Rules for Immersion

[GMMichael]

A Lord of the Rings-sized campaign history. Dimmers on the lights. Fingertip access to several seasons of Game of Thrones soundtracks.

There are all sorts of ways to get players into their characters' heads, but what rules does your game use to support immersion? Should immersion be part of the rules?

For example, when I ask for rolls to determine turn order, I ask PCs to use the attribute that best reflects the character's readiness for conflict. This changes the thought process from "roll a die and add what the rules require" to "what was my character thinking or doing when this conflict started?"

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I like to get my players really involved in cross-genre games, like mixing together science fiction and fantasy (similar to Barrier Peaks).

I call my technique…. The immersion blender.

 

[payn]

A Lord of the Rings-sized campaign history. Dimmers on the lights. Fingertip access to several seasons of Game of Thrones soundtracks.

There are all sorts of ways to get players into their characters' heads, but what rules does your game use to support immersion? Should immersion be part of the rules?

For example, when I ask for rolls to determine turn order, I ask PCs to use the attribute that best reflects the character's readiness for conflict. This changes the thought process from "roll a die and add what the rules require" to "what was my character thinking or doing when this conflict started?"

You highlight a great example. My Traveller games are often very much like that. I will let the Travellers choose how they react to combat/exploration/social dynamics based on what the Traveller is equipped with. Your Traveller has no combat skills, so what do they do in a fight? Well, maybe they have good computer skills and hack a local terminal to turn the environment against their foes. Maybe they apply their tactics knowledge and lead the team. Its up to the Travellers to help narrate and decide how their character deals with a myriad of situations.

Now the above is pretty difficult to do in systems that have a detailed, intricate, and nuanced combat rule set. Sometimes it can feel like waving away the rules, or disappointing to folks who spend a lot of time figuring out how to interact with them. So, I think there is a fine line to walk that will vary from combat systems in general.

Back when I played in a Kingmaker PF1 campaigns, the GM wanted the kingdom management to be more immersive and less mechanical. All they did was hide the numbers from us players, yet held to the mechanical ruleset. The result was pretty bad in that we had no idea the impact of our choices. A town needs a mill right? Will that help with economics, security, loyalty, etc..? We had no idea but sure enough the mechanics were being adjusted behind the screen. We had to have a number of discussions on this and many lessons were learned.

Fast forward to today and I am in a War for the Crown campaign also for PF1. Currently, we are helping build back up a down trodden backwater village. Our goal is to build a presence in the area and effect politics. Unlike Kingmaker, this time we have a series of places that exist, but have stories to explore. The swamp pump house was used to keep the water ways from flooding. Investigating why they have stopped working is an adventure. Clearing up the issue allows ferries to resume service speeding up overland travel. Sometimes there are enemies in the way to fight, sometimes there is some obstacle to overcome. Each place has a beneficial result for engaging. We understand the stakes, and thus, are informed about our decisions. More importantly, it has us engaging the campaign and not just winging it on player whims.

The point of the stories is that immersive rules are tricky. I think you need the right balance of mechanics and player agency. There is a difference between the rules indicating exactly how the game is played, and how one might play the game with a provided toolset. The former or latter are largely dependent on game system design. A bespoke system should lean heavily into the themes the game is supposed to support. A general RPG system, should remain vague and provide many options to both GM and player on how to engage play. YMMV.

 

[kenada]

My homebrew system does not specifically address “immersion”, but it’s also just a mess of notes and stuff in Scrivener at the moment, so I can’t say exactly what final form it will take. It does do a few things that I think are helpful for immersion:

• It’s transparent about how mechanics work. My view is our interface with the game world is limited by our ability to describe it. Game mechanics can be a shortcut for conveying an understanding the characters would have naturally just by living and existing there.
  
  They can also be helpful reminders to the referee to make sure the PCs are aware of what’s happening or could happen. Sometimes descriptions are sloppy or imprecise, so having to note consequences as part of stakes-setting is a reminder to the referee to make sure the situation is fully conveyed and understood as the PCs would understand it.
• While certain actions are prescribed in-combat, most Skill Checks are based on the method and approach used by the PCs. If you want to ambush bandits, you have to say how you’re doing that. Wanting to disguise yourself to leap down from a tree, then you would probably say you are using Camouflage + Dexterity (to balance).
• The initiative cycle is also triggered by activity in the game world. The referee does not just declare initiative. It happens after the equip phase, which is triggered by equipping a weapon (or certain techniques). This makes combat flow really nicely from “feeling each other out” to “it went downhill, draw weapons” while still keeping it structured for play.
• EXP is earned via accomplishing goals, which the players set. Goals are meant for the players not the characters. The intent is to help players stay focused and not forget something important they’d wanted to accomplish. I look at it like this from an immersion perspective: characters don’t have the real world distractions that players do, so having tools like this for the players help them have their characters do things like their characters normally would.

I also try to avoid using certain phrases when describing and talking about the game in the text itself. For example, I never use “the fiction” or talk about “fiction”. It’s about what’s happening in the game world. I avoid them due to a lack of shared understanding of what “in the fiction” means between different gamers, but I’m also not a fan the idea that RPGs are about telling stories, so I want to avoid confusion using that kind of language could create.

 

[overgeeked]

A Lord of the Rings-sized campaign history. Dimmers on the lights. Fingertip access to several seasons of Game of Thrones soundtracks.

All you need is consistency of setting. All the rest of the above is superfluous.

There are all sorts of ways to get players into their characters' heads, but what rules does your game use to support immersion? Should immersion be part of the rules?

It's an inverse ratio, generally speaking. The more rules, the less immersion. Why? Because the more rules you have, the more likely you are to forget them and the more likely you are to have to stop the game (i.e. break immersion) and look up the rules. The most immersive experiences I've ever had were in rules ultralight games, namely FKR. Because we could just play the game by being immersed in the setting without having to break immersion every few minutes to do rules stuff. Mechanics like Adventure Time's new Yes And system will likely be just as immersive (maybe more so). Because it's simple and rules light. It gets out of the way to let the players be immersed in the setting.

For example, when I ask for rolls to determine turn order, I ask PCs to use the attribute that best reflects the character's readiness for conflict. This changes the thought process from "roll a die and add what the rules require" to "what was my character thinking or doing when this conflict started?"

No, that would utterly break immersion because it's still game-mechanics time rather than narrative-immersion time. To be immersed in the story you have to stay in the story as much as possible. Every time you call attention to the mechanics that breaks immersion.

This...

P1: "I do this."

GM: "Roll that."

P1: "I got a..."

P2: "Here's what happens..."

is less immersive than...

P1: "I do this."

GM: "Here's what happens..."

The more steps you put between the players declaration and the referee narrating the results, the more it breaks immersion.

Rules that help with immersion would be things like torches lasting 30-60 minutes (because they do), torches not sitting burning in every sconce in a castle (because that's a monumentally stupid waste or resources), weight being tracked and excessive weight slowing characters and causing exhaustion (because it does), needing to sleep uninterrupted for 6-8 hours (because people do), etc. Anything that reinforces the world helps with immersion. But, the closer your in-game world is to the real world, the less rules you need to bother with because all your players are (hopefully) quite familiar with the real world and don't need a book to tell them things like "people don't like when you threaten their lives and tend to react poorly if you do."

 

[aramis erak]

A Lord of the Rings-sized campaign history.

Which none of my players would read... time to teach them on the go...

Dimmers on the lights.

Great... now I can't read my notes or dice

Fingertip access to several seasons of Game of Thrones soundtracks.

And hold music... as I lose the ability to pick out voices...

None of those provide me, whether player or GM, with immersion. 2 of the 3 actually seriously impair it for me.

For me, immersion comes from a good story unfolding in response to GM presented situations and GM situations reflecting the actions of the PCs; it helps when a player or two are deeply in character.

Note that "helps" - I don't find it requisite to be in-character to be immersed.

 

[pemerton]

For me, the number one rule for immersion is that what my character cares about matters in play.

 

[bloodtide]

In the vaguest sense, you get immersion when the rules make the players do anything except roll dice.

The most classic is if the player can describe in detail what their character is doing, then they DM adds a circumstance or other bonus. It's a huge difference from the immersion breaking: DM: "oh your character wants to do a thing, roll dc 10". Player "I got a 22 total". Dm "you do the whatever".

 

[Smackpixi]

My first instinct is, less rule, less rolls, more immersion. But thinking about it, no. I don’t think rules or rolling necessarily breaks immersion, and in fact can enhance. When I think back to when we’ve been most intensely in the moment, It wasn’t casually chatting it up role play interactions, it was rolling dice at the penultimate moment of a combat. Time pressure on a puzzle. Even I just said, chatting it up wasn’t one of the immersion moments, but I think there’s been conversations where the players take ten minutes real time to discuss what they want to say, totally not verisimilitude, totally gaming the game, but they were into it, and the outcome of the conversation mattered more than anything else in the world. I think Immersion can happen in any game, even Iike a card game like War. When you’re so into the game the outside world falls away.

I’m not sure what rules support this, I think the intense immersion can happen in any game, but RPG specific for a DM to sustain, when someone says “I dive into the water, my dagger unsheathed and pointed ahead of me as me feet kick propelling me forward toward the beast” and you have no idea what the rules are for this, the thing to say is not, lemme check, it’s, “um, omg, roll 3 d6 beat 12” and just go with it.

Immersion is being in the moment, and sustaining that when it happens is just everyone at the table going with it and doing their best and not questioning anyone else’s deviations from perfect.

 

[Emberashh]

Tension Pool. Nuff said.