Quote from: Haffrung;726118For me and most of my group, it has nothing to do with immersion in character or method acting. It has to do with only seeing the world through the eyes of your character. That limited perspective helps you feel like you're in the game world, immersed in the setting, and facing the kinds of choices the character faces. You don't need to talk in character, or have a deep PC backstory, to enjoy immersion. You can be just as immersed in the game world with a pre-generated character in a one-shot as you can with a PC you've been running for six years.

That is a good way to put it.

My explanation revolved around "Act as if you are really there as your character even if the character just a reflection of yourself." But your explanation looks to be more understandable and accurate.

Quote from: Haffrung;726118For me and most of my group, it has nothing to do with immersion in character or method acting. It has to do with only seeing the world through the eyes of your character. That limited perspective helps you feel like you're in the game world, immersed in the setting, and facing the kinds of choices the character faces. You don't need to talk in character, or have a deep PC backstory, to enjoy immersion. You can be just as immersed in the game world with a pre-generated character in a one-shot as you can with a PC you've been running for six years.

A-fucking-men.

Very well said, Haffrung - I couldn't agree more.

Not to jump on the bandwagon, but Haffrung nailed it for me as well.  When we play, we're not really method acting at all.  first person and third person freely switch back and forth.  However, we always are looking through the eyes of the player we're playing, and viewing the game world that way.

for us, it's not only natural to do so, but is very enjoyable.

Quote from: Haffrung;726118For me and most of my group, it has nothing to do with immersion in character or method acting. It has to do with only seeing the world through the eyes of your character. That limited perspective helps you feel like you're in the game world, immersed in the setting, and facing the kinds of choices the character faces. You don't need to talk in character, or have a deep PC backstory, to enjoy immersion. You can be just as immersed in the game world with a pre-generated character in a one-shot as you can with a PC you've been running for six years.

That's very well put. It reflects my feelings and experiences on the matter as well. I do like to talk in character and so on, but it's not needed to enjoy the game from the character's point of view, and neither are complex personalities, backstories, etc etc. All you need is a basic character concept and the ability to imagine yourself in its place. It doesn't require any special insight or training. It's make-believe.

I made up a role-playing and "authorial stance" hybrid back in the 1980s (before I had seen any example of the form). I quickly concluded that the two are too much at cross purposes for me, the hybrid less interesting than either alone.

When I want a game, I would translate the GNS (for the sake of exercise) into more well known categories of game like this:

G = Conflict Simulation
exemplified by wargames in miniature, and Avalon Hill and SPI board games

N = Story Telling
exemplified by Dark Cults, Once Upon a Time, and Tales of the Arabian Knights

S = "Traditional" RPG

Trad RPG 'mechanics' can easily be used for a Conflict Simulation game; the shape of the context is the frontier between the older game form and its daughter.

In what I would call most definitely an RPG, role playing is fundamentally both the very means of play and "the object of the game" in itself. This has been perhaps somewhat obscured by the growing tendency, even among vehement objectors to "out of character" elements, to take considerable knowledge of the abstraction as a basic assumption.

If my dear friend John can't just play his character and leave it to the GM to know how the the formal algorithms work, then to my mind we have slipped away from the essential element of the kind of RPG that I like.

Yeah, Haffrung's statement is a good summary. I wouldn't want to throw the deep-IC immersionists under the bus; however, they tend to be used to portray the everyday immersive (IC-POV, world-experiencing) aesthetic as a tiny fringe, which in turn becomes a talking point for people who claim that heavy "author/director stance" has no experiential impact once you get used to the mechanical procedures.

On the contrary, I find that complex "simulationist" procedures are a minor impediment to IC-POV once they become habituated because they are purely procedural and require little or no change in cognitive perspective. That's not to say they can't slow the game down or scare away newbs. (Which is why I've pulled back from preferring something like Harnmaster or RQ 6 to stuff like Magic World/Elric, or Talislanta, as my upper limit of complexity.)

The key as Phillip says is whether a player can use natural language to describe their character's actions from the PC's perspective without knowing the rules, and someone else who does know the rules can fairly consistently translate that into mechanics.

Quote from: Phillip;726157. . . [R]ole playing is fundamentally both the very means of play and "the object of the game" in itself.

Worth repeating.

Quote from: Phillip;726157If my dear friend John can't just play his character and leave it to the GM to know how the the formal algorithms work, then to my mind we have slipped away from the essential element of the kind of RPG that I like.

Agreed.

Quote from: Haffrung;726118It's not much different enjoying first-person video games. It's more evocative, creepier, more intense to experience the game-world from the grounds-eye POV of your character than from a zoomed-out top-down perspective. (...)

I do prefer a third-person point of view in video games, but I'm apparently a minority. Actually seeing my character instead of just its hands or its weapon helps me be immersed more.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;726131Not to jump on the bandwagon, but Haffrung nailed it for me as well.  When we play, we're not really method acting at all.  first person and third person freely switch back and forth.  However, we always are looking through the eyes of the player we're playing, and viewing the game world that way.

for us, it's not only natural to do so, but is very enjoyable.

I'm with Haffrung on this as well.

Perhaps interestingly, though, I tend to find overly present method actors somewhat disruptive to immersion. Acting is definitely not the same as game immersion for me.

Quote from: Phillip;726157If my dear friend John can't just play his character and leave it to the GM to know how the the formal algorithms work, then to my mind we have slipped away from the essential element of the kind of RPG that I like.

I have expereinced the flip-side of this.

In an AD&D 2nd ed game in the mid-90s, I built my cleric PC using a fairly deep knowledge of the system parameters and the PC build options. A new player built his fighter PC following the advice of the GM, who was in effect translating this guy's conception of his character into the formal mechanical language of the game.

In the first combat, my cleric was dealing with foes at an effectiveness ratio of about 4:1 compared to the new player's fighter. His immersion was pretty shattered as he discovered that his PC, whom the GM had told him was a warrior, was barely effective compared to me PC, ostensibly a priest.

I think games with very transparent PC build rules, eg Traveller or RQ or a somewhat stripped-back RM, are better at avoiding this problem.

. . . or you just don't play with kits and weapon specs at level 1 and all sorts of shit that rig the game in favor of the guy who's read all the splats and squeezed every modifier he could get out of them. Just a thought.

Quote from: pemerton;726287I have expereinced the flip-side of this.

In an AD&D 2nd ed game in the mid-90s, I built my cleric PC using a fairly deep knowledge of the system parameters and the PC build options. A new player built his fighter PC following the advice of the GM, who was in effect translating this guy's conception of his character into the formal mechanical language of the game.

In the first combat, my cleric was dealing with foes at an effectiveness ratio of about 4:1 compared to the new player's fighter. His immersion was pretty shattered as he discovered that his PC, whom the GM had told him was a warrior, was barely effective compared to me PC, ostensibly a priest.

I think games with very transparent PC build rules, eg Traveller or RQ or a somewhat stripped-back RM, are better at avoiding this problem.

That is more a disparity between role-playing and power gaming. Mix the two in one game and of course something may go off kilter because player A: built a character for the experience and player B built a character to kill stuff.

Which is exactly what happens when I game with my security tech as a player rather than a GM. I like to create a character to experience the setting, the tech likes to squeeze the system till it cries so they can either massacre stuff or are effectively untouchable. Call of Cthulhu example: On one side was my totally mundane Zoologist doomed to learn things man was not meant to know, on the other was the techs Martial artist whom nothing short of a Mi-go teleporting in from the nth dimension could get the drop on.

Sometimes that is even ok with me as it means I can focus on the cerebral stuff and the others can try punching a shoggoth. Lots-o-luck that guys! ta-ta!

That's an issue of the GM looking over character sheets for approval and keeping things within the scope of their campaign and table expectations.

Any system is ripe for abuse without oversight. That's why humans have judgment.

Quote from: Opaopajr;726296Any system is ripe for abuse without oversight. That's why humans have judgment.

What does abuse of PC building look like in Runequest? In Traveller? In Rolemaster (without backgrounds/traits)?

Quote from: Omega;726295That is more a disparity between role-playing and power gaming. Mix the two in one game and of course something may go off kilter because player A: built a character for the experience and player B built a character to kill stuff.

Actually, my guy was also a better negotiator/diplomat.

But more importantly, if a new character builds a duelist warrior, what do you think he wants to experience? My guess is that he wants to kill stuff. That was certainly the occasion here.

If he'd build a pastry chef and my priest turned out to be a better warrior, I don't think it would have been such a big deal.

Quote from: pemerton;726340What does abuse of PC building look like in Runequest? In Traveller? In Rolemaster (without backgrounds/traits)?

You tell me. Probably the same as in In Nomine, AD&D 2e, L5R, WEG d6, Heroes Unlimited, CoC, etc. I don't have those games, nor played in them. Ask me about ones I have. However I have yet to come across a perfect system, so if you are willing to offer these as unbreakable examples of such...

edit: I will also add, if such structures were made so unbreakable perhaps we could replace quite a bit of our social organizations with them, too. Goodness knows we could appreciate a statutory or social policy system that solves ills without needing humans involved. Or could we?