Quote from: David R;327362Makes sense. I'm sure there are dealbreakers though. I think there's a lot of changing mindsets and flexibility esp in groups who have gamed a long time.

Regards,
David R

There are structural reasons why metagame resources and mechanics are difficult to reconcile with immersion. The more transparent the mechanic in terms of interpreting between in-game action and real-world input-output about the action, the better it works with immersion (or at least, the less it interferes with it).

"I know it when I see it."

I know I've got it when my character is making different decisions than I would and it feels natural. The more often that happens, the "better" my immersion is. It's a state I can't reach before I've internalized mechanics... huh, just had a realization there which I won't bother this thread with. But yeah; if I don't know the mechanics like the back of my hand, it's harder for me.

Metagaming is sort of orthagonal. I think there are a lot of techniques you can lump into that category, to the detriment of discussion. E.g.: I can immerse in Feng Shui, even though there are Luck Points, because it becomes a matter of when I want the character to be lucky. My decisions about the flow of luck around the PC doesn't affect the PC's decisions.

The way metagaming can help me hit immersion: deliberately making metagame decisions which /don't/ benefit my PC reminds me of the differences between me and the PC.

Did anyone mention Bacon yet?

Quote from: Aos;327394Did anyone mention Bacon yet?

Bacon?  It's delicious and I had some for breakfast.

Quote from: Fiasco;327326Now all the good stuff I'm talking about doesn't tend to happen straight away.  Your character grows organically. I don't believe, however, you can use gaming tools to front load that growth so you can instatnly start with characters of substance.

My best IC experiences have also been in long form games.  However, I have read short stories that moved me to tears, so I'm not prepared to say that nobody can front load this stuff, just that it tends not to work for me.

Quote from: Jason Morningstar;327129Immersion is sort of a tar baby.  

Only in the sense that you guys try to make it that, because real Immersion doesn't fit with your ideas of what RPGs should be forcibly transformed into. You can't "address premise" or "tell a narrative story" if you actually give a fuck about what the character would want to do in an emulated world, what is best for him as a character, rather than "The Story" that you're trying to construct. So you want to discount Immersion as either something that doesn't exist, or that if it does is somehow harmful to either the game, the group, or one's mental health.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Levi Kornelsen;327311Sure.

If the experience of "those folks" matches mine when I play story-games (by which I mean Once Upon A Time and the like, but also a few RPGs-that-swing-both-ways, If you know what I mean), they're in a kind of author-type immersion.  So, engaged with the character and the whole cloud of fictional stuff around the character...

And feeling it as if it were a fiction that is in some ways telling itself.

Which is an analogue to feeling like the character is doing the thinking.

That's a very small difference.  But I'd say that it's critical.  Because the whole list of things that fuel those states of minds - or "flow states", if you like - aren't the same stuff.

Gamers are getting off on playing a character, and how that character ends up getting a life of his own in an imaginary world.

Storygames-Swine are getting off on "crafting a story", ie. how clever they imagine themselves to be.

That's the difference: One is about losing yourself, the other is about jerking off to the wonderfulness of your own alleged genius.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;327382Come on, you're smarter than that, to hinge a contested understanding on a semantic coincidence. Even if it has something to do with "flow" (and it might when it comes to "deep immersion"), it's "flow" within and dependent on a specific kind of experience, seeing things and making decisions as the character rather than for, with, or by means of the character.

"Flow" isn't semantically contested. "Immersion" is. I don't see anything you've said in this discussion that demonstrates that it isn't flow, and I think it's more than just a "semantic coincidence" that the two both involve the term "immersion". That it's "dependent on a specific kind of experience" is vacuous here, since all flow states are dependent on specific kinds of experiences. "Immersion" is just the kind of flow state that comes about when you're playing your character.

I think trying to narrow it down past that, to some highly specific and fiddly definition like "Immersion is playing your character but only through your character, not for your character" or some such, is an artificial constraint that fails to match up with our ordinary understanding of the word "immersion". It has all the problems of Forgist pseudo-jargon.

Quote from: RPGPundit;327422So you want to discount Immersion as either something that doesn't exist, or that if it does is somehow harmful to either the game, the group, or one's mental health.

RPGPundit

Statements like this make you look foolish.  

As far as immersion being a difficult subject to have a sensible conversation about, I'm not the first or only person to make that claim.  Your rhetoric sort of proves the point.

Here is what I find weird. The vast majority of games I've played in are almost entirely predicated on the basis that the players characters act as though they knew they were characters in a rolpleaying game.

It starts off that way, in the tavern...

"Hi guys, we've never met before but let's spend every waking moment for the next year together for the next year or so fighting side by side in paces people have no business going to! "

.. in our attitude towards death and mourning...

"Damn, the cleric got killed. Let's head back to the town and get a new cleric."

..and attitude towards money..

"Yay look at all the gold we made adventuring. I'll spend it all on better weapons and armour because I have absolutely no other needs, interests, desires or responsibilities in life!"

But that's cool because it's a game. We are here to have fun, not to bogged down in boring minutia. And if that you bite when presented a lame plot hook by the GM, even though deep inside you know it makes no sense at all, so be it. It all comes with the territory.

So here is what I don't get. Given all the above anti-iimersive baggage that is pretty much inherent in roleplaying games (at least the ones I've seen or the published scenarios I've read), how is it only time I see ..well read mostly.. people getting really fussy over immersion is when meta-gaming mechanics are mention? Then suddenly, everyone's a purist.

I think I need a new term for something else, something I'm running into more and more on there Internet and I'm getting really fucking tired of.  

I shall call it the "Emperor Strawman".  It's a different breed of strawman argument, with a different motivation.  The usual Strawman is one set up so the poster can knock it down and make themselves look smart, but the Emperor Strawman is one the poster sets up and ascribes to others, and then knocks down to try and make them look like hypocrites, without stopping to consider whether they actually hold the supposedly conflicting belief or not, or in some cases, whether the beliefs conflict at all.

That's a nice Emperor Strawman you've got right there, Soylent Green, seeing as it's founded on so many assumptions about the posters in this thread that you have been given no cause whatsoever to believe even exist.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;327437"Flow" isn't semantically contested.

I didn't say it was, although you might have inferred that from the scare quotes. I was really just using them because of the specialized meaning.

Quote"Immersion" is.

Duh.

QuoteI don't see anything you've said in this discussion that demonstrates that it isn't flow,

Except that everyone who talks about immersion as something they value, and which is often harmed by certain mechanics & techniques, sees it as distinct from flow.

Quoteand I think it's more than just a "semantic coincidence" that the two both involve the term "immersion".

It is, sorry.

QuoteThat it's "dependent on a specific kind of experience" is vacuous here, since all flow states are dependent on specific kinds of experiences. "Immersion" is just the kind of flow state that comes about when you're playing your character.

This is a fatuous argument particularly given that the people who really care, care about that particular state, not the superset described by "flow".

QuoteI think trying to narrow it down past that, to some highly specific and fiddly definition like "Immersion is playing your character but only through your character, not for your character" or some such, is an artificial constraint that fails to match up with our ordinary understanding of the word "immersion". It has all the problems of Forgist pseudo-jargon.

No, it's not an artificial constraint. You are the one engaging in Forgism, in precisely the way that Jim Henley has laid out. Whether that's sophistry or simply because you (and, to be generous) the Forgites simply have a tin ear for this particular mode of enjoyment, I can't say. It does seem though that practically every effort to pooh-pooh immersion is part of an effort to sell people a bill of goods and get them to disbelieve their own sensibilities.

Quote from: J Arcane;327444I think I need a new term for something else, something I'm running into more and more on there Internet and I'm getting really fucking tired of.  

I shall call it the "Emperor Strawman".  It's a different breed of strawman argument, with a different motivation.  The usual Strawman is one set up so the poster can knock it down and make themselves look smart, but the Emperor Strawman is one the poster sets up and ascribes to others, and then knocks down to try and make them look like hypocrites, without stopping to consider whether they actually hold the supposedly conflicting belief or not, or in some cases, whether the beliefs conflict at all.

That's a nice Emperor Strawman you've got right there, Soylent Green, seeing as it's founded on so many assumptions about the posters in this thread that you have been given no cause whatsoever to believe even exist.

I do apologise I meant no offence. My post was flippant and I exaggerated for effect. It seemed more fun that way.

I should have just said that I personally don't find meta-gaming mechanics damaging to my sense of immersion, especially when compared to number of conventions and mannerism I often encountered in roleplaying games over the years.

I guess one can never be careful enough when posting on a public forum.

Quote from: RPGPundit;327433Gamers are getting off on playing a character, and how that character ends up getting a life of his own in an imaginary world.

Storygames-Swine are getting off on "crafting a story", ie. how clever they imagine themselves to be.

I could argue with your attempt to load the conversation all day.  But hey.  As long as everyone gets off, I'm happy.

So, rather than that, talk to me more about how characters get their own life.  You've already said a few interesting things, basically stating that deep environment creates character depth.

How does that happen in play?  I've got this emulative environment, it makes sense and has all sorts of stuff going on.  We drop in the characters, and they get depth...   By accretion?  By interaction?  By means of the phlogiston of whatsis?

What happens, there?

Quote from: Soylent Green;327442Here is what I find weird. The vast majority of games I've played in are almost entirely predicated on the basis that the players characters act as though they knew they were characters in a rolpleaying game.

It starts off that way, in the tavern...

"Hi guys, we've never met before but let's spend every waking moment for the next year together for the next year or so fighting side by side in paces people have no business going to! "

.. in our attitude towards death and mourning...

"Damn, the cleric got killed. Let's head back to the town and get a new cleric."

..and attitude towards money..

"Yay look at all the gold we made adventuring. I'll spend it all on better weapons and armour because I have absolutely no other needs, interests, desires or responsibilities in life!"

But that's cool because it's a game. We are here to have fun, not to bogged down in boring minutia. And if that you bite when presented a lame plot hook by the GM, even though deep inside you know it makes no sense at all, so be it. It all comes with the territory.

So here is what I don't get. Given all the above anti-iimersive baggage that is pretty much inherent in roleplaying games (at least the ones I've seen or the published scenarios I've read), how is it only time I see ..well read mostly.. people getting really fussy over immersion is when meta-gaming mechanics are mention? Then suddenly, everyone's a purist.

It sounds like the vast majority of games you have played in haven't involved much high quality roleplaying.  Thats cool, but I don't see how it applies to the rest of us.  I know you are partially rebutting the whole desirability of immersion thingy, but immersion it self is only tangential to the central discussion of character substance.  

Immersion doesnt happen the whole time.  It would be a real worry if it did because obv people need to tell the difference between game and reality. When it does happen, however (and that is more likely with characters of substance) its usually great.