Deep Immersion

[contracycle]

I'm not "attacking" D&D, or champions... but I am saying that the current verioins of those rulesets, along with many others, carry a lot of unchallenged assupmtions in them as to what "the best" kind of play is, and many of those assumptions arise from holding DI or method role play as the ultimate form of play.

Congratulations - you have established that G and N also exist.

If the whole point of this thread is to identify that a default Sim assumption which permeates the hobby by default is not the only way to play, then well done and all, but this is old news.

Not much of this has to do with method acting and immersion as far as I can see.  But if the symptom we are addressing is old schoold default sim, then any allegations of "selfishness" must again fall; people who honestly, if mistakenly, pursue a mode because they are instructed to (and obey those instructions naively) cannot be said to purposefully prejudice other players fun.

[pete_darby]

Well, maybe DI is one of the ultimate extensions of Sim, and the pushing of an exclusively sim agenda is pushing towards DI.

And I'm not "demanding" that conventional rule sets do anything: this is more a "feel my pain" talk that a "thou shalt, thou shalt not" talk on my part.

Russell: the whole OOC /IC information thing: damn straight SIm play can feed very happily on OOC character information. But that style of play is very under represented in conventional RP rule sets, because ever deeper immmersion is still typically held up as a gold standard of play.

I'm not anti-sim, or anti-immersion, just anti it being assumed as the ne plus ultra of play. Which has been my experience, but maybe I'm getting off on some quixotic anti-DI kick. I mean, I don't think I am, I think DI is being assumed as the best kind of play by a great many rule sets, and players, but maybe I've just been reading the wrong books and talking to the wrong players.

Maybe the Western metaphor was too stretched (since it's not likely to happen, and I'm not saying it is happening, so where did LotR and Master & Commander come from?).

Let's stick with it a moment, though: these folks who "like westerns and don't want to watch sci-fi..." If they've only ever seen Westerns, and if they've only ever had other styles of film discussed as compared to Westerns, how do they know they won't like something else better?

For British readers, replace "westerns & cinema" with "DIY & antique shows and TV". Or, US & UK, think about last year & the year before when you wanted one night of TV that didn't have a reality TV show. For reality TV, read DI promoters.

Anyway, that's how I'm feeling, obviously other folks don't feel the same, are we just talking past each other now?

[Peter Hollinghurst]

I suspect that there is a lot of confusion over agendas and terms used in this thread, with people taking taking various interpretations and degrees of meaning of both such things as immersion, deep immersion, and the theory that many games and playing styles have an inherant bias towards promoting these and working against OOC knowledge and metagame knowledge. Others have tried to clarify all of these earlier in the thread.
What does not seem to have been put into perspective is the 'history' behind it all.
What follows, for what it may be worth, is a personal account of these issues from a perspective of the gaming group I played in and GM'd for through that time. Others may well have had a different experience, but it seemed typical for those I played with and met over the years.
I have been playing rpgs since 1976 (I mention it not to gain any cudos-Im sure others here have played longer, rather to show that I have played throughout much of the hobbies development and as such have a long perspective on how the hobby has evolved).
When I first started playing immersion was, quite frankly, totally irrelevant. We just did not play that way. Everybody I knew played for laughs and for the fun of it, nobody took it very seriously. That is not to say that nobody else did anywhere else, but the pervading mood I sensed at the time was that these sort of topics were just not in popular usage or conciousness.
Over time as new game systems were developed and players became more sophisticated in their approach to the hobby, a new awareness seemed to dawn-game systems became more inclined to look at how people 'should' play and eventually these philosophies found their way into a wide acceptance. My own gaming group adapted to these, and we became inclined to follow then unquestioningly. Other gamers I met seemed to do the same. At this time little or nothing seemed to be discussed or dissected about exactly how people played or why or what terminology was best-there was not even much of a method open to do this. A certain degree of seriousness then entered our play, and concerns over OOC developed alongside attempts to achieve deeper immersion in a game. A lot of discussion occured in the game group about how to achieve this immersion as if it were a sort of 'holy grail' of gaming. For the first time issues of how we played, not what we played, became important.
Many of the games we played were moving further and further from the hobbies wargaming roots at this time as well.
Immersive techniques seemed to be discussed more in gamebooks, and the OOC issue became more apparent in them, but I would suggest this was a subtle shift. We all certainly felt at the time that this was the 'correct way to play'.
More recently agendas in game systems became stronger (white wolfs storytelling system for example), but even these often offered mixed messages and showed basic dichotemies between the suggested playing approach and the game mechanics. This suggests strongly to me that most developers were as much in the dark about the deeper aspects of 'game theory' as everyone else was.
The evolution of online forums such as this one allowed for a different kind of interaction about rpgs however, and I would suggest that the emphasis on terminologies and precise meanings/approaches has been evolving from this more than anything else. The ability to discuss and share,coupled with the state of devolpment in the hobby, has created and sustained a deeper level of theory collectively and has allowed particular applications of language and theory to grow.
The flowering of indie game design enhanced by the internet and self publishing opportunities has allowed greater experimentation to run alongside this discussion.
My own circle of gamers are still entrenched in the no OOC mode, striving for immersion however. They are strongly resistent to models of play that are different in any way, and by and large they have not pursued any of the forums or indie games available that demonstrate alternatives. The period in which we played the sort of DI, no OOC approach mentioned by some here, coupled with the number of gamebooks supporting it implicitly in their texts has created a strong bias toward a belief that this is how rpgs should be played, despite the simple fact that it was not how we originally played them.
As a referee and a designer, I have been interested in exploring new approaches but have met considerable resistence to breaking any of the accepted 'scared cows' of rpgs (having a GM, DI, diceless games and so on). All a bit tricky since I am experimenting with a card based GM'less story creating rpg with hardly any stats and a system that encourages OOC. My point is that the resistence is definately there, and it does seem to surround the issue of immersion very strongly (the anti GMless stance for example taking the view that the GM is essential to construct a solid reality for immersion). All the rpg'ers I know locally must have picked it up from somewhere-and lo and behold, the game books they read, along with their own gaming experience, seems to be where it comes from.
With only a very few exceptions, all the gamers I have known, regardless of coming from different groups, age, and so on, tend to fit into this mould. Of the hundreds I have played rpgs with, only two have been exceptions.
I believe it is so prevelent that I have come to the conclusion that I need to do two things in marketing my game (if it gets to that stage): I need to create two systems-a 'story' game that does not even claim to be a rpg and explores different concepts of play, and a trad rpg version that can share supplement material but ditches many of the more radical elements such as GM'less play. The story system would be primarily aimed at non-rpgers or those who have become dissatisfied with rpgs, while the more trad version would be pitched at the standard rpg community.
Finding people I can test play 1-1 with for the story system has become a nightmare though-the gamers I know are mostly highly resistent to it and I dont want to involve testplayers that are hostile from day one. Every time the issue of what they are uncomfortable with comes up, it centers around immersion-without exception.
My own experience seems to indicate that the issues discussed here do reflect aspects of both the industry, and players, approach to gaming, that it is an issue 'felt but rarely understood or dissected' and that everyone seems to have issues about the language used, concepts and meanings that demonstrated a gap between a 'traditional' and 'nontraditional' approach to gaming (one that has evolved over time and was not present in the early days).
The difficulty over sharing meaning and the outright rejection of alternatives is, for me, very reminiscent of the sort of struggles between 'modernist' and 'postmodernist' concepts-there is some sort of deep cultural gulf that is resistent to change and adaption.
It worries me-but it does not suprise me.

Ultimately my point is this-all of these issues discussed have evolved over time, and as such a serious, more academic side has been absent until recently. Attempts to apply this approach to both players and most non-indie designers will inevitably hit problems because there are a lot of aspects that are felt but not understood by proponants of particular views outside the forum. Contradictory stances and attitudes are, I would suggest, the norm outside of these forums, not the exception. To discuss them without becoming ensnared by these contraditions surely requires that we accept that these contradictions exist? We simply cannot take stances ourselves that assume a cohesive body of considered opinion is out there-rather we should look at the subject as largely an immotive one, and that perhaps this is the real problem.

[Russell Impagliazzo]

Pete Darby wrote:
``Russell: the whole OOC /IC information thing: damn straight SIm play can feed very happily on OOC character information. But that style of play is very under represented in conventional RP rule sets, because ever deeper immmersion is still typically held up as a gold standard of play.

I'm not anti-sim, or anti-immersion, just anti it being assumed as the ne plus ultra of play. Which has been my experience, but maybe I'm getting off on some quixotic anti-DI kick. I mean, I don't think I am, I think DI is being assumed as the best kind of play by a great many rule sets, and players, but maybe I've just been reading the wrong books and talking to the wrong players.

Maybe the Western metaphor was too stretched (since it's not likely to happen, and I'm not saying it is happening, so where did LotR and Master & Commander come from?).''

My point was that in my experience immersion is a relatively uncommon style, and certainly not the de facto norm.  I've read the rule books for DnD and Champions, and don't see any real advocation of Immersion there  (there's a conglomorate style they call ``Deep Immersion Storytelling'' in the DM Guide, but it doesn't really describe immersive play).  So when you say that DI is a pervasive influence that's limiting role-playing possibilities and list D&D and Champions as examples, this causes me cognitive dissonance, just as listing Master and Commander and LotR as Westerns and then complaining of the prevelance of Westerns would.  I can see some similarity between the games you're talking about and games geared for immersion, but only about the same level of similarity as LotR and Treasure of the Sierra Madres.  (Both involve corruption by the love of a golden object, for example, and in both they go up to the mountains.)  

So what I'm saying is that my reaction to the claim that the pervasiveness of DI is stifling the hobby is about the same as my reaction to a claim that the Western genre is currently dominating film that gave the above movies as examples.  My first reaction is that you are not using the term Immersion in the way I use it, and so gave my definition of the term.  Alterantively, you could be playing with a very different group of people than who I play with.  

A third possibility is more subtle.  One of the big boons that threefold/GNS model has been for me is that it exposed some major incoherrence in my previous thoughts on role-playing systems.  Before exposure to these concepts, I would defend decisions and rules willy-nilly on the basis of ``realism'', ``fairness and balance'', and ``dramatic impact''.    Since most games still have incoherrent justifications that jumble different concepts, you will find appeals to all of the above in most rule sets.   So if you're looking for any particular bias, you will find it in the rules  for most games somewhere.

[greyorm]

The following is something I wish I'd had time to mention prior to my leaving last week is the following, regarding D&D and DI textual support, and how D&D can be a DI supporting game.

This was also to be my reply to John's points about D&D and how I could point it out as an immersion-supporting game, given its other texts and the way it is often played. The answer is: I'm not. Because it isn't meant to be. It's a poster child for what's wrong with the idea of Deep Immersion. The text attempts to enforce the ideal of immersion, while the game itself does not support the pursuit of it.

One of the main complaints about 3E is that you practically have to chart your character's future from rolling him up at 1st level.

Frex, in order to enter any particular prestige class, you can't just come into it or decide to pursue it later in response to events in-game, you have to carefully chart the character's progress (skills bought, feats taken, classes pursued), you have to know your character will be moving into that PrC ahead of time or it will be difficult (even impossible) to attain.

Another interesting feature of D&D (and 3E) is that the game encourages you to choose equipment not based on culture, desire or personality, but on mechanical effectiveness.

Why do I bring these points up?
The DM's guide clearly disapproves of this behavior, because these behaviors require metagame thinking.

As I said before, this is schizophrenic.

D&D, especially 3E, isn't meant to be an immersionist/in-character exercise. The mechanics actually force the player to move outside his character in order to make decisions about the character's effectiveness and future.

The player can ignore that and try to make those decisions based only on the character's non-mechanical bits, but then one is not really playing the game any longer: the character's survival and comparitive ability is severely reduced by it (ie: he goes out-of-whack with the mechanics of the rest of the system).

This is exactly the problem with DI: its acceptance as standard -- or rather, the push for standardization of play regarding 1) adherence to immersion 2) reduction of metagame. It attempts to be all things to all games, even where the game itself doesn't support it, such as in the particular case of 3E D&D.

The text says "Metagame is BAD! Naughty! You MUST immerse!" (remember, and I quote the DMG here, if you base any action on the fact that it is a game, you aren't doing real roleplaying and are spoiling the game...this thinking must always be discouraged) while the mechanics cater to the exact opposite attitude of decision-making in play.

So, when the argument arises against D&D being a DI text because D&D doesn't support heavy immersion, I have to wonder and ask what else is there to turn to given the text's advocacy?

If metagame thinking -- thinking about the game as a game -- is to be always discouraged, and is not real role-playing? What does that say about what behaviors are to be encouraged, and what "real" role-playing is?

What does that tell the reader the concept of "real role-playing" is all about? Particularly when written into a game where the idea of avoiding metagame is simply against the grain of its very mechanics?

This is DI. And this is why it's bad.

[Halzebier]

I think you're quoting D&D out of context. 3E gives a definition and, perhaps more importantly, an example of the kind of 'metagame thinking' they criticize.

Regards,

Hal

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I have confirmed that nearly every recent post concerns, roughly, "what I meant in my earlier post was ..."

I've also given this thread about as much time as it needs to escape from all the usual, wearying hassle that crops up with the term "immersion." It hasn't escaped.

So - time to close it. If you want to discuss something specific about what you or someone else said or "meant," please consider private messages. If you really think you have an inquiry or point of general interest, take it to a new thread.

Best,
Ron