Edge Cases Versus Vast Territories

Posted by Jim Henley on August 31, 2006 at 10:32 PM

Immersion discussion is back, which means bad-tempered reactions to immersion are back too.

I think one of the structural problems with character-immersion discussion is that one of the easiest ways to explain the phenomenon is to give an example of a time when, in the player's subjective experience, the character stubbornly bucked "the party" or The Plot or whatever, because it's the kind of thing that throws the features of character immersion into sharp relief. But it's only one tiny part of the internal experience of the immersive player and one end of the range of relationships immersively-played PCs have with other PCs and the GM's world.

I consider myself only a fitfully immersive player, but some of my clearest "immersion moments" pointed my character in the direction of greater harmony with the play group as a whole. In Mike's great "Loose Ends" Amber campaign, I first recognized myself as "immersed" when, in mid-IC conversation with another PC, I experienced a powerful, subjective realization that "my" war with another player-character was pointless and stupid and we really ought to find some way to negotiate its end. And this was an Amber game!

My other most immersive character experience was in Nate's Over the Edge campaign of last year. In that game, first, "my" "realization" that Mo Cleveland had to leave Al Amarja and return to the National Football League was immersive. I felt it welling from within as a complete surprise. As in that Amber campaign from years before, it was the emergent outcome of in-game events that weren't remotely conceived as decision points or conflicts or whatever's cool this month.

Even though we had planned for the campaign to end within a month, I worried OOCly that the timing of Mo's decision would leave him undramatically spinning his wheels for a couple of sessions. Then immersion came to the rescue! Using my fevered brain as his tool, Mo suddenly conceived an intense ethical involvement in a caper the other two PCs had gotten up to in Mo's absence. Suddenly my PC was plugged right back into "the party." (Is it a Party if there are three of you, and all three PCs are so dumb they make the cast of Boogie Nights look like a Mensa meeting?)

None of which is to say that immersive players don't sometimes find themselves in play groups that aren't suited to constructive immersive play, or that some players don't use "immersion" as an excuse for destructive behavior. Just as some players use the sanctity of the Party as cover for their social domination of the rest of the group, some GMs use the same concept as cover for their god complexes and some whole groups reify "the Party" collectively because they're needy and it makes a nice simulacrim of a community. There are all kinds of paths to roleplaying dysfunction. There's no reason to be defensive about healthy versions of any way to play.