Yeah, the other James pointed out my misunderstanding with the names.

Jesus Christ I can't even imagine what it must be like to play with you guys.

Let me be clear, I think it would be interesting, it's just not the way I've ever played (that deep).

I remember being in a group where I was looked at askew simply for not using OOC knowledge, they would have shit if I was that deeply in character.

Note: Don't get me wrong, I loved playing that way, and still do as it's what's mostly natural for me. But I'd love to just watch a session of you guys just to see what it's like.

Quote from: James J SkachDon't get me wrong, I loved playing that way, and still do as it's what's mostly natural for me. But I'd love to just watch a session of you guys just to see what it's like.

Probably not that different from your own gaming. I've met a lot of gamers through email, they give these lengthy elaborate descriptions of their gaming style, then we sit down to game, and they end up rolling dice, eating cheetos and talking shit like everyone else...

Quote from: JimBobOzProbably not that different from your own gaming. I've met a lot of gamers through email, they give these lengthy elaborate descriptions of their gaming style, then we sit down to game, and they end up rolling dice, eating cheetos and talking shit like everyone else...

Guilty as charged.  

And given that when we do get into the intense role-playing, our games can drop into near real-time play and whole sessions can be a lot of talking and stuff that's important to individual characters but not very interesting to anyone else, I suspect that many sessions of the games I play in would be really boring to watch.

Quote from: John MorrowYour "Mr. Would-be Heartthrob" (Mr. WBH) example points to the key of what I usually do.  You mentioned how your in character perception of Mr. WBH as a "dangerous jerk" (assuming the player wasn't really a "dangerous jerk").

No, the player just couldn't portray suave and amazingly charming, and that's how the failed attempt came across IC to my character.

QuoteThat's the sort of thing I fiddle with. What I do is translate that into something closer to what's intended for my character or simply ship it along with a feeling that goes along with it.  So long as the feeling is at least reasonably sensible, I can use it in character.  So, for example, if I realized that Mr. WBH was simply portraying his character badly, I might pass a more suave version of what he's doing along to my character or I might just pass the scene to my character with a mental note to the effect "You feel that's really suave" and just plug that in.  To a certain degree, I've learned to accept those cues along with descriptions such that I can nudge my character to like, trust, distrust, dislike, etc. NPCs.  No, it won't work if everything else about the scene is screaming for a different interpretation.  But when it's easier, I can pull that off.

Well, it was a marked reaction from my character, and I didn't hear the explanation for what Mr. WBH's player was trying to do until well after the fact, so I didn't even have the OOC information to try to work with until we'd already played a lot based on the original reaction.  If I'd known in a timely manner I might have been able to say, "OK, that scene didn't really happen that way ... " and try to retcon that part of it.  But that would have been pretty damaging in a couple of other directions, because three other important relationships for my character changed or shifted during it, one as a result of my character's view of Mr. WBH.

And it wasn't clear at the time to anybody what kind of an effect that scene and my character's interpretation thereafter would have.  It was only after it played out that Mr. WBH's not having another good path into the thick of things became apparent.  "Hey, he's not getting much spotlight time."  "Well, all the rest of us are psionicists and members of psionicist guilds, and even if we're enemies we all know each other and speak each other's language, and he ... poles a boat.  Oh, yeah, and besides that my character thinks ... " "Well, we sort of thought the teenagers would get together."  But the girl was played by another immersionist, and she fell hard for my character, rather than Mr. WBH.  So the expected tie never materialized.

Quote from: KeranNo, the player just couldn't portray suave and amazingly charming, and that's how the failed attempt came across IC to my character.

Yeah, I got that.  My point was to translate it for your PC so that it seemed suave and amazingly charming to your PC even if it wasn't.  It sounds like part of the problem was that the player didn't communicate the intent so you couldn't filter.  That's fine.  But could you have filtered if the player had told you what they were trying to do?

Quote from: KeranBut that would have been pretty damaging in a couple of other directions, because three other important relationships for my character changed or shifted during it, one as a result of my character's view of Mr. WBH.

Well, that's a "path not taken" discussion and you'll never really know if it might have been just as interesting the other way, though it's good that you enjoyed how it did run.  But I think the point here is that it sounds like you could have nudged the character by changing their perception of Mr. WBH's dialog if you had recognized what was going on and wanted to, correct?  And while I can see how you'd see that as a retcon, what I do is apply a real time translator to the situation so I don't have to rewrite it after the fact.  It's like having the character speak into a suave and charming modulator and having the character hear suave and charming out of the other side.  It can work as a retcon, too, and the net effect is the same.  The character's perception of the situation has been changed on purpose.

Quote from: John MorrowGuilty as charged.  

And given that when we do get into the intense role-playing, our games can drop into near real-time play and whole sessions can be a lot of talking and stuff that's important to individual characters but not very interesting to anyone else, I suspect that many sessions of the games I play in would be really boring to watch.

Well, tonight's session, I rolled dice twice, in private.  The only OOC remarks during the session (aside from "brb") were about the game.  We played for about four hours and a quarter, typing at each other.  I drank tea; I have no idea what anyone else did for refreshments, as one player isn't in my state and the other isn't on my continent.  I spent most of it channelling the world, which isn't as wonderful as deep IC but still fun.

I was in reasonably good form.  The major action tonight involved one of the PCs getting past a complex ward to scry the contents of a room the villains have been keeping sealed; she discovered a reliquary with disturbing contents.

It's interesting to watch other people's scenes if one has some engagement with the story.  For completely uninvolved third parties, however, I suspect we'd leave a lot to be desired as entertainment.  I mean ... ... there are 218 poses, 128 of which are in-world, some two dozen of which are about who's present, etc., and remarking on future sessions, and the rest are about the matter of the present session. Or, roughly, someone says something a bit more than once every two minutes.

It's possible to watch one of our games if one has a MU* client or telnet, and I don't think the players would mind, but I suspect we might render someone who doesn't have any investment in the story comatose.  Especially since, yes, we also often are doing *slower than realtime* play  (we have to type the conversations) and dealing with things that are interesting in deep IC, but not at all interesting to anyone who doesn't have a connection to the character.

If one's other hobby is watching glaciers, we're probably drop dead fascinating.  Otherwise I have my doubts.

Quote from: John MorrowYeah, I got that.  My point was to translate it for your PC so that it seemed suave and amazingly charming to your PC even if it wasn't.  It sounds like part of the problem was that the player didn't communicate the intent so you couldn't filter.  That's fine.  But could you have filtered if the player had told you what they were trying to do?

Hmm.  Good question.  I think I could have made a stab at it.  I wouldn't actually have any memories of convincing play here -- I think it'd come out as a patch, a blur, much the way retcons appear: they're not good, but if I don't have to contend with them too often, they're not fatal. As long as subsequent play fits in reasonably well with the patch, it's OK.

What I might not be able to deal with subsequent play that kept reinforcing my character's original impression.  At that point I doubt my suspension of disbelief would survive.

One night when I was playing, and not in terribly good form (post-migraine daze), I had an immersible character take an action that anyone else would have taken under the circumstances.  And it didn't feel entirely right, but I didn't figure out at the time either why it wasn't right, or what he would have done instead.  After the session -- I don't remember whether it was later that night or next day -- I suddenly realized that Tzaich couldn't possible have done what I'd said he did because it would have broken what, for the sake of brevity, I'll describe as a geas (in the old legendary sense of geas: the thing that will mystically bring down ruin on the hero if he ever does it).  Tzaich, having very strong magic, also had a very strong geas against pretending to be someone else: the closest he ever dared to get was to translate his name into another language and neglect to mention his origin.  And I'd shown him pretending to belong to another tribe.

I hadn't previously realized the existence of the geas.  It and its magical effects made sense of various other odd presentiments that I'd had that were previously unexplained.  So I had to retcon a part of the previous session.  The character model was refusing to accept what I'd played, and clearly pointing to something I hadn't consciously understood at first.

The retcon left me with a blurry grasp of that particular incident.  But I never again played in a manner that didn't account for the geas, and so the whole thing 'healed' around the retcon -- not perfectly, but adequately.

Quote from: KeranWhat I might not be able to deal with subsequent play that kept reinforcing my character's original impression.  At that point I doubt my suspension of disbelief would survive.

Yes.  I would guess that's a combination of the effort involved to keep translating and that if the translation fails or is forgotten even just once or a few times, it can cause a disconnect between the translated and untranslated version of the same character, right?

Quote from: KeranI hadn't previously realized the existence of the geas.  It and its magical effects made sense of various other odd presentiments that I'd had that were previously unexplained.  So I had to retcon a part of the previous session.  The character model was refusing to accept what I'd played, and clearly pointing to something I hadn't consciously understood at first.

I think that's a good example of how thinking in character can produce some incredibly deep and interesting linkages between things that don't seem readily connected to the player.  This sort of in character subconscious experience really fascinates me.

Quote from: KeranThe retcon left me with a blurry grasp of that particular incident.  But I never again played in a manner that didn't account for the geas, and so the whole thing 'healed' around the retcon -- not perfectly, but adequately.

Sometimes I can tap my GM skills (I do GM from time to time) to retcon in a fairly detailed scene to produce the desired memory and replace the real events.  The bigger problem that I've seen comes from when the inconsistency is so intertwined with something else or has already triggered an important series of events that to retcon it is to replay a large chunk of the game all over again.  What I often do there is to just try to sequester the memory from the character so they don't dwell on it or build on it.  It does create a sort of "scar" that the character has to avoid touching but it call allow the game to continue if it doesn't bother anyone else.

Quote from: John MorrowYes.  I would guess that's a combination of the effort involved to keep translating and that if the translation fails or is forgotten even just once or a few times, it can cause a disconnect between the translated and untranslated version of the same character, right?

I'm not aware of having a translation routine for general use that works while I'm in deep IC.  I can retcon at the cost of blurriness and some disruption.  I can step out momentarily, ask the GM how something is generally perceived in the character's culture, and fill in the character model from there.  I'm sometimes aware of getting pulled out of character because I the player am also listening, even if I'm usually in the background, and sometimes I start seeing patterns that indicate there's something OOCly wrong with what another player is doing -- signs of bad social dynamics, signs of someone using their play as an excuse to bully, that sort of thing.

I haven't really been thinking along these lines, though, and it may be that, now that I am, I'll notice myself doing something more like it in play.