Here are the two threads on Immersion from The Forge. I post them here because what they say, and what people here
say they say, are two entirely different things:
It is important to note that I am a believer in fundamental subjectiviity and Isolation. There is an unknowability that exists in another's mind, a fundamental mystery of the dynamics and processes of another that I need to declare as a preamble.
I also believe that this unknowability extends into one's own mind as well to a lesser or greater extent. So accepted.
As a matter of fact, it is that attitude of internal perfection and self-knowledge that bedevils therapists and behavioral experts, for when a subject is not open to change or analysis, it drastically reduces the means to affect change or allow for growth.
Agreed.
Because the discovery of the partial or full falseness of a person's perception of their internal experience or process is not just commonplace, it is constant.
Also agreed. But where does this falseness
come from? Why aren't they seeing the world
objectively? More to the point, how can they NOT see the world objectively?
For some reason people fill in the blanks or falsify input. They do this automatically and subconsciously. They
make shit up without being aware of doing so!
Fundamental Subjectivity, while real, is NOT a blanket defence against analysis or questioning the internal process. It is not an unassailable position or even a decent argument.
Quite true, which is why I didn't just state what was going on in my head; I also included the
methods I used to achieve it, because that's the only objective thing which can be measured and designed to.
I am stating that just because your immersion and your opinion of that experience is internal and personal does not make it true, and I tried, perhaps poorly or perhaps in the wrong way, to follow and to justify the position of why that might be. Please feel to engage from here and we can restart if necessary.
Fair enough. I take back my insults and apologize.
But let me point out that internal experience is only a lie when it comes to external stimuli. When it comes to games the internal experience IS the reality. And the very fact that the internal experience can diverge from the objective real world means that people can make their reality up without being cognizant of it.
That's my point, and the reason I make it here is because the main difference between roleplaying and story games here seems based on the fact that in a storygame you are explicitly aware you are making up the fiction, while in an RPG it all happens much more intuitively and seamlessly.