jimboboz: "Immersive" roleplaying

jimboboz (

jimboboz) wrote,
@ 2006-08-30 18:44:00

Entry tags:

roleplaying

"Immersive" roleplaying
John Kim writes in jhkimrpg, "Immersively played characters will frequently break the rules: by splitting the party, by questioning other PCs, and by failing to follow the meta-game cues for the direction of the adventure."

I smell an Attention Junkie.

It's interesting that when people speak of "immersion", they speak of an individual acting against or tangentially to a group, and seeking their own individual story separate to others.

That is nothing intrinsic to "immersion" in this character acting individually; it's simply a character who is more loner than gregarious, who believes that their destiny can best be found alone, rather than in a group.

If you find that you prefer to immerse yourself in characters who act individually rather than with groups, that says something about you and your choices in character creation and roleplaying, and says nothing about "traditional play". Where John Kim says "traditional play... is not at all character-immersive", I would say, "traditional play encourages teamwork rather than one character being the star of the show."

It's entirely possible to be "immersed" in a team. For example, is it truly possible to roleplay a character on their own? For a bit, perhaps - but the opportunities for expression of personality are limited. Navel-Gazing, the RPG?

Personality is expressed by interactions between a person and the environment and people around them, in fine:

- reactions to events - what the GM presents
- to NPCs - again, presented by the GM
- and to other player characters - presented by other players.

The first two allow for roleplaying in a one-on-one game, or in a game where the party gets split up. The third requires that the party stay together, more or less.

Why is it that in speaking of "immersive play", you think only of the first two? Why do you not think of how your character's personality might be expressed by way of other player-characters? Do you only immerse yourself in loners? Are you never immersed in gregarious, sociable, team-oriented characters?

"Traditional play" assumes that roleplaying is a social hobby. Social hobbies require other people, interacting with other people. "Traditional play" assumes that as you are, so will your character be; if you are being social, you will want your character to be social. If you are not social, then roleplaying is a strange hobby to take up.

When you're wandering away from the party and the plot, are you really being "immersive", or are you just being an Attention Junkie? "Look at me! Look at me! I'm walking away from the party and the adventure! So either the GM will run a one-on-one game with me and ignore everyone else, or the whole party will chase after me and beg me to stay! Wooohoo! Attention!"

(Post a new comment)

jhkimrpg
2006-08-31 07:31 pm UTC (link)

The specific post here is "Immersion Links", by the way.

In general, obviously there can be a person who is an attention junkie. I'm not going to defend attention junkies. However, there are also people who play immersively without being attention junkies. I don't see that the two are correlated.

jimboboz wrote: Why is it that in speaking of "immersive play", you think only of the first two? Why do you not think of how your character's personality might be expressed by way of other player-characters? Do you only immerse yourself in loners? Are you never immersed in gregarious, sociable, team-oriented characters?

To answer these in order. First, I'm not thinking only of the first two -- social interaction is one of the key parts of play for me. However, social interaction also implies the possibility for difference, dissent, and/or conflict. The interaction with other *characters* has no substance if they all act in groupthink.

I often immerse in gregarious, sociable, team-oriented characters. However, it is fairly normal for sociable characters to leave physical proximity of each other regularly. It is normal for gregarious, social people to not be single-minded focused on accomplishing a single team plot. For that matter, acting as a team often means splitting the party.

To pick an old example, I remember playing a convention game at one point where my PC was a thief who was written as being in love with another party member. We came up with a plan for accomplishing the mission, but during execution she ditched on her part of it and went to shadow her love and protect him. It endangered the success of the mission, but was safer overall (in particular for him) since we could ditch upon failure. She was gregarious, social, and cared about interaction with other PCs. However, she also chose to put the person she loved over success of the mission. What I remember was that most of the other players were quite pissed, because to them the point of play was accomplishing the mission.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

jimboboz
2006-09-01 12:03 am UTC (link)

It's true that social interaction implies the possibility of conflict within the group. But roleplaying that conflict can certainly be "immersive". "Traditional play" certainly does not suppose that the group will never have conflicts. Look at popular webcomics about game groups, or the semi-parody rpg Hackmaster: intra-party conflict is mentioned constantly as one of the fun things about gaming.

Certainly sociable characters will at times split the party; certainly acting as a team sometiems requires splitting the party. I don't dispute that. What I do say is that this has nothing to do with "immersive" play. Whether the party is more often split than together reflects quite simply the players' approach to roleplaying and accomplishing the mission. Note that "the mission" may be given them by the GM, which I suppose you would call "traditional play", or it may be given them by themselves, which you might call "immersive play" (or at least a step towards "immersive play").

"Immersive play" is neither more nor less likely to split the party and disrupt the "mission", whatever that might be.

I think perhaps the key point is whether the "mission" is given by the GM or by the PCs themselves. So when you speak of "traditional play" not allowing the party to be split, and "immersive play" causing it to be split, I think you are mistaking a symptom for a cause. The cause of the discomfort is not "traditional" vs "immersive", but simply what most would call "mission-based campaigns" vs "player-directed campaigns."

In your example, the other players were fools. Every plan must have a backup, "what do we do if we fuck up?" Her actions, "immersive" or not, provided that backup. So whether they cared for "immersive" play or not is irrelevant; if they cared for the mission, they needed a backup.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

jhkimrpg
2006-09-01 02:14 am UTC (link)

jimboboz wrote:So when you speak of "traditional play" not allowing the party to be split, and "immersive play" causing it to be split, I think you are mistaking a symptom for a cause. The cause of the discomfort is not "traditional" vs "immersive", but simply what most would call "mission-based campaigns" vs "player-directed campaigns."

Well, it may not be logically necessary -- but my experience has been that player focus on a unified mission is strongly correlated with non-immersive, thin character play where the players emphasize solving tactical/problem-solving challenges over deep characters.

It seems like you taken an offhand reference to party-splitting, and taken it to be logical argument that "immersive players can never fit into a party ever" -- which obviously isn't the case. A rule against party-splitting is just an example of a common (in my experience), unspoken meta-game rule.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

jimboboz
2006-09-01 04:42 am UTC (link)

Correlation is not causation. The cause of parties sticking together is not "non-immersive, thin character play", but simply the social nature of roleplaying. It's easiest for players to be social, everyone having fun, if their characters are also social and sticking together.

As I noted on the RPGSite thread on the topic, I don't think gamers are really against splitting the party as such; they're just against being bored. In my other roleplaying posts I talk about sessions where the party was split: one where the non-acting PCs were bored, and one where they loved it. The real issue was not whether or not they were participating at that particular moment, but whether they'd been able to choose whether to participate, and whether the events they were merely watching were interesting to them or not.

"Offhand references" are important, because when discussing things abstractly - as you did in your LJ psot about "immersion" - those offhand comments provide the applied examples of the pure ideas. If the applied examples are wrong, then that strongly suggests you need to look at the ideas themselves.

The applied examples are missing the point of roleplaying for most people, which is having social fun.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	jhkimrpg 2006-09-01 06:33 am UTC (link)
	Since you've posted in both places, I've replied on the RPGSite thread. See you over there. (Reply to this)(Parent)

Mini Sitemap:

Username:		Create an Account Forgot your login? Login w/ OpenID
Password:
	Remember Me
	English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…