Clashes over Channeling?

[John Kim]

OK, this is picking up from Channeling and GNS at Ron's request.  I'd like to discuss the overlap of conflicts -- having GNS Nar/Sim conflict within a game as well as channeling-vs-drama conflict. 

Now, accepted wisdom previously has been that channeling/immersion is not a signal for GNS Simulationism.  For example, Vincent had his thread on Sacrificing Character Integrity - a Rant -- although there were some like Ralph who disagreed with him.  I also discussed being true to character in a thread I labelled Anti-my-guy Syndrome. 

So I'd like to bring up my own experiences with such overlaps, and I'd also like to query other people's experiences.  Has anyone seen a correlation between GNS Nar/Sim and channeling-vs-drama? 

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I'd like to go over another example of channeling-vs-drama clash, which happened in the "Immortal Tales" campaign, which I played jointly with Chris Lehrich, Mark Kobrak, and David Covin.  The campaign was nominally using Theatrix, but largely systemless.  The characters were all immortal beings of different sorts in something close to the real world.  Each session was set at a different time in history between 1100 A.D. and the present.  The campaign had a unifying wrap-around story:  The four immortals had met in the house of Odysseus (a PC) in 1994.  There they exchanged stories about their past.  So each session was an episode where one PC was absent -- and that character's player acts as GM while the who the other PCs tell the story to his character.

I have some more details, in particular on the PCs on my web page, Immortal Tales.  My PC was Harkel, a Norse man with a Dragon inside him, who could be an unpleasant sort. 

So in one episode, Chris was acting as GM.  The adventure was set in Gahara, India in 1844.  We had run afoul of some members of the Ismaili cult.  We had started to see some signs going on when Pyutz was captured.  Harkel and Lemminkainen found tracks leading away, and he had written a symbol for "trap" in the ground along the way. 

At this point, I as Harkel balked at going to the rescue.  From his point of view, Pyutz was tougher than either him or Lemminkainen, and these people had taken him out.  I said that he wanted instead to threaten them remotely.  I couldn't see him being willing to go be a hero in that manner. 

However, this caused quite a conflict between me, Chris as GM, and Lemminkainen's player David.  In-game, what happened was that Lemminkainen tried to rescue him on his own shapeshifted, but failed.  Harkel started a fire among the cult, but then I eventually compromised to a degree as Chris had a bunch of guys who were friends of Pyutz head out to go rescue him.  Still, at the end, I think Chris, David, and Mark were all annoyed at me to varying degrees. 

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Maybe Chris would disagree with me, but I believe this was a Creative Agenda clash.  The others wanted there to be a fixed Theme, but I wanted to answer the question differently.  In other words, I was Narrativist clashing with GNS Simulationist path for story. 

For me, this has been a fairly common pattern.  I generally push to follow the character wherever it leads.  However, I know that experiences differ.  How does this compare to other people's experiences of similar clashes? 

[Josh Roby]

Abandon what you figure your character would do in order to make the character do what the other players at the table want him to do?

While you certainly were 'channeling' in that you wanted to remain true to what you supposed your character would do, I don't know if the other players were really after 'drama' in such a way that was antithetical to your approach.  As I see it, they were not after a dramatic scene and you weren't so much as they were after a different kind of dramatic scene than you were.  The entire party could have stayed put and talked about courage and cowardice and honor and friendship and whatever, and you still could have generated a dramatic situation.  The badguys could have come to you instead of the other way around and created a dramatic situation.  That the other players wanted to go to them and create that dramatic situation does not to me suggest that they were 'going for theme' while you were 'going for character'.  After all, it's perfectly feasible that it was in-line with their character concepts to go and be heroic, and they were channeling just as much as you were.  It's just that their particular character-agendas and their particular player-preferences were different than yours.

If anything, I'd say the real problem was the other players invalidating your channeling since it was immaterial to their goals.  From my (brief and uninformed) reading, much of the situation could have been resolved by Lemminkainen's player (not character) giving you some screen time and perhaps interaction with his character in order to address the differences in character viewpoints, rather than skipping ahead to the infiltration/battle scene.  Of course, this is the 'problem' with channeling, that the player can get so involved with the character that they do not step back and address the social inter-player issues at the table.  Lemminkainen's player may have been just as eager to get to the battle as Lemminkainen was, when he could have reduced the inter-player tension by letting that scene happen a little later in order to allow you some space.

To illustrate from my own experiences, of which I know the details far better, in our Riverworld campaign, my wife was playing a stubborn turn-of-the-century frontierswoman (whose name I forget) while my brother was playing Teddy Roosevelt.  We were playing in GURPS; the fronteirswoman had the Stubborn disadvantage and Teddy had the Glory Hound disadvantage, which my brother played to the hilt.  However, the mistake that my brother made was that, in addition to playing his character as a my-way-or-the-highway Glory Hound in Teddy's interactions with other characters in the game (which would be fine), he also let that "bleed over" and interacted with his fellow players in a similar manner (which was not).  My wife tried to play her character and remain true to her nature, but allowed for inter-player discussion and negotiation in terms of scene framing and pacing -- which only works if the other players are willing to allow for that, as well.  My brother ended up taking advantage of the concessions my wife put forward, rather heedlessly taking any advantage he could in order to forward his character's agenda.  My wife concluded more than once that her character was not important to the game, and all she was supposed to do was follow along and hit people in combat.

Channeling and immersion are great, but conflicts between channeled characters are inevitable, and you must have some way of ensuring that conflicts between characters do not become conflicts between players.  Systemic support for this has been lacking in most published gamebooks.  Any game that assumes both (a) players will channel/immerse/stay true to their characters and (b) characters will work together seamlessly is making an incorrect and rather common assumption.  Note that by no means am I saying that there needs to be ways to make the characters agree in-game -- I think Capes does an awesome job of bringing such inter-character conflicts to the fore and making them the focus of the game.  Similarly, any group of Dogs is just a timebomb waiting for inter-Dog conflict, and the system makes that conflict exactly the same as the rest of the game -- a matter of taking moral stances.  Moreover, Dog's system allows for that conflict to take place, get resolved, and then keep going with more juicy moral goodness (flavored by that inter-player conflict).

In the end, I don't see this as a conflict between the channeling technique and any specific agenda so much as a conflict between player goals.  Moreover, this difference in goals only becomes a conflict when players try to make their goals the exclusive focus of play for the whole table.  The conflict can be avoided with a little more foresight, cooperation, and negotiation.  (If you think such meta-concerns are antithetical to channeling in general, well, that's a different subject entirely, and my prognosis is that you're SoL.)

[Wormwood]

John,

I suspect that Channeling is more prone to clash than most techniques. Since clash essentially happens when the shared content of play cannot be made to meet everyone's goals, Channeling a character is a very definite goal which is very difficult to share in terms of resulting play. In more precise terms, the Channeling view of a single character is very unlikely for multiple players to adopt. What then matters is what additional goals are brought into play. Either the Channeler needs additional goals to accept when the Channeling goal won't be met (i.e. when changing a Channeled action) or the other players must adopt goals which permit them to include some portion of that view.

This is of course assuming the simplest therapeutic view point, namely that shared goals in terms of play content leads to a successful game. More complex approaches could be taken where the intersection of player views is empty (e.g. when all but one player is Channeling, and that last player is competitively learning the procedure for causing multiple Channelers to feed of each other's decisions (and has some skill in this).) Usually in this case one or more players bridge the different views, even though no single view need contain portions from all other views.

The most reasonable approximation of narrativism in terms of general play content is that of a cultural content, focused on moral and ethical decisions. In that context I would expect to see overt awareness of other player's moral or ethical stances. You didn't include any content like that, so I suspect that's not something you retained strongly from the session. From that alone I would deduce that it is unlikely that you were playing from a cultural perspective, and it is likely that your predominant view was declarative with a topic matter of your character. As a perhaps inaccurate simplification, you appear most interested in what your character would do next, rather than why he would and why the other characters would or would not.

It is important to remember that clash can occur within CAs, as well as between them.

   - Mendel Schmiedekamp

[John Kim]

In the end, I don't see this as a conflict between the channeling technique and any specific agenda so much as a conflict between player goals.  Moreover, this difference in goals only becomes a conflict when players try to make their goals the exclusive focus of play for the whole table.  The conflict can be avoided with a little more foresight, cooperation, and negotiation.  (If you think such meta-concerns are antithetical to channeling in general, well, that's a different subject entirely, and my prognosis is that you're SoL.)

I think I agree.  I'm saying that there is not a conflict between the channeling technique and GNS Sim agenda -- or GNS Nar agenda.  As far as I can see, these are independent and uncorrelated clashes. 

To illustrate from my own experiences, of which I know the details far better, in our Riverworld campaign, my wife was playing a stubborn turn-of-the-century frontierswoman (whose name I forget) while my brother was playing Teddy Roosevelt.  We were playing in GURPS; the fronteirswoman had the Stubborn disadvantage and Teddy had the Glory Hound disadvantage, which my brother played to the hilt.  However, the mistake that my brother made was that, in addition to playing his character as a my-way-or-the-highway Glory Hound in Teddy's interactions with other characters in the game (which would be fine), he also let that "bleed over" and interacted with his fellow players in a similar manner (which was not).  My wife tried to play her character and remain true to her nature, but allowed for inter-player discussion and negotiation in terms of scene framing and pacing -- which only works if the other players are willing to allow for that, as well.  My brother ended up taking advantage of the concessions my wife put forward, rather heedlessly taking any advantage he could in order to forward his character's agenda.  My wife concluded more than once that her character was not important to the game, and all she was supposed to do was follow along and hit people in combat.

Channeling and immersion are great, but conflicts between channeled characters are inevitable, and you must have some way of ensuring that conflicts between characters do not become conflicts between players. 

Interesting.  In my experience, channeling tends to reduce bleedover of conflicts from characters to players.  That is, for players who are channeling will more generally accept that their actions and actions of other players are not out-of-game.  I discussed some examples of this in an earlier thread, Anti-my-guy Syndrome.  In the Ripper campaign, I and another more immersive player had our characters at each other throats.  The curious thing was that we were fine with it, but a less immersive player was shocked and upset with us (more me) for this fighting. 

Now there are two things: (1) our experience with channeling might differ; (2) we might differ on what behaviors we're calling channeling. 

I'm curious what sort of concessions your wife offered, and how your brother heedlessly took advantage of them.  Were they clearly out-of-character concessions? 

Systemic support for this has been lacking in most published gamebooks.  Any game that assumes both (a) players will channel/immerse/stay true to their characters and (b) characters will work together seamlessly is making an incorrect and rather common assumption.

My experience is that most games that assume seamless cooperation are more Gamist in their focus, and don't consider immersion.  On the other hand, there are many games which in principle expect inter-PC conflict, but still don't provide good support for how to handle that conflict. 

From my (brief and uninformed) reading, much of the situation could have been resolved by Lemminkainen's player (not character) giving you some screen time and perhaps interaction with his character in order to address the differences in character viewpoints, rather than skipping ahead to the infiltration/battle scene.  Of course, this is the 'problem' with channeling, that the player can get so involved with the character that they do not step back and address the social inter-player issues at the table.  Lemminkainen's player may have been just as eager to get to the battle as Lemminkainen was, when he could have reduced the inter-player tension by letting that scene happen a little later in order to allow you some space.

Well, I can't know for sure, but I don't see that as a solution.  We did compromise over this -- Pyutz was rescued, and Harkel got his screen time doing a bit of his own thing.  However, neither side was satisfied with the compromise, presumably because it seriously undercut what we were playing for.  You're also interpreting David (Lemminkainen's) player as channeling, and I saw no sign of that.  From what I saw, David was perfectly willing to change his character's actions from out-of-game cues or negotiation with the GM.  My clash with him was that he felt I was ruining the story -- i.e. failing to validate the pre-determined Theme. 

[Josh Roby]

I'm curious what sort of concessions your wife offered, and how your brother heedlessly took advantage of them.  Were they clearly out-of-character concessions?

I can't recall them in detail, but they were framed in "We can have the characters do this instead" terms, rather than "We can do this instead" terms, so I'd say rather OOC.  They were also offered after game-time narrative was very explicitly stopped and discussion was purely player-to-player around the table.  My brother would agree with the concessions, have the character do the proposed  course of action, and then turn the results towards the goal he wanted in the first place.  He rather patently did not recognize anyone else's claim to screen time or story-significance, or thought that they had to "fight" for it just as he was in order to deserve it.  Which works great in Capes, but not so much in games not designed for this strive-for-spotlight impulse.

You say that your compromise "seriously undercut what we were playing for" but you also seem to think that different players were playing for different things from the start (unless I'm reading this wrong).  How did a scene involving Harkel doing his own thing undercut what Lemmensomethinorother's player was after?

[John Kim]

I'm curious what sort of concessions your wife offered, and how your brother heedlessly took advantage of them.  Were they clearly out-of-character concessions?

I can't recall them in detail, but they were framed in "We can have the characters do this instead" terms, rather than "We can do this instead" terms, so I'd say rather OOC.  They were also offered after game-time narrative was very explicitly stopped and discussion was purely player-to-player around the table.  My brother would agree with the concessions, have the character do the proposed  course of action, and then turn the results towards the goal he wanted in the first place.  He rather patently did not recognize anyone else's claim to screen time or story-significance, or thought that they had to "fight" for it just as he was in order to deserve it. 

So as I understand it, he was technically abiding by the OOC agreements, but was still managing to hog the spotlight time.  Is that a fair description?  That does sound like a problem, but I'm not sure how it connects to channeling.  If he was ignoring the OOC agreements in play, then I could see the relation -- but this seems more like a general case of spotlight hogging.  For example, I have often heard the opposite complaint that channeling players are passive wallflowers who don't engage with situation. 

Just from another point of view, I can suggest problems that I've had or heard of.  The above clash is one, along with the one I mentioned in the Anti-My-Guy syndrome thread.  As another example, on rgfa Mary Kuhner discussed where they had a tricky in-game situation, and the GM asked Out-Of-Character what the PCs would do in a certain circumstance and got a bunch of possibilities.  However, when she then actually played it out, she reacted completely differently than any of the possibilities that she had suggested OOC.  Breaking out of game a moment, she apologized but couldn't change her mind on that point. 

You say that your compromise "seriously undercut what we were playing for" but you also seem to think that different players were playing for different things from the start (unless I'm reading this wrong).  How did a scene involving Harkel doing his own thing undercut what Lemmensomethinorother's player was after?

I believe that Lemminkainen's player David wanted the game as a whole to hang together as a thematic story which followed a certain pattern.  My character's doing his own thing completely disrupted the plotline.  His actions, say if he took hostage or killed relatively innocent relations of the Ismailis, would completely muddle how we dealt with rescuing Pyutz.  The story would likely start a cycle of violence which wouldn't have closure at the end of the session, and it would bear little resemblance to a heroic narrative. 

[Josh Roby]

So as I understand it, he was technically abiding by the OOC agreements, but was still managing to hog the spotlight time.  Is that a fair description?  That does sound like a problem, but I'm not sure how it connects to channeling.  If he was ignoring the OOC agreements in play, then I could see the relation -- but this seems more like a general case of spotlight hogging.  For example, I have often heard the opposite complaint that channeling players are passive wallflowers who don't engage with situation.

Normally he doesn't do this; it only happened when he was playing a character who also wanted to hog the spotlight time.  As he would later put it, in order to play Teddy Roosevelt "right" he had to engineer such situations.  Which I think was a rather destructive way of doing things.

[ewilen]

John, I'd like to skip back to an earlier post in this thread.

[...]I would deduce that it is unlikely that you were playing from a cultural perspective, and it is likely that your predominant view was declarative with a topic matter of your character. As a perhaps inaccurate simplification, you appear most interested in what your character would do next, rather than why he would and why the other characters would or would not.

It is important to remember that clash can occur within CAs, as well as between them.

I agree with this analysis, although frankly it's difficult to determine if there's a Sim-Nar clash or an intra-Sim clash without first nailing down Sim.

John, the first question in my mind is, If you were trying to play Nar, what was the Premise? And did you, as a player, connect with that Premise on some level?

It seems to me that you're saying you were grabbing for Nar purely because you refused to be Forced by the other players, and they were going for Sim because they were trying to use Force on you. But while Force is considered antithetical to Nar, I don't know if it's definitional of Sim. The glossary defines Force as "control over characters' thematically-significant decisions", but I believe I've seen that glossed as "control over characters' CA-relevant decisions". If that gloss is accepted, then this conflict could be seen as intra-Sim. You were going for Sim(Exploration of Character) and the other players were going for Sim(Exploration of Situation).

What do you think?

[Marco]

Maybe Chris would disagree with me, but I believe this was a Creative Agenda clash.  The others wanted there to be a fixed Theme, but I wanted to answer the question differently.  In other words, I was Narrativist clashing with GNS Simulationist path for story. 

For me, this has been a fairly common pattern.  I generally push to follow the character wherever it leads.  However, I know that experiences differ.  How does this compare to other people's experiences of similar clashes? 

I have to say that I don't necessiarily see N vs. S there. I'm not sure that the other players, by thinking it would be cool to mount a rescue, would be in some way anti-Nar: it would simply be their answer to the premise question (whatever that question was).

Nowhere is it written that I, as a player, will enjoy gaming with someone else's solution to a problem simply because it is an address of Premise. If one player's addressing premise leads to unsatisfying play (as deemed by the other players) it is simply an intra-Nar clash. I have often questioned how one knows that CA-Clashes are more meaningful or relevant to satisfying gaming than technique clashes.

-Marco

[Mike Holmes]

I have often questioned how one knows that CA-Clashes are more meaningful or relevant to satisfying gaming than technique clashes.

And we've as often answered that we don't. Just because you have a drug to cure a disease that doesn't cure another disease doesn't make that drug any less important. Nobody says that GNS clashes are the most meaningful, just important from what we've seen.

Mike

[John Kim]

OK, this is curious.  So Elliot suggests that this is an intra-Simulationist clash -- while Marco suggests that this is an intra-Narrativist clash.  I suspect all three of these (i.e. my seeing N-vs-S, Elliot seeing S-vs-S, Marco seeing N-vs-N) probably say something about our perspectives.  I pondered this issue on my LiveJournal a few weeks ago in a post entitled Me and GNS. 

John, the first question in my mind is, If you were trying to play Nar, what was the Premise? And did you, as a player, connect with that Premise on some level?

It seems to me that you're saying you were grabbing for Nar purely because you refused to be Forced by the other players, and they were going for Sim because they were trying to use Force on you. But while Force is considered antithetical to Nar, I don't know if it's definitional of Sim. The glossary defines Force as "control over characters' thematically-significant decisions", but I believe I've seen that glossed as "control over characters' CA-relevant decisions". If that gloss is accepted, then this conflict could be seen as intra-Sim. You were going for Sim(Exploration of Character) and the other players were going for Sim(Exploration of Situation).

First of all, I don't like the idea of reducing to a single sound-bite Premise.  There were a variety of issues involved here.  But the core of Harkel's tension, which I connected with, was about the tension over forming attachments to people versus forming attachments only to abstract ideals.  This could be phrased as a question like "Is it worthwhile to care about people, if everyone dies in the end anyway?" 

As an immortal, I conceived of Harkel as someone who had of necessity detached himself.  He survived by detaching himself from people and instead only caring about immortal ideals -- particularly culture. 

I have to say that I don't necessiarily see N vs. S there. I'm not sure that the other players, by thinking it would be cool to mount a rescue, would be in some way anti-Nar: it would simply be their answer to the premise question (whatever that question was).

Nowhere is it written that I, as a player, will enjoy gaming with someone else's solution to a problem simply because it is an address of Premise. If one player's addressing premise leads to unsatisfying play (as deemed by the other players) it is simply an intra-Nar clash. I have often questioned how one knows that CA-Clashes are more meaningful or relevant to satisfying gaming than technique clashes.

Well, hold on.  Your first statement is misleading.  The fact that David wanted Lemminkainen to mount a rescue is irrelevant.  I had no problem with his character attempting to mount a rescue.  The problem was that David objected to my answer.  The key is your latter point, which I disagree with.  Narrativism inherently requires the participants to be open to any answer to the Premise.  If the GM (or any other player) objects and blocks based on what my answer to the Premise is, then Narrativism itself is being blocked. 

[ewilen]

Okay, so to put it crudely, Harkel was facing the question "Is it worth it to form attachments to people?", you yourself perceived this as an interesting question for him to face, and you felt the answer would provide functional play either way. Sounds like you were grabbing for Nar; I retract my earlier suspicion. (The summary in your initial post sounded more like a tactical disagreement, or an analytical disagreement over characterization, than a moral issue.)

It looks like other players wanted a specific scenario to develop so they blocked your choice. They weren't interested in the moral question, so they weren't grabbing for Nar at that moment. If what they wanted to do was "play out a dramatic rescue" then I'd still guess that in GNS terms they were trying for Sim(exploration of situation).

I'm satisfied that channeling per se doesn't conflict with Nar per se. I think we still might reasonably ask if channeling can contribute to clashes either among channelers or between channelers and non-channelers at the player level (inter-character conflict can be perfectly functional, as you say).

Also, if we agree that channeling all by itself neither facilitates nor prevents a particular CA-focus, some people's experiences of overreliance on channeling without concern for focusing techniques could explain why channeling sometimes gets blamed for incoherence.

[Marco]

Well, hold on.  Your first statement is misleading.  The fact that David wanted Lemminkainen to mount a rescue is irrelevant.  I had no problem with his character attempting to mount a rescue.  The problem was that David objected to my answer.  The key is your latter point, which I disagree with.  Narrativism inherently requires the participants to be open to any answer to the Premise.  If the GM (or any other player) objects and blocks based on what my answer to the Premise is, then Narrativism itself is being blocked. 

I may have a confused idea of what happened--but this was my interpertation:
1. No one hijacked your character--the GM didn't take control of your PC and run him as an NPC (Force).
2. David didn't like your stance--but didn't break the systemic limits by taking over your character and running your PC as an NPC (Force).

If there wasn't actual force then I don't think it's fair to say that your answer was blocked. I mean, people calling a time-out to the game to talk about things or even leaving the table is not the same as blocking your answer, IMO. Certainly people being annoyed by your answer or the GM scrambling to come up with something to keep everyone from having a bad time are possible occurrences under any CA.

Furthermore I can't see playing in a game where I would be expected to withhold objection to a variety of "letigimate" answers to a premise-question: assuming my objection doesn't take the form of force, a convention that I not-object would, in and of itself, block me (that is, assuming the convention rendered my PC effectively an NPC for purposes of taking objecting actions or stances).

-Marco

[Mark Woodhouse]

If there wasn't actual force then I don't think it's fair to say that your answer was blocked. I mean, people calling a time-out to the game to talk about things or even leaving the table is not the same as blocking your answer, IMO. Certainly people being annoyed by your answer or the GM scrambling to come up with something to keep everyone from having a bad time are possible occurrences under any CA.

Furthermore I can't see playing in a game where I would be expected to withhold objection to a variety of "letigimate" answers to a premise-question: assuming my objection doesn't take the form of force, a convention that I not-object would, in and of itself, block me (that is, assuming the convention rendered my PC effectively an NPC for purposes of taking objecting actions or stances).

Which is why I think channeling is problematic for coherent play. There is less bandwidth for clear communication of "hey, I'm going somewhere with this, this matters to me-the-player" without breaking the fiction. Channeling doesn't only require that I individually have a solid grip on my character and have carefully loaded that character with Agenda-relevant ammo - it also requires that all my fellow players know how not to step on my toes, AND that Not-Stepping-On-My-Toes isn't stepping on their toes. All while immersed in the mindset of a character who has a whole different set of priorities.

It's not impossible to keep play firing on all cylinders consistently under those constraints, but it IS delicate and tricky.

[John Kim]

I mean, people calling a time-out to the game to talk about things or even leaving the table is not the same as blocking your answer, IMO. Certainly people being annoyed by your answer or the GM scrambling to come up with something to keep everyone from having a bad time are possible occurrences under any CA.

Furthermore I can't see playing in a game where I would be expected to withhold objection to a variety of "letigimate" answers to a premise-question: assuming my objection doesn't take the form of force, a convention that I not-object would, in and of itself, block me (that is, assuming the convention rendered my PC effectively an NPC for purposes of taking objecting actions or stances).

Hold on.  I consider that leaving the table or threatening to leave the table is most certainly Force.  I'm not saying that threatening to leave the table can't occur over other, non-GNS differences -- but I don't see a conceptual difference between the GM saying "You have to do X" and a GM saying "If you don't do X, then I walk".  In this case, that's effectively what this came down to.  Play ground to a halt, and the only way that we were able to proceed was by an out-of-character compromise. 

I don't see how a non-objecting convention could possibly render your PC effectively an NPC.  The convention is that you as a player don't try to stop the game over this.  There is nothing preventing your PC from taking action, which isn't the same thing. 

Which is why I think channeling is problematic for coherent play. There is less bandwidth for clear communication of "hey, I'm going somewhere with this, this matters to me-the-player" without breaking the fiction. Channeling doesn't only require that I individually have a solid grip on my character and have carefully loaded that character with Agenda-relevant ammo - it also requires that all my fellow players know how not to step on my toes, AND that Not-Stepping-On-My-Toes isn't stepping on their toes. All while immersed in the mindset of a character who has a whole different set of priorities.

It's not impossible to keep play firing on all cylinders consistently under those constraints, but it IS delicate and tricky.

I'd be curious to hear your experiences.  Because the problem here was the opposite.  You describe immersive player being unusually sensitive, such that the danger is other players stepping on their toes.  In the case I describe, I took action which was allowed by the system, but the others then expressed that this action stepped on their toes.  Moreover, they did not have any clear instructions for how not to step on their toes.  In the arguments, the GM argued convincingly that he didn't want to railroad me to making a particular choice, but he could not express concretely what were the allowed limits on my choices.  In contrast, my preference was pretty plain -- let my character do what I felt he should, and react in-character.