the players playing through an amusement park-like challenge and part of another game describing virtual reality simulations the PCs were engaged in.  Parties.  Courting.  Shopping.  Talking.  Yeah, all that boring stuff is what I like.  Yes, I play with other players who (as one puts it) want to "get to the killing" so I'm also willing to move things along to keep the camera moving, but that's a social concession as opposed to being a selfish jerk, not a move designed to enhance my enjoyment of the game.

Quote from: Omnifray;418986Obviously if the GM uses techniques which come across as contrived, then that's just crass and terrible for immersion. But the key here is simply subtlety. When you handle this sort of thing with your subconscious impulses, it's often very subtle. But of course one person's subconscious impulses may be another person's contrived tropes.

There are plenty of times when a GM thinks they are being subtle but they aren't.  Most role-players fancy themselves as being above average in terms of imagination and intelligence but I'm honestly not sure that's the case.

Quote from: Omnifray;418986Because if other players have Fate points and WANT to use them, then why should your character be disadvantaged and his role in the game curtailed because that is not your preferred playing style? In other words, the game is OPEN to you without REQUIRING you to use your Fate points, and game-balance is maintained. For me, that is important because everyone should have their fair share of the limelight, and because most players tend to prefer to feel that they are being treated fairly.

My question was why I'd want a GM to use Fate points on my behalf.

As for other players using them, the problem occurs when they use Fate points in ways that damage verisimilitude.  For example, three PCs using Fate points to survive a plunge from a 50 story building is going to strain my suspension of disbelief and will certainly break it if they do it more than once.  Often things like Fate points allow that sort of thing to happen.

As for "fair share of the limelight" and game balance, that's fine if you want it and your group enjoys it but it is not a universal preference.  

Quote from: Omnifray;418986The point is though that the GM is CONSTANTLY using basic techniques of story even if he does so subconsciously. To speak of the game as if it were a pure simulation is simply inaccurate and misleading. The game has basic elements of story technique, conscious or subconscious, whether you want them or not. So it's got to be a question of degree how much of that sort of technique you want.

There is a difference between using "story techniques" to set up a game or campaign and using them in play toward certain resolutions.  Just about everyone wants the former but the latter is more problematic.  And, yes, I've acknowledge that the degree and subtlety matter.  But I would rather a GM proceed with caution and concern that it will cause problems than the confident faith that it won't cause any problems.  

Quote from: Omnifray;418986My own limit on this is that I think all player plot input should be GM-filtered, and that player plot-input should be the exception rather than the norm. But to me, in small amounts it's fine.

When my group plays Fudge, we use Fudge points (you get one per session), limited to two uses per session.  Most players don't use them that often.  That's about right for me.  Enough to fix something that's going to break the game for a player but not so common as to make a mess of verisimilitude.

Quote from: Omnifray;418986Now for you to say you don't share my preference is fine. But for you to claim that in your games there is simply NO use of story technique by ANYONE strikes me as simply unrealistic, almost to the point of an unwillingness to engage with reality. You're exaggerating the difference between our two positions to the point of absurdity.

Again, you are playing the post-modernism game here by defining things a tautology that can't be denied for what use, exactly?  If I acknowledge that I can tolerate a little story-technique, they why not more?  Why not run a whole game with story techniques?  That I may fall short of being perfectly naturalistic does not change the fact that naturalistic is the ideal and general idea that I'm looking for.  Again and again, you are blowing minutia out of proportion to make a semantic or philosophical point that misses the point.

The reason I keep beating up on you over the post-modernism thing is that you can play this game with anything and the results are the same.  It's like a child that learns that they can keep asking "Why?" ad infinitum because no answer will ever really give a final reason for something.  It's a game that pretends to find enlightenment but actually defeats it.

Yes, there are times when naturalistic games produce unsatisfactory results.  The game might be slow, boring, or all the PCs might die.  It happens.  So to counter this, GMs and players often introduce story techniques to guarantee happy endings.  The point I'm trying to make is that there is value to naturalistic play (also to players looking to confront challenges) and harm caused by story techniques to certain styles of play and my own preference leans heavily toward the naturalistic.  Each GM and group needs to balance a variety of needs and perhaps even play styles but the main point I am trying to make is please don't assume that just because the GM glosses over bathroom breaks that the players are willing to swallow more intrusive story techniques, which is where insistence on accepting story techniques of any sort always seems to end up.