Quote from: Koltar;242786Sometimes "IMMERSION" has less to do with game mechanics and more to do with a good GM and players that trust him or her.

Exactly Ed. I mean I've seen some play which seemed realy immersive (or so I assume) with what I would consider "immersive breaking mechanics" and then realize that my so-called "immersive mechanics" ain't so immersive to some after all. It really depends on the group. Their familiarity with the system, the kind of play they expect from each other etc.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: TonyLB;242736How do people balance immersing in their characters and the fictional situation with the real-life necessity of (say) rolling dice?

As long as the dice map to something outside of my character's control, I map the die result onto what my character experiences the same way I map the GM's descriptions onto what my character sees, hears, etc.  I'd prefer that the mechanics don't intrude on what my character is thinking or deciding to do unless the mechanics inform something that's not entirely under my character's control (e.g., fear, endurance, etc.).

Sometimes immersion means immersed in the activity of playing the game, rather than playing out the story. I can be extremely immersed in a boardgame, managing points, resources, die rolls, my objectives, and my perception of other players' objectives. I put myself in that groove, and as long as we aren't interrupted for a while, it just goes clicking along, and I lose any sense of time. That's an immersive experience to me--when I look up and think "wow, where did the last four hours go?"

For rpgs, I like a consistent, no nonsense, internally logical system without any metagame agenda, rule-breaking resource points, or built-in minigames. BRP is the best example, but I get a lot of mileage out of most well-thought out generics.

It's worth noting that after I get over the initial learning curve and internalize rules for a new system, the crunchiness doesn't matter. I find CORPS as satisfying as GURPS or Hero. I find RoleMaster and Talislanta both highly immersive, though probably for different reasons.

Mechanics which can fade into the background usually do, when you have a good group.

Quote from: stu2000;242888Sometimes immersion means immersed in the activity of playing the game, rather than playing out the story.

Yeah, sorry for the vagueness of the term.  I'm talkin' about immersion into the character and the game fiction.

Quote from: Jackalope;242841I recently got exposed to Action Points (from Eberron) for the first time, and I actually found they greatly increase my sense of immersion.  It feels more like I'm watching and participating in a story unfolding when certain things occur when I expect them to.

I find action points help prevent the very realism of the game from creating story-holes that take me out of the action.

Oh don't get me wrong, they work alright. The difference is--if the mechanics worked to ALREADY do that without action points, wouldn't that be better? I'm not saying action points are bad at all, just they are a method we use to get the results we want--but not the only one. In some games it feels like if they'd just tried harder mechanically they could have resolved the situation without using a resource of the PLAYER, instead a resource of the character.

Quote from: Silverlion;242910Oh don't get me wrong, they work alright. The difference is--if the mechanics worked to ALREADY do that without action points, wouldn't that be better? I'm not saying action points are bad at all, just they are a method we use to get the results we want--but not the only one. In some games it feels like if they'd just tried harder mechanically they could have resolved the situation without using a resource of the PLAYER, instead a resource of the character.

Agreed 100%, Tim. In Cold Space/FTL Now, Blood Games II, and the IHW series, I used LUCK - a character stat - not a player-bound mechanic for exactly that reason. The character has luck, not the player.

-clash

No firm answer, I don't think, and I believe it's a quite variable reaction people have.

Generally speaking, the longer the mechanical steps and the less those steps map to any in-game reality, the harder it is to immerse. This is one of my concerns about 4e; a LOT of the abilities and strategies (and the freakin' map) don't have any strong connection to the setting.

I love the idea of cards*, but I've found them very distracting. TORG, one of my favorite games ever, has a fucking brilliant use of cards to shape pacing. But, ultimately, it's a very gamy artifact.

In the end, I think the mechanics have to be internalized by the players and have a degree of ease before they get out of the way of immersion. How easily that happens depends; some players are quite fine with rather complex, numbery systems, and feel it really helps them get into the world. Others find that a stone wall.

I would just recommend using the simplest mechanics you think do what you want in the game, select toward mechanics that have some intuitive connection to in-game stuff, and there you go.


*Expounding on cards:
The problem with cards is when you are playing a card game, and then translating the results into something going on in the world. This translation is often very... tenuous. Consider Dust Devils. Cool game idea: Western game where you play a poker hand to decide the outcome of a scene, with person getting highest card describing out how the scene resolves.
But the process of the poker game has absolutely nothing substantive to do with the world; the actions and decisions you make are not connected to the rules of the world, but rather the rules of the card game. A pair of Aces have nothing to do with 'I duck over here and then...'

Quote from: TonyLB;242736How do people balance immersing in their characters and the fictional situation with the real-life necessity of (say) rolling dice?

Are there some die rolls that are less immersion-breaking than others?  If, for instance, you throw a die and it tells you what type of actions you can choose to undertake, does that shake you out of immersion more than saying "Okay, I'm swinging my sword at him, let's see if I hit!" and throwing a die?  I'm pretty sure (from my own experiences in immersion) that it would ...

I think my current theory is that mechanics that you can call upon to say "I'm trying this, but its success or failure is partly outside my character's control, so I'm happy to throw dice to see how those parts work out" are pretty solid for supporting immersion.  Does that sound right to the folks who take this matter deadly seriously?

At the risk of giving myself a heart attack I'll answer "Yes".

*ek*

... please send my corpse to Heaven's Gate Cemetary.   I prefer burial to cremation.  kthnxbye.

Quote from: Will;243047The problem with cards is when you are playing a card game, and then translating the results into something going on in the world. This translation is often very... tenuous.

Yeah, on a side-note:  I find that wierd.  I agree that I've seen exactly what you're saying, I just don't understand why.

When people make a dice system, they seem to find it very easy to map each roll of the die to an action in the fictional world.

When people make a card system, they less often make each play of a card correspond to a fictional action.  Castle Falkenstein is a notable exception.  But yeah, mostly, the card game is a separate thing.

I don't know why shifting between dice and cards puts designers in such a different mindset.

Well, imagine a dice game where matched sets do various things and you have to look up stuff on tables to determine how the dice interact. And then define what that means in game terms.

I think the root is that 'I have X odds, let's randomize' is a very thin line between mechanics and world.

I mean, if you had a system where you draw a card to generate a number each time, the divide would be narrow! Except there'd be little point to using the cards, then.

It's a shame. Cards sound so nifty. Mind you, if you are willing to give up a bit of immersion in exchange for cool gameplay elements, hey, go for it; not every game needs to be really immersive.

Quote from: Will;243099I mean, if you had a system where you draw a card to generate a number each time, the divide would be narrow! Except there'd be little point to using the cards, then.

Still lotsa good things you can do with them:  A hand, for a start.  But maybe this should be split off to another thread?

No, keep it here.

Briefly, the reason cards lead to that sort of design is because cards are designed for persistence and choice. Dice aren't. You can switch them around (if you know Kingmaker event cards, there's an example of cards being used like dice; meanwhile DitV kind of uses dice like cards) but it's often clumsy and against the spirit of the tool.

Cards can be used in an immersive fashion when they represent transient menus of opportunities that a character has to select from; in this sense, the limitation imposed by cards can actually aid immmersion if viewed from the right angle.

Like Lace and Steel's menu of combat opportunities?  Yeah, some times you'd really like to go for a High Thrust, but it's just not on your menu at the moment.  Maybe your footing is wrong.

Sounds like it's in the right ballpark.

A hypothetical example would be a game of political struggle and intrigue. (As an aside, I should mention a third element of play that's more naturally handled by cards than dice: asymmetrical access to limited information.) You have a hand representing various persons and organizations that you can influence and use--so does the other player. It's assumed that the struggle is carried out through the agency of a fairly centralized "core" of plotters who are pulling the strings on each side. This "core" is the players. The people represented by the cards, on the other hand, have limited initiative, by which I mean they don't really do much unless they're made to do so.

So now we have a mechanic where you draw a card sometimes, representing gaining access to some element of the city, and you play a card sometimes, representing setting it in motion. Generally speaking, players take turns, but the precise mechanics of drawing/playing could allow for doing more than one on your turn, for example depending on special abilities. You might also be able to steal cards or peek at the opponent's hand. But the core mechanic is draw from the deck and play a card.

So, we have persistence because you have continuous access to a set of resources. But we also have choice since you can't activate all of them simultaneously. Why not? Well, even though one could in theory issue orders to everybody on "your side" at the same time, the important thing to realize is that the other guy is doing the same thing. So your choice represents a decision to focus your initiative on one part of the total political battlefield and get that into action ASAP.

Just as with the sequencing of card draws and so far, you could dirty this up by making some cards "harder" to play, either dependent on a preexisting game state (like a prerequisite card having already been put on the table), or requiring a separate resource expenditure, or taking two "actions" to play. But the basic idea is to explain the basic idea of "taking turns making choices" as a representation of rough simultaneity under the influence of centralized decision-makers. The better the "actual" situation conforms to this model, the more immersive it is. The less it conforms, the more "gamey" it seems.