[PTA] Deep in your character

[Alan]

Over in

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=25329.0

I said

Caveat: PTA will never give the deep-character-concentration that some players prefer.

Alan, I disagree entirely.  In a few of the games I have played we really got into our characters and gained deep immersion.

Judd, I'd be interested in learning how this is achieved. In my experience, there are certain types of players, steeped in certain types of traditional roleplay, who complain that PTA doesn't jazz them and they always give lack of "immersion" as the reason.

Thing is, when reading threads and having discussion, I'm never sure what "immersion" means. I don't want to try to define it here and that's not what I'm asking from others.

Instead of using that word, I will attempt to be specific. So I ask that no one use the word "immersion" from here on.

The sort of play I refer to: "players who enjoy making decisions based solely on what their characters would want, think, desire, and perceive with little or no consideration for any meaning beyond their character's perspective or game mechanical advantage."

As best I can determine, there a great number of players who really like this sort of play and when I've run PTA for them, they have to a (wo)man stuck to that preference and declared PTA unsatisfying.

Is there a way to engage such players in PTA without drift or dropping rules?

[Judd]

The sort of play I refer to: "players who enjoy making decisions based solely on what their characters would want, think, desire, and perceive with little or no consideration for any meaning beyond their character's perspective or game mechanical advantage."

As best I can determine, there a great number of players who really like this sort of play and when I've run PTA for them, they have to a (wo)man stuck to that preference and declared PTA unsatisfying.

Is there a way to engage such players in PTA without drift or dropping rules?

Alan,

I have heard players, friends of mine, make similar complaints but I find that when I'm at the right table where character and mechanics can form a kind of symbiotic link, we've had play where the characters surprised the players who were playing them.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=18449.0

However, I'm not sure that we got into the state you have described above and the rules-get-out-of-the-way-so-I-can-role-play school of gaming where it comes from leaves me pretty cold.

[Matt Wilson]

the rules-get-out-of-the-way-so-I-can-role-play school of gaming where it comes from leaves me pretty cold.

Yeah, me too. If players with that preference can't dig PTA, that's okay with me. Plenty of options out there. No point making it one-size-fits-all.

[schlafmanko]

I haven't exactly tried to do this on purpose, but it's certainly possible accidentally to get into the state you're talking about in PTA.  And then you feel like a dick when one of the other players points out the meta-game factors you weren't thinking of when you gave his character a hard time about not coming to your character's wedding.  Oops. 

Not thinking out-of-character thoughts isn't a goal for me; feeling like I'm emotionally inside my character's head is, and I do want to feel like my character is reacting and making decisions "on her own" rather than as my puppet.  Sometimes that leads to losing sight of narrative elements beyond character PoV, but not always.  My preference is to know on an intuitive level how a character is reacting, especially if it's in a way that surprises me or is different from how I'd normally react, but also to keep a running lit crit analysis (internally, mostly not spoken) of what those reactions mean and how they interact with the themes of the story.  I have fun thinking out-of-character thoughts, but I'm happiest when I can maintain the illusion that those thoughts are reactions to my character's actions and emotions rather than their shapers.  But if I end up thoroughly in character and need to put off analysis until later, that's cool, too. 

Framing scenes in-character seems dramatically weak to me, but once you've thought about what sort of scene to have next, it's certainly possible to jump into it and not do any further thinking out-of-character.  You can set stakes for a conflict while staying in character, as long as you're okay with your character stepping out of time momentarily to do so.  Then the conflict resolution system feels like reading tea leaves to see what's going to happen, or like cutting away from an argument to explain why you're so fired up about it and why winning it is so important to you.  In a reality show, you could even use existing conventions to do that.

Does that answer the question about how it's possible to immerse in PTA?  (I assume that you're not actually asking about techniques, though I could try to talk about that.  I just don't know how portable they are.)  I'd also add that it took maybe a month of playing PTA before things clicked fully and I started feeling like I was in my character as opposed to controlling her from outside. 

[schlafmanko]

Hmm, re-reading my comment, I hope that didn't come across sounding snarky.  What I should've said is that I used to identify with that kind of roleplaying and still maintain some of it, insofar as I don't enjoy it when my characters make decisions based on factors external to themselves.  If playing fully from character PoV is the only thing that someone enjoys, parts of PTA are going to compromise their fun a bit, but if one's willing to take some time to get used to juggling different subject positions, the game may make up for it in terms of greater ability to focus in on the kind of situations and aspects of character the player wants to experience (assuming that's why people want to stick to character PoV).  Being a character in a situation where you can externalize what you're feeling to others and get their support and interaction is much more fun than feeling something quietly and then acting on it in a way that never fully makes sense to anyone else at the table.  Not that that's an inevitable side effect of that other style of gaming, but it certainly tended that way for me, and it annoyed me.  Anyway, that's my pitch.