So I have posted my essay from the "Beyond Role and Play" book up on my website, along with book information. So first of all, here is the essay:

http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/narrative/immersivestory.html

The gist, in short form, is to suggest a model where each player simultaneously identifies with their own PC as a protagonist. This might sound trivial, but I think it has major significance from examining the consequences. If your own PC is the one you identify with, then the story doesn't need the same externalization of inner conflict you find in traditional drama. The point of this externalization is to allow other people to identify with your character. Thus an audience member can be drawn through an emotional arc. But in immersive story, other players don't identify with your PC as a protagonist.

The inner conflict still needs to be there for each player to have an emotional arc, but it does not need to be externalized in the same way. I don't go into any detail on techniques for this or game design, but I think it would be an interesting topic for discussion. Which designs foster externalized drama, and which foster this model?

Yes I agree with this, liked the paper, although I did not feel it rose to a stong conclusion. There are a couple of remarks I would like to make.

I think the recognition that we are dealing with multiple protaginists is fundamental; to me this radically seperates RPG from conventional story authorship, makes large chunks of the conventions of linear media irrelevent. I wholly agree that a large part of conventional dramatic devices are aimed at conveyinng the conflict experienced by the main character to the audience, a step largely unnecessary in RPG.

What I would like to raise in response to that however is that in fact there is some role for these dramatic devices - but not in the dialogue between player and Gm, but rather in that between player and player. Each player constitutes the others audience, and so for player A's activity to be minimally entertaining, player B must comprehend some of the dilemma with which player A is wrestling. If player A is, well, a closed book, player B never appreciates their viewpoint or contribution becuase it is never visible.

In large part conventional RPG has resolved this problem by, IMO, essentially treating the group of players a s a single protagonist, the multi-headed party beast. They are presented with a problem they are obliged to address coellectively, whether through personal investment of ties of allegiance to one another. For most purposes, they act more like a single character in linear media than like multiple characters.

I do think there is room in which actually specific methods of portrayal and exposition can be employed. I would like structured mechanisms by which players are actually obliged to engage in character portrayal, to initiate scenes which are purposefully directed at communicating the characters state of mind to the audience, in the manner that a singular author might. At the moment, the presumption is that we just grok this from being in the same space, but I think the experince may be more rewarding if portrayal and exposition are also addressed as goals and methods.

Similarly, I think many of the problems surrounding player creation of objects in the game world could be resolved through such an approach. What I find aesthetically displeasing about creating my own objects is that it is borderline cheating in my eyes. As a self-identified gamist, the idea that I might be able to introduce new pieces to the board, as it were, to which my opponent had not signed up, would be grossly abusive. That is why if I want there to be a tree, I must ask for permission to create a tree, because I do not not know whether or not a tree here, now, matters. If it does matter, then I will not do it; only if it does NOT matter will I feel free to exercise this power.

But I think that if we could in some manner establish areas of action that are Important, and areas that are Unimportant, and a player knows which is which, then the player can be freely licensed to treat the unimportant area as their sandbox. This is not an attention paid to realism, or protagonism or challenge, or meaning: its purely concerned with the dramatic structure of the game as played.

Hi John,

I do have some questions about the underlying theory of the Threefold/Three way model, but I see that's a previous essay and not relevant here.

Reading "Immersive Story" I get the impression that it is a validation of a technique that values the minimization of externalization in gaming. By focusing on the player's inner experience of play, and defining it as a separate category of the Threefold model, the essay validates a style of play that demans little communication performance (not acting, but communication) between the players. It seems that the opinions of other players at the table are unimportant, perhaps anathema to this style of play. Would that be correct?

I like the observation that each player experiences his own PC as protagonist. This is the first time I've seen the point articulated in just this way. It's very clear and I think it's very true in many forms of roleplaying. Good work.

Now, I understand what you are proposing is a prescriptive model, as I like to say, that is, this is one way roleplaying can be done, not a descriptive model of how all roleplaying is. The comments below are not meant to claim you are wrong, but to discuss the problems inherent to the proposition. And I get to tell you how much I hate immersionism, which is a bonus ;)

For many styles of play the role of other player's as spectators is absolutely essential. On the other hand there is many important factors to externalizing inner coflict that tie directly to aristotelian drama in general. The whole point of drama is to formalize and give voice to inner conflict that's relevant to the audience. Your character's conflict is always relevant to you, so it's always beneficial in the aristotelian sense to give it external voice, to make it real. This isn't the thread for possible other forms and theories of storytelling, but I for one have never seen a roleplaying game that wasn't at it's root aristotelian, as far as psychology goes.

Anyway, to say it in other words: when a play is enacted and identification with the protagonist occurs there is an important additional element to the process you haven't touched on. This is the effect of verbalization: the relevant feelings or issues that draw the audience are in the medium, not telepathically moved to the audience. This is a great gift for humanity, and I deem it the basis of the textual arts. When you remove this verbalization, as when internalizing drama, you remove a great deal of the point from the drama itself. The main reason drama can do anything to us is that it's presented in a clearer, purer medium than our day-to-day thoughts. The katharsis results from seeing your own issues given form. What you are calling internalized drama I'm calling everyday thought, and that's not so great a thing. A roleplayer perceives, is forced to perceive, the drama he creates when he gives it form. It's not just the other players (although they are important too) but he himself that gains the benefit from creating the external drama.

I was a year ago a part of an extremely dysfunctional, long-running game, where the GM had "every character is the protagonist of his own story" as his guiding principle. The game was Amber, and I feel that said principle was at least a part of the failure of the game for me. One can never say for sure, of course. Picture a game of nine (9) people with a GM absolutely convinced of benefits of immersionism and character protagonism (which for him meant largely "no plot"). What do you get, when you remove the nine-headed party beast, like you have to with Amber...?

Thaaaat's right, we all sat around twirling our thumbs for two hours at a time, waiting to get a turn with the GM. The game apparently worked for some players, based on how much time they used in there with the GM. I wouldn't know, because we never found out what any other player was really doing.

Now, one could say that the hard core immersionism was part of the problem, but for me it was more important that the GM really had no entertainment at all in mind. The game was "character protagonism" to the hilt, with me and only me deciding the story of my character. The GM even agreed to everything I wanted to do, so it was like I was writing a story about my character. No problems with that, but I prefer to do my writing with a text editor and a plan, not in strange little pieces of narrative to a "GM".

Another example that touches on the matter: I've been playing plenty of MLwM lately, and I have to say that that's one game that cannot be played with internalized drama, largely because there's nothing to do if you take the drama away. On the contrary, I've had to teach players to perform, as strange as that may sound, to get the game going. The other players are the audience.

These examples illustrate how immersionism in general and internalized drama in particular is in great danger of being extremely dull and useless. When there's no verbalization the drama is more alike to abstract pictoral art; feelings, no thought.

But to get on to your main question about the model, what kind of design would support this kind of internalized drama? My best guess is plain immersionist system, which largely means that GM decides everything. There's no serious immersionist games around afaIk but for Myrskyn Aika from Mike Pohjola. The tragedy is that it supports immersionism best when giving the standard "GM is always right" advice and worst in actual mechanics (pure setting/character sim). I take this as a kind of a proof for the "GM decides" system. It seems that anything else will just get in the way of immersion, like the actors in a Japanese puppet show.

Of course you get even stronger immersionism (and stronger internalized drama, presumably) by larping it, which is a good reason for many immersionists being larpers. The better the props, the better you can really feel the feelings of the protagonist (which is what you mean by internalized drama, as I understand it). The ultimate would be virtual reality, where there's very little limitwise between internal drama and the player.

Consider this quote from the essay:

John Kim in his essay wrote: For the player, there are personal responsibilities as well as social responsibilities. For you the player to have emotional engagement, you must delve into the personal issues of her own PC. This does not mean mentally contemplating the character, it means taking actions which are personally meaningful to the character. By playing through the consequences of your choices, the story develops meaning for you.

Eero Tuovinen wrote:
Anyway, to say it in other words: when a play is enacted and identification with the protagonist occurs there is an important additional element to the process you haven't touched on. This is the effect of verbalization: the relevant feelings or issues that draw the audience are in the medium, not telepathically moved to the audience. This is a great gift for humanity, and I deem it the basis of the textual arts. When you remove this verbalization, as when internalizing drama, you remove a great deal of the point from the drama itself.

Thaaaat's right, we all sat around twirling our thumbs for two hours at a time, waiting to get a turn with the GM. The game apparently worked for some players, based on how much time they used in there with the GM. I wouldn't know, because we never found out what any other player was really doing.

These examples illustrate how immersionism in general and internalized drama in particular is in great danger of being extremely dull and useless. When there's no verbalization the drama is more alike to abstract pictoral art; feelings, no thought.

Of course you get even stronger immersionism (and stronger internalized drama, presumably) by larping it, which is a good reason for many immersionists being larpers.

The main reason drama can do anything to us is that it's presented in a clearer, purer medium than our day-to-day thoughts. The katharsis results from seeing your own issues given form. What you are calling internalized drama I'm calling everyday thought, and that's not so great a thing. A roleplayer perceives, is forced to perceive, the drama he creates when he gives it form.

contracycle wrote: What I would like to raise in response to that however is that in fact there is some role for these dramatic devices - but not in the dialogue between player and Gm, but rather in that between player and player. Each player constitutes the others audience, and so for player A's activity to be minimally entertaining, player B must comprehend some of the dilemma with which player A is wrestling. If player A is, well, a closed book, player B never appreciates their viewpoint or contribution becuase it is never visible.

In large part conventional RPG has resolved this problem by, IMO, essentially treating the group of players as a single protagonist, the multi-headed party beast.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: I was a year ago a part of an extremely dysfunctional, long-running game, where the GM had "every character is the protagonist of his own story" as his guiding principle. The game was Amber, and I feel that said principle was at least a part of the failure of the game for me. One can never say for sure, of course. Picture a game of nine (9) people with a GM absolutely convinced of benefits of immersionism and character protagonism (which for him meant largely "no plot"). What do you get, when you remove the nine-headed party beast, like you have to with Amber...?

Thaaaat's right, we all sat around twirling our thumbs for two hours at a time, waiting to get a turn with the GM.
...
The game was "character protagonism" to the hilt, with me and only me deciding the story of my character. The GM even agreed to everything I wanted to do, so it was like I was writing a story about my character. No problems with that, but I prefer to do my writing with a text editor and a plan, not in strange little pieces of narrative to a "GM".

Eero Tuovinen wrote: A roleplayer perceives, is forced to perceive, the drama he creates when he gives it form. It's not just the other players (although they are important too) but he himself that gains the benefit from creating the external drama.
...
These examples illustrate how immersionism in general and internalized drama in particular is in great danger of being extremely dull and useless. When there's no verbalization the drama is more alike to abstract pictoral art; feelings, no thought.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: But to get on to your main question about the model, what kind of design would support this kind of internalized drama? My best guess is plain immersionist system, which largely means that GM decides everything. There's no serious immersionist games around afaIk but for Myrskyn Aika from Mike Pohjola.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: This is as good a justification and definition for immersionism as any. For all intents and purposes it seems that what you have here is Nordic immersionism.

I thought that the Turku manifesto rejected the idea of even internal authoring. The player was to "become" the character, such that the experiences were as direct as possible, with as little metagame thought process as possible. Does this represent an extreme of the Nordic scene, or is there some acceptance there that play is dull even for the player of the character in question if there is no authoring of any sort going on?

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: I thought that the Turku manifesto rejected the idea of even internal authoring. The player was to "become" the character, such that the experiences were as direct as possible, with as little metagame thought process as possible. Does this represent an extreme of the Nordic scene, or is there some acceptance there that play is dull even for the player of the character in question if there is no authoring of any sort going on?

John,

It's a side-note to the current dialogue, but the thread is about your essay so I'll post here.

You make some initial remarks, remarks that I think are extremely important for framing what you're up to, about puppetry. You mention the Japanese traditional puppet-art bunraku, which incidentally is only one of several such, and only a few hundred years old (just in case someone thought it was of great antiquity), though it is certainly the dominant one. At any rate, you mention in passing that "the experience for the audience is arguably lessened by having the illusion broken." Here, I think, you have gone astray, though I don't think it's your fault. And from this, in my opinion, your argument goes a bit off the rails.

I would encourage you to read up on the question of "realism" in drama, particularly (if you can find anything) in puppetry. One of the guiding aesthetics of bunraku is that precisely because some elements of the "real" are annulled, other elements come naturally to the fore. You might think of this like a person who loses a leg: there's an old notion that that person becomes much stronger in his upper body because of the absence. This is exactly what happens in several traditional Japanese arts: you remove one element in order to strengthen the rest, rather as though you had a given quantity of water and kept stopping up bits of a vast alchemical system of beakers and alembics.

For example, the visual aesthetic of some Japanese painting forms also emphasizes the use of negative space, of space in which nothing happens, as a way of emphasizing what happens in the other spaces by contrast. Similarly, in the dramatic art of No [read with macron], you eliminate vast regions of realism -- facial expression, ordinary movement, spontaneity, set design, props (in a realistic sense), and so forth. Part of the idea is that by eliminating all this, you force the audience to focus on the one thing that (in No) matters, which is the emotional intensity of the dominant character. As a way of helping guide us, there is a secondary character who elucidates and brings out the emotional force, and usually in terms of plot is the entering factor that causes the emotional force to manifest.

So for RPG's, this suggests that precisely the lack of immersion and realism in that sense can be used to create greater power in stories. For example, MLwM creates its effects and its drama by eliminating whole vast ranges of possible emotions and actions from the minion-PCs. This gives them a limited range of things to consider seriously, and arguably produces the desired effects in that fashion.

I'm not suggesting a subtractive theory of gaming, or anything, but that your theory of immersive storytelling seems necessarily to eliminate some aspects of the possibilities of gaming. It seems to me that one of the reasons No is not very popular here in the West is that we don't know what is supposed to be eliminated, so we don't know how to focus attention. If you had a game that deliberately eliminated aspects and make explicit what the tradeoffs were, you would have a powerful potential for interesting storytelling, whether immersive or otherwise.

It's worth remembering that the founders of No as a form were insistent that the man behind the mask does not live his character. It's as far from Stanislawski as possible: over-identification destroys characterization and power. I see these as equal possibilities.

Like Eero, I don't think you're constructing a proscriptive model, telling everyone how they ought to game. But it seems to me that your use of puppetry wants to pull in a quite different direction than you want it to.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: Anyway, if mr. Kim meant that the internalized drama would include authoring, that is, analytical structuring of the action, it gives things a somewhat different complexion. Authoring isn't possible without verbalization, you see, so an authored internal experience is for the player himself largely similar to an external one (except for the social dimension, of course). Implies things about my earlier writing.

So is it "I feel anguish for lost love" or is it "my character feels anguish for lost love"?

John Kim wrote:
Well, in my essay, I don't make any distinction between these two. I only distinguished based on the observable distinction of internal vs external. However, when you bring this up, the only answer I have is "both" or "neither".

clehrich wrote: At any rate, you mention in passing that "the experience for the audience is arguably lessened by having the illusion broken." Here, I think, you have gone astray, though I don't think it's your fault. And from this, in my opinion, your argument goes a bit off the rails.

I would encourage you to read up on the question of "realism" in drama, particularly (if you can find anything) in puppetry. One of the guiding aesthetics of bunraku is that precisely because some elements of the "real" are annulled, other elements come naturally to the fore.

However, the experience for the audience is arguably lessened by having the illusion broken. I would say that neither style is inherently better. Greater expression allows better stories, but the distraction of visible manipulators detracts from the story.

clehrich wrote: So for RPG's, this suggests that precisely the lack of immersion and realism in that sense can be used to create greater power in stories. For example, MLwM creates its effects and its drama by eliminating whole vast ranges of possible emotions and actions from the minion-PCs. This gives them a limited range of things to consider seriously, and arguably produces the desired effects in that fashion.

I'm not suggesting a subtractive theory of gaming, or anything, but that your theory of immersive storytelling seems necessarily to eliminate some aspects of the possibilities of gaming.

John Kim wrote:
OK, I'm going to disagree with you here, because you are implying that anything other than the externalization of a protagonist's inner struggle is inherently boring to watch. That has never been true in theater and it isn't true in RPGs, either.

contracycle wrote: I do agree that from the perspective of the individual player enjoying their protagonist role, the other characters primarily exist as supporting cast. But I also think that players are not solipsysts, and that the collective joy of the game arises in part from appreciation of the others players personal story too, as it were. This requires some degree of expression, exposition, on the part of the player, even for them to function as supporting characters.

I suppose you might say that I feel players have a duty to other players to express their characters to one another, to actively support and contribute to the shared inmaginary space.

John Kim wrote:

The immersive story paradigm suggests a different kind of expression for the player. Rather than projecting your own PC's issues outward to another player, your duty to another player is to help them along with their PC's story. For example, your PC might be a dramatic foil who serves as a contrast to the other PC's issues. This is different than trying to be a protagonist. A foil doesn't require sympathy or understanding. It does require believability and expression and depth, however.

RDU Neil wrote: I've only read your essay once, so I may have missed something, but... to your point above... wouldn't it be the player's responsibility to do BOTH in an immersive RPG play session? Similar to the the reality of players being both author and audience in an RPG... shouldn't the player do both, express their own PC's issues outward AND help other players with their PC? Be both protagonist and supporting cast (and in some games antagonist) all at once.

For you the player to have emotional engagement, you must delve into the personal issues of her own PC. This does not mean mentally contemplating the character, it means taking actions which are personally meaningful to the character. By playing through the consequences of your choices, the story develops meaning for you.

You are also a participant in other players' stories. However, this is not projecting your story to them. Rather, pieces of your story are the background and supporting pieces to their story.

RDU Neil wrote: All these modes of thought require at least a piece of the players mind being in a distanced and analytical position to look at the "whole story" being created... which to my mind is antithetical to true immersion. Wouldn't true immersion be "getting into character" so much you forget you are a character, and thus, just as in real life I don't think to myself, "How will my next action reflect a dramatic foil to my coworker" I would never think that while in an immersionist game?

John,
You wrote:

it means taking actions which are personally meaningful to the character.

RDU Neil wrote:

John Kim wrote: it means taking actions which are personally meaningful to the character.

But isn't that projecting your character to them? Good books and movies don't "tell" they show. So a protagonist acts, and through her actions we understand her character. How is this different?

RDU Neil wrote: And to the point of being a participant (i.e. a dramatic foil) for other players' stories, if you act in any way "in character" while being that foil, aren't you still projecting your character?

Did I miss something where you are using this priority schtick from GNS, and implying that only the one you are prioritizing is the real role? That seems unnecessary in this case. I see no reason why both couldn't be going on at the same time... acting as foil, but also demonstrating "projecting" your own character. Why the seeming need for such absolute division?

John Kim wrote:

As I discussed this to my friend Bill, what happens is a whole story for the individual player -- but that story mixes both expressed and unexpressed imagination. So other people only see half the story: the externally expressed half. Half a story is certainly very similar to a whole story, and you can say a lot of things which will apply to both. But it isn't the same thing.

The storytelling view tends to characterize purely internal experience as "waste". Put another way, anything imagined but not expressed is wasted -- which idealizes the case where player's imaginations roam no farther than exactly what is said in session. That is because it is viewed that the shared space is the product, and that there is only a single product and single story. The internalized stuff is valueless daydreaming.

Because they have no separate author and audience, RPGs have no separation of conceived story and perceived story.

RDU Neil wrote: might we say that the "character" is the text?
....
Now, just like a literary author can't force a reader to interpret the text exactly as the author intended, nor can a player expect others to interpret their character exactly as the intend. They can only set forth their character (describing actions and dialoge and even telling what internal thought the character might be having) as a text to be interpreted by the others.
....
But then, I am saying that conceived story means "intended" and perceived story is "actual" as it plays out... and yes, the perceived/actual story is different for every player... but I don't see that as any different than multiple readers interpreting the same text of a novel.

John Kim wrote:
However, the immersive story model values and uses internal conceived story. The product is not what is said at the table, but rather the sum of the individual internal experience. i.e. If everyone in the table has a deep and interesting experiences through the game, that is the goal -- even if the written transcript of what was said doesn't reflect that depth. The point is that the analogy of books and movies fails to capture what is different about RPGs. Because they have no separate author and audience, RPGs have no separation of conceived story and perceived story.

the essay wrote: To the Dramatist, the Immersionist may seem to be rejecting story as a goal. However, Immersionist play will produce a series of fictional events -- often with deep characters and intricate interactions. Is this not a story?

RDU Neil wrote:

John Kim wrote: The storytelling view tends to characterize purely internal experience as "waste". Put another way, anything imagined but not expressed is wasted -- which idealizes the case where player's imaginations roam no farther than exactly what is said in session. That is because it is viewed that the shared space is the product, and that there is only a single product and single story. The internalized stuff is valueless daydreaming.

Seems a bit extreme to say it is "wasted" but I would agree it is of less value. I'm not a big fan of the solipsitic type of play that emphasis on internal experience can create... but I'd never say it's wasted. It's just meaningless to anyone but that person, so it IS kind of valueless, by definition, to anyone but that person.

Jack Spencer Jr wrote:

the essay wrote: To the Dramatist, the Immersionist may seem to be rejecting story as a goal. However, Immersionist play will produce a series of fictional events -- often with deep characters and intricate interactions. Is this not a story?

My disconnect with all of this is right here because my answer is no. This is based mostly on my perception of story as an art object. A series of events is a story in the sense of "What's the story with this cellular phone bill?" but not in the sense, as Ron had said elsewhere (paraphrasing)"If it were written as a script and taken to Hollywood, we'd make a million dollars."

Jack Spencer Jr wrote: Also, if I'm understanding the concept correctly, it is simply life we're talking about. We each in our own lives experience life in our own heads and others don't always get to know what goes on inside. I may be missing a key element here, but for this experience, we don't need an RPG. That's fine and all, but I'm looking for stuff we do need and RPG for.

John Kim wrote:

Well, I consider it different because you might understand why your character is taking those actions, but it may not be clear to everyone else -- at least not to the depth that you envision it.

I feel I do have an audience-interest in the others players protagonist characters.

RDU Neil wrote: And this is where I'm struggline with this Immersive theory. While I totally agree that each individual will create their own story inside their own heads... I don't see how this is contradictory with enjoying being the audience to another player-characters actions.

RDU Neil wrote: In fact, those moments in a game where every player and the GM are focused on one character in a crucial moment... everyone else playing support to that character... that is often the most effective parts of the game for every player, not just the focus player. In a good game, every character will get their "spotlight moment" and assist and audience others in theirs.

Now, I think I know what you mean by prioritizing that kind of play, valuing those internal moments most... and I do see that in other players... but to tell the truth, that tends to drive me crazy. Players doing their own thing, ignoring others, not expressing their moment or their enjoyment to others... basically not sharing and totally "me" focused.

RDU Neil wrote: It's not enough to pay attention to others and play supporting cast, but you need to want and APPRECIATE others as audience... to put forth effort to show them what is going on inside your and your characters mind. If the PC is struggling and confused, it is up to the player to convey that to the rest, not just immerse themselves in their own mental world.

Now, yes, I'm stating this in absolutes, and I don't mean to say it that way, so I'll rephrase. How does the Immersion model deal with the responsibility of the player to project their character to the others and include the others as the audience of their personal story?

John Kim wrote:

From my point of view, they keep pushing to make the story more shallow -- i.e. with everything on the surface and no sense of as-yet-unexplored depth.

RDU Neil wrote: But if the depth is only apparent to you, the player of that character, why should they care about it? This is what I'm saying about responsibilty. If you want to be able to plumb the depths of your character, you need to make the others care about your attempts. You don't need to project exactly what is going through your character's mind, but you need to project that SOMETHING is going on... provide SOMETHING for the audience to react to... even if they don't understand it perfectly. I'm not looking for perfect understanding, just CONNECTING... trying to make the others care about your charcter, and caring about theirs. You can do this (and should, IMO) IN character... it's not breaking out into exposition... but if your internal world is full of drama, an RPG should be about how you share that drama with others, and grow that drama beyond what would exist if you were just imagining it by yourself.

RDU Neil wrote: I really think I've got a player in my group just like you. At the table, half the time it appears as if he is not paying attention or not interested in the game, but in one on one conversations, it is clear that a deep and meaningful internal story is happening for him, but he never shares it with the others. He is easily overlooked and it can be very frustrating for all of us, because miscommunication and worse happens because he's so internally focused, and not really connecting with the others (player or charcter.) Your model helps explain why he role plays at all, because sometimes I'm very confused since he doesn't seem to "get it" like the rest of us. If he is such an immersionist, then what he is getting is likely external stimulous (the game and other players) that help generate an interesting and deeper internal fantasy life.

Yes, I have a tough time not being emotional about this, because it seems selfish and solipsistic, because that player doesn't give back to the others, nor give them reason to care about him.

...(double post deleted)...

John's essay was really true to my own experience as a role-player. The crucial aspects of the story to me are often my character's uncommunicated experiences of the events. For years, I never tried to portray my character to the other players, but instead tried to stay in character. These are very different things. These days, I do worry more about acting for the benefit of other players, but its often at the expense of having less connection with my character.

For example, in one of the first games I really enjoyed, I played a male Amazon (a random result of background tables, not a conscious decision.) The highlight of playing this character was his viewpoint on gender roles. While he loved the personal freedom he got in non-matriarchal societies, he couldn't help feel that some things just weren't natural about them. We had a pair of warrior PCs, male and female, and if the woman got injured, she would insist that the party return to baseand heal up. My character would be thinking, ``What a wimp! Sven is twice the woman Silke will ever be!''. But the character would be trying to HIDEthe thought, not communicate it. So acting in character meant NOT portraying the parts of the character that mattered to me.

I think Brother L. is the best example of this. Brother L. was my most sick and twisted character ever. Not exactly evil, but paranoid, secretive, and power-hungry. He believed knowledge was power, and became a monk of a sect which venerated truth in order to get access to secret knowledge. The first adventure, we were all strangers wandering down a road when we were beset by strange creatures. Since he had never
encountered similar creatures, after the monsters were defeated, Brother L. healed them, in order to interrogat them later and possibly perform some vivisection experiments. The other PCs jumped to the conclusion that Brother L. had some extreme pacifist morality. I decided that Brother L., being paranoid and secretive, would want the party to stay deluded. When he learned that the goal of the most powerful PC was to obtain a magical gem, he decided that he needed to maintain the pacifist ruse in order to slip under the PC's guard and kill him before he could get the god-like powers of the gem. On many adventures, Brother L. acted like a pacifist, while secretly plotting betrayal. It was somewhat dull to play such a stereotypically benign monk, but I had fun with Brother L's secret plans and revenge fantasies. Since he had little combat power, pacifism wasn't much of a strategic sacrifice, and he had enough skills to keep himself useful. Finally, the gem came into our reach. Brother L grabbed it before the others had time to react. The GM said, ``Normally, using the power of the gem causes you to go insane, but since Borther L's motives are so pure, he gets an exception...'' He found it hard tobelieve me when I said, ``Actually, I'm using the gem to kill the rest of the party". I had to point to where it said ``paranoid'' not ``pacifist'' on my character sheet several times before he got it. In this case, I eventually portrayed his true nature, but that wasn't necessary for me to experience being a twisted monk for months.

I tyhink a complication is added with a conventiopnal players-and-GM structure. That is, I-as-GM, represent all the NPC's and whatnot as well. If a player character is conflicted, but this conflict is not expressed, I cannot have any NPC notice that and respond to it - even if they have Notice Distress at high levels.

I don't dispute the idea of the personal story at all, nor a proposed structure which tries to work on that basis, nor drawing attention to this possibilitiy in players. But I do say that if a detail is not expressed, as far as the othyer players are concerned it didn't happen. That may be unimportant, or it may be very important, if your versions of the SIS become more divergent. But I think players, like writers, must poroduce more than their own dialogue, they must produce thenthings I see and smell and touch as well. If Bob's been despondant, Bob's player should alert me to the fact that Bob is behaving that way, otherwise I may well proceed on the assumption that Bob is grooving on the same things I am.

Russell wrote:

Finally, the gem came into our reach. Brother L grabbed it before the others had time to react. The GM said, ``Normally, using the power of the gem causes you to go insane, but since Borther L's motives are so pure, he gets an exception...'' He found it hard tobelieve me when I said, ``Actually, I'm using the gem to kill the rest of the party". I had to point to where it said ``paranoid'' not ``pacifist'' on my character sheet several times before he got it. In this case, I eventually portrayed his true nature, but that wasn't necessary for me to experience being a twisted monk for months.

RDU Neil wrote: Point being, I'd never game with you again if you pulled this in any game I was in. All you did was create an argument over what "paranoid" means... and expect others to agree with your own internal, uncommunicated assumptions. Such a scene would have completely ruined the game for me, and if I was GM I'd have booted you from the group so fast you wouldn't know what hit you. This is exactly the kind of solipsistic, selfish, onansim that some claim passes for role playing that I was initially appalled to think that Nar play intended. I now realize that Nar play is completely against this in most cases, and it is a form of Sim play.

John Kim wrote:

Would it have made a difference if you were a player and the GM had known about the secret?

Jim didn't clue into this at all until the point when Thorfinn was revealed. So suddenly his interpretations of the last few months of play were revised in meaning.

It's interesting; there's some sort of fine distinction going on here, because I find myself fully agreeing with both of you and I'm not quite sure how that's possible on this issue.

On John's side, I certainly do see the Character Secret Gets Revealed thing as good fun, and as he says, something people remember later. It certainly helps, as Neil says, to drop hints all along the way, but I think that depending on the nature of the secret this doesn't have to be the whole issue; besides, the guy with the gem here is going to tell us that he's dropped hints all along the way and we just didn't pick them up.

On Neil's side, this is something I have seen done time and again by certain kinds of players, and in fact certain kinds of GM's, and I find it absolutely infuriating. Suddenly, out of nowhere, this hand grenade is thrown in the middle of a perfectly pleasant game, with an implicit or explicit, "Ha ha, think quick, gotcha, nya nya I win" kind of mentality. I hate this.

I guess the first question is whether the hints, and the surprise itself (or rather the issue to which it relates) is in fact anything that the other players have indicated interest in.

For example, Dave is secretly a demon wearing a flayed human skin, and he's been dropping hints about this for some time now. Thing is, the other players quite clearly dodge any sort of plot threads that have to do wtih demons, possession, or any of that. Let's assume that Dave is collaborating on the GM about this, so the GM has been tossing similar thematic material for a while, but the other players doggedly avoid it.

Conclusion: they don't give a damn about demon-possession stories.
Result: when Dave rips his face off and says, 'Ha ha, gotcha" the other players will be pissed.

In the same example, if the other players constantly seek out weird occult information to track down "real demons" or whatever, and are convinced there's some sort of demon-spy conspiracy, and so on and so forth, then when Dave rips his face off it may work rather better. On the other hand, the best-case scenario would be for the gang to be sitting around discussing it, and somebody starts to figure it all out, and you get this moment when everyone suddenly realizes, "Uh oh, um, Dave?" --- who promptly rips his face off and attacks, for fun and laughs all around.

I don't know; it's a fine line. John is right that the character secrets and issues, well told in a good context, can be some of the best moments in a whole campaign. But Neil is right that exactly the same material, set up wrong or for the wrong audience, go beyond sucking and into the actual fury zone.

A last example: I know someone who ran a game in which his wife's character was precisely the demon with the false face. They cooked this up before the campaign started, and the whole thing was a long, elaborate setup. They dropped hints and so forth, all the way. And looking back on it, my friend still laughs merrily when he tells the story of how totally surprised they were, and how [note this one clearly] damn stupid they all were when the hints were so clear....

Not surprisingly, the other players don't look back on this session or in fact this campaign terribly positively. They basically wanted to tell one kind of story, and the "big surprise" was that actually their attempts to do so were just self-delusion. Isn't that dandy? Ugh.

Just some ramblings, but frankly I don't think you guys are all that far in disagreement here, it's just that you're thinking of REALLY different examples.

There have been some strong reactions to my Brother L. anecdote. I over-simplified
several aspects so I may have been misleading.

First, we were using Hero system, where the character's psychological quirks are spelled out fairly precisely. At the start of the game, I had given my character sheet to the GM, and run through my character's paranoia and secretiveness with him. It was just that after several months of play, he had totally forgotten. I wasn't keeping anything purposefully secret from the GM.

I wasn't even (as a player) planning to keep anything secret from the other players. It just seemed that someone very secretive would keep some secrets until he trusted the other PCs. As it developed, the more he learned about the other PCs, the less he trusted them. I did perform some subtly non-pacifist actions, but that just resulted in discussions of whether I (as a player) should be reprimanded for breaking my character's supposed ``code vs. killing''. But since we were always fighting supernatural evil, I was repeatedly absolved. One of the other characters was a telepath, and I expected to be exposed at any minute, but it never happened.

The conversation I had with the GM was a private conversation since I was the only person who had contact with the gem. He had already told me that someone using the gem with impure intent would become a mind-controlled slave of the gem. I was informing him that my character's intentions should probably be considered bad, rather than pure as he thought. The result would NOT have been my character killing the rest of the stunned group, but my character, the weakest in combat, being an easily defeated pawn of the gem. The other players would probably think Brother L. was a good person controlled by an evil force, and never learned otherwise, so I wouldn't even have been able to say, ``Fooled you all!'' As it was, the game ended for other reasons before we played this out.

The main point is that I was not hiding information from the other players to give my character an unfair advantage, or to twist the story to make my character the anti-hero.
If I had had any ``in-character'' ways to divulge my character's nature, I would have taken them. But ``portraying'' my character by giving the other players insight wasn't
my goal, simulating my character was. As I wrote before, I do worry more about
portraying now than I did at the time.

clehrich wrote: It's interesting; there's some sort of fine distinction going on here, because I find myself fully agreeing with both of you and I'm not quite sure how that's possible on this issue.
...
Just some ramblings, but frankly I don't think you guys are all that far in disagreement here, it's just that you're thinking of REALLY different examples.

One of the problems of immersionism that's been pointed out here is that an immersionist player isn't always interesting to play with, to put it bluntly. A player who feels his character's emotions strongly and has a vivid internal experience of events, but does nothing to portray this to the other players, might be immersing strongly, but contributing nothing to the group. And he might even be portraying his character very accurately - if that character is a strong, silent type, or an introvert, or paranoid, etc.

I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand, players have a right to do whatever they enjoy, if it doesn't bother the others. On the other hand, if you don't interact and portray, you might as well go read a book or something. Perhaps a passive immersionist player should be encouraged to find some other (perhaps non-game) way to contribute to the group, since he/she is essentially leeching off others' efforts?

Note, also, that immersionism doesn't mean players who don't interact. If you immerse yourself into a violent, high-spirited, extremely talkative, or empathic character, that would definitely result in a high level of interaction.

Another problem that's been discussed is that of player secrets. This is not a necessary part of immersionism. It's quite possible, and often more enjoyable, to divulge secrets OOC, but keep them IC. Thorgerds struggles to keep her identity a secret could have been a good show for the whole party if the players were let in on the secret, but the characters weren't. My point is that immersionism shouldn't be criticized for this kind of secrecy.

Russell Impagliazzo wrote:
I did perform some subtly non-pacifist actions, but that just resulted in discussions of whether I (as a player) should be reprimanded for breaking my character's supposed ``code vs. killing''. But since we were always fighting supernatural evil, I was repeatedly absolved. One of the other characters was a telepath, and I expected to be exposed at any minute, but it never happened.

They might be hard to understand, but they aren't passively sitting by themselves. The hard-to-understand depth makes them more interesting in my mind, not less.

i.e. If you pay attention to internal detail, that makes your character passive and uninteresting to other players.

contracycle wrote:

Not if you PORTRAY that internal detail to which you are paying so much attention. Paying attention to internal story does not inherently imply keeping it to yourself. But if you don't portray it, it didn't happen as far as I am am concerned.

Apologies for coming into this thread at such a late time, but I find I have too little time these days to keep up to pace with all the Forge's discussions. Very interesting discussion going on in this thread!

Roleplaying is a social activity, but as always, every player coming to the table is an individual. So clearly, there is both internal movement and external movement around the table, whatever happens. Emphasis can be placed on either in varying degrees, but in all cases it will be there on both dimensions.

I believe the crossing of these boundaries -- this external/internal divide -- to being crucial to role-playing. External actions declaring internal states. Internal states adapting to external circumstances. Indeed, the shady middleground is where it's at, at least for me. Here can be found the true feeling of the story being engaging and the shared world real, independent of all other technical concerns. There is potency within the internal realm as immersion and in the shared external realm as strong narrative. The GM can be seen as a facilitator for this: the person who takes the player's hand (and with license) takes you to that Otherworld (see El Dorado). Once back outside of it, it may be difficult to say if the feelings were your's or your characters. Therein lies the magic.

Also, I think the term audience to be somewhat misleading. Certainly there is an audience to your actions while at the table, as there are other human beings present, but the implication here seems to be that the audience is analogous to a theater/movie audience. Roleplaying is its own medium and while it can benefit from learning and importing from other medias, we should be careful of not importing artificial structural limitations that simply are not relevant (unless, in the special case of, we seek to emulate another medium as an objective in our game). You are the actor and the audience, multiplied by the number of players. A rather unique situation.

The question then being: should we as role-players enjoy watching others in the act of roleplaying or should we perhaps gain our enjoyment strictly through our own immersion into our characters? Again, either can be true (and in my preferred gaming style, both ought to be). In the case that neither is, I don't think there is much point in playing.

- Joachim Buchert -

I think the term audience to be somewhat misleading.

OK, there seems to be a fundamental impasse here. Neil and contracycle both claim that character immersion is inherently passive. i.e. That somehow mysteriously if I am acting as my character that always means that I am doing absolutely nothing and nothing is visible to the other players.

I think the exact opposite -- and I clearly say so in my essay. Character is action, and thus passivity is bad for immersion and immersive story. Now, if you were to rail against active and emotional play which is mysterious to you, I could accept that as valid. But if you continue to claim that I am advocating passivity, then I don't think conversation can continue.

Moreover, the essay does not identify immersive story as simply acting as the character (i.e. a common definition of "character immersion"). It advocates drama where the player consistently identifies with their own PC as the protagonist. This inherently means that each player experiences a related-but-different story.

---------

I can try to guess at what's causing the disconnect here, but these are only guesses. One is a limited view of acting -- perhaps influenced by stage acting (?). In this, if I want my character to express something, I have to first think of what to express, and then as a separate step come up with an externalization of how to express that. The thinking-as-character itself isn't visible.

However, particularly in a close environment (like film close-ups or being across the table from an RPG player), the latter isn't necessarily true. Natural emotional states are visible through facial expression and gesture. This is the basis of Stanislavsky's method. Moreover, it is even more true in an RPG where a character's actions can be freely determined on the basis of character thought.

Another possibility is that passivity perhaps can result from failure to engage players who would prefer immersive play. This suggests that the character is not supported as a protagonist -- other PCs do not act in supporting roles, the GM does not help, and perhaps the player isn't able (for whatever reason) to pro-actively pursue his character's goals. Neil discusses the case of a passive PC:

RDU Neil wrote: Portrayal can be this subtle... often is best this way... but a player playing such a character can't just sit quietly because "that's what the character would do." Instead, they need to describe things like distracted looks, a twitch, the state of the person's affects/equipment/home... whatever. The point is to give something to the group. This does require extensive verbal skills, probably better skills than those of the more extroverted, spill it all out, type. It requires a sublime sense of description and dramatic timing.

John Kim wrote: OK, there seems to be a fundamental impasse here. Neil and contracycle both claim that character immersion is inherently passive. i.e. That somehow mysteriously if I am acting as my character that always means that I am doing absolutely nothing and nothing is visible to the other players.

I think the exact opposite -- and I clearly say so in my essay. Character is action, and thus passivity is bad for immersion and immersive story. Now, if you were to rail against active and emotional play which is mysterious to you, I could accept that as valid. But if you continue to claim that I am advocating passivity, then I don't think conversation can continue.

I can try to guess at what's causing the disconnect here, but these are only guesses. One is a limited view of acting -- perhaps influenced by stage acting (?). In this, if I want my character to express something, I have to first think of what to express, and then as a separate step come up with an externalization of how to express that. The thinking-as-character itself isn't visible.

However, particularly in a close environment (like film close-ups or being across the table from an RPG player), the latter isn't necessarily true. Natural emotional states are visible through facial expression and gesture. This is the basis of Stanislavsky's method. Moreover, it is even more true in an RPG where a character's actions can be freely determined on the basis of character thought.

Regardless of how well it is done, I can't imagine being interested by a player narrating poetically about how her character is giving distracted looks and twitches. I might be if the player physically acted it out, but in general I would say that the character should not just be sitting there. The character should be involved and interacting, pursuing his story.

contracycle wrote:

John Kim wrote: I think the exact opposite -- and I clearly say so in my essay. Character is action, and thus passivity is bad for immersion and immersive story. Now, if you were to rail against active and emotional play which is mysterious to you, I could accept that as valid. But if you continue to claim that I am advocating passivity, then I don't think conversation can continue.

Now you are conflating character passivity with player passivity. If the character is moving and walking and talking, then the player is necessarily portraying that character, commmunicating its actions to the group or audience. I have no problem with that; I DO have a problem with a player who communicates nothing to this audience and then expects us to acknowledge some mental or emotional state on the part of the character, which is more or less how you seem to be arguing this immersive story should play out.

contracycle wrote:

John Kim wrote: Regardless of how well it is done, I can't imagine being interested by a player narrating poetically about how her character is giving distracted looks and twitches. I might be if the player physically acted it out, but in general I would say that the character should not just be sitting there. The character should be involved and interacting, pursuing his story.

Well I find that surprising. In your game, given the situation and all the delicacy involved, would it be implausible to have a player say "my character squirms with embarrasment", and/or to adopt some posture and body language that conveys this to the other players? I find this a completely normal and unremarkable technique, and I have indeed seen it done well, and done it myself. I can't really understand how it is that this is different to "pursuing their story", and furthermore, if self-reflection implies disengagement from story, then how is any form of internal story possible?

Hiya! I've tried to refrain from commenting on Mr. Tuovinen's views on my game Myrskyn aika, but here's a clear error I noticed. (I don't read the Forge regularly, so you'll have to forgive me for opening up a discussion that ended in April.)

Eero Tuovinen wrote: There's no serious immersionist games around afaIk but for Myrskyn Aika from Mike Pohjola. The tragedy is that it supports immersionism best when giving the standard "GM is always right" advice and worst in actual mechanics (pure setting/character sim).

Of course you get even stronger immersionism (and stronger internalized drama, presumably) by larping it, which is a good reason for many immersionists being larpers.

John Kim wrote: *snip*
So you see this play as "selfish" because it's not the kind of play you like. i.e. You would hate to be surprised in this way, and to re-interpret events. But for players who like it, this sort of internal character development is feeding the game with added depth that goes beyond what is obvious on the surface.

Noon wrote: Sure you might not be able to trust them to seperate IC and OOC info, but everyone is still trusting you to share rather than enjoy something by yourself which is a product of the groups shared creation.