Life got very busy indeed. Mind if I pick this up in India, say, end of next week? I’ll be better able to think if I’m sitting by a pool with a mango lassi in my hand.

15. Back when you and I (and others) were tossing the ideas of ‘push’ and ‘pull’ around, one of the things we talked about was the way gender (and other) socialization can impact the ways we prefer to play. Do you think that this applies to immersive preferences? That is, do you think that our immersive preferences are, at least in part, a function of the way that we are socialized?

The reason that control seems important is just because achieving that kind of synchronicity between two different people without training or tools is really, really, really hard. Most of the time, we don’t even walk away from a game with a similar understanding of the game or a similar report of the experience. As people, we have different filters that say what is believable, what is cool, what is striking, and what is fun.

Over on The 20×20 Room Brand quoted Neel Krishnaswami from some other place as saying “When you take a point of view to get a slice of the game, you get a story — protagonists, antagonists, and supporting characters emerge. However, you can slice a game in multiple ways, and get multiple stories. And in each slice, who the protagonists are is different. All from the same play session.” That’s so true about life, really, not just RPG’s. So if we can never fully form an objective reality by synthesizing our subjective realities, how hard must it be to create a consistent feeling character who reacts subjectively to a story and a world that both players are on their own subjectively experiencing and reacting to?

Double hard to reach the “consistent feeling” when the players are immersionists, because the rich internal tapestry of a character – the psychological and emotional context of that character that makes the character feel like something worth of being immersed in – how can two different people’s perceptions of that internal tapestry be merged into one and comprehensively and equally be .understood by both people to allow either player to immerse? Maybe there’s no way we can do it 100% but there might be ways to get us closer, tools and social processes to get there, if we want to try.

The people that play fiction RPG’s in which the protagonists are handed off from one writer to another manage it to one extent or another (I’d be interested in finding out if they do actually feel a continuity, and if they would consider what they do an immersive act) and I think this is helped along by having a single written “bible” of what happened as a result of their play.

So in the end, I think what I am saying is that control is only important because it is easy and efficient in producing the right kind of consistency of character that allows an immersive to plug into, and not control for its own sake.

As for how someone who immerses into story or system might deal with control? Well, like fiction RPG players have help from a text, system socket folks have a written contract to which they can refer to, and this cuts out a lot (but you only have to have a look around on RPG forums to know that it’s not all) of the disparity between subjective perceptions; There’s a rulebook. System socket players surrender control to that contract, by agreeing to play within it (indeed, if there were no contract, and no agreement wholly or modified, then there is no play). When things break down, and there is no meeting of the minds of a particular item in that contract, the game (and I’d think the immersion too) ceases until an agreement can be made. System socket play goals are concrete, and their play happens in a confined cage-match arena of the system, whereas character socket play goals are more abstract and take place in the continuously amorphous arena of the character’s (or arguably player’s) mind.

Story socket goals are somewhere in between, however, because establishing a continuity of story is necessary to more players, there are more and better tools to help establish it. You’ll notice that some of the biggest mitigating tools out there are about control: there’s a GM and it’s her story that we play in, or we shift that roll, and the person who owns that authority has that right. We have contests for who gets to say what happens, or we just have equitable distribution of turns, or we do it by pure meritocracy. Often, the authority is limited by the system to help maintain continuity (or other things).

Why is that? Again, because it is easier and more efficient than it is to build tools to mitigate social behaviour. Building systems and tools that build player skill or move the play group towards a unified vision where continuity is a guaranteed byproduct of play is much harder (and possibly impossible). The thing is, if it could be done or at least moved in that direction a ways, it would support not only the process of achieving a communal continuity, but a whole host of other benefits such as… well, facilitated social contracts for one.

And I know you’re itching to Thomas, but don’t ask me how we will build it, I’m still working on that one myself.

14. You point out that one of the things you find important for immersion in your character is control of that character. Is that because of the specific type of immersion you enjoy, or do you think that control is a key to any sort of immersion? That is, how do issues of control play into immersion for people who like to immerse in story (or system, or whatever else)?

Personally, I often find myself building strategies to work around mechanics that are disruptive. I talked a little bit about it here. Our play groups, like most play groups out there, have a mixed bag of styles. I don’t generally ask that mechanics be removed from play because some others in our groups like the game crunchy. However, sometimes we hack to get a desired mod that can work for multiple players at once.

Mostly though, my work-arounds are really ways to pull the system. By identifying what it is the mechanic is trying to produce in the game and preemptively providing that thing, the mechanic can stay in place and becomes less intrusive to my play; I co-operate with it better, rather than competing with it to win my immersion. I think that this is just an exaggerated version of the kind of social maneuvering and appeasements that we make on a regular basis to accommodate each others’ personalities. I’ve been told that it sounds like an impressive skill, but it’s one that we use on a smaller scale unconsciously, everyday with our friends, our families, our co-workers. In this situation performed with conscious intent, and using a matrix of two or more personalities for every participant, it’s just a more complex model. Rarely does this work to stop disruption 100% of the time, but it can make it livable. However, I’m not sure that I could find a workaround for all mechanics to make them jive with myimmersion.

The one that I always come back to as a show stopper is games that resolve conflict through narration rights. By this I don’t just mean that if you and I are in a conflict in the system and you win that you get to tell me what happens to me but that you get to tell me what I do. Also, there are harder lines where serious co-ownership exists. It’s hard, at least for me, to maintain an empathic “subjectified” connection to a character that I do not have continuity rights to. That character will be too changeable, or too one-dimensional, too out of context to feel like a whole person, or a self. I could maintain an empathic “objectified” connection to them, in which case I could care about what happens to them, and even in time, learn to live with kairotic immersion alone, but I suspect that it wouldn’t have the same kind of overall emotional resonance that I’m looking for.

13. Some mechanics disrupt immersion. Do you find that, given time to acclimate and a desire to do so, you can learn to utilize certain mechanics so that they are less disruptive? Or even, given enough familiarity with them so that they are not disruptive at all anymore? I guess what I’m asking is, do you see certain mechanics as inherently and necessarily disruptive, or do you think that you can learn to live with and even thrive with anything? (Quick aside: this is pretty theoretical, I’m not suggesting that people who have trouble immersing under certain mechanics aren’t ‘trying hard enough’, but I am asking about where compromises might lie.)

Systems which give the winner of a conflict the right to decide the impact to the loser’s moral or psychological makeup could interfere with any immersive goal, but to a karotic it would likely have disasterous effect because exploration in that specific arena is the point of play.

For me, a mechanic will most strongly disrupt my immersion when it tries to push me towards having to plug into the game in a T way because the point of play is to explore moments of strong emotional resonance and feel them in a cathartic way.

Likewise, games in which the mechanics must be addressed or negotiated verbally throughout the course of play are disruptive to me because they break up the emotional continuity and momentum of my feeling the story by asking me to act as me addressing thinky things. I am able to think objectively as my self during a game without a problem, and to talk as myself in the course of play, but in the middle of the emotionally impacting moment, if the game makes me toggle back and forth right then, I’m out.

I’m not sure if this analogy will transfer, but if you think about it this way: You’re watching Fellowship of the Ring, you’re engaged with the story, really grooving on feeling how monumentous and difficult a task it is going to be. Boromir goes for the ring: Oh no! Frodo runs! Massive fight scene! Boromir is hit, then Aaragorn finds him… and then for the next five minutes, the person sitting next to you, who controls the remote, pauses the movie every 30 seconds to ask you to perform a minor mathematical, analytical or referencing action. By the time you get to “My Brother, My Captain, My King!” does it have the same impact as it would have if you’d maintained a sense of emotional momentum and continuity throughout?

The magical formula is not a universal one, it’s a personal one, to some extent, and the best that we can hope for as designers trying to make accessible games is to do the best trending that we can. However, immersion aside, paying attention to the timing in which the mechanic is invoked, the kind of action the player is asked to perform and the way it does or does not flow with the resonance of the moment are extremely important designing skills to develop.

Does the mechanic have to be performed verbally or could it be mitigated another way? Think about the way a player in DitV can push their dice across the table to visually declare their see rather than having to interrupt the narrative.

If I want to foster emotional resonance in the story, where do I want that emotional resonance to have the most impact, and how can I parse my mechanics around it to protect the emotional momentum and continuity while still providing the support it was meant to deliver?

Really, who am I designing this game for, what are their methods of play, how am I designing to support that? OR, in a narrative context, what kind of a story am I trying to produce with this game, what kind of resonance should it have, what kind of play fulfills that story, and by designing for it, who am I inviting to the table?

As for mechanics that help immersion? That’s a nifty question that I’m not sure I have an answer for. My first inclination was to say X mechanic helps immersion by not hurting immersion, which, I suppose illuminates part of the state of things. However, it’s really not answering the question, and the last thing I want to say is that mechanics help immersives by getting out of the way. It’s the last thing because I think there’s potential for more, but it’s kind of unexplored, so it’s hard to find examples.

One example I could think of though…

The resolution mechanics in Dogs helps me to immerse in a kind of an odd way. In the conflict all (or at least most) of the dice are all rolled right off the bat. This of course helps not to hurt because it means less mechanical negotiation during the emotionally impacting moments. More than that, though… is that everybody’s cards are on the table, face up. You know what dice they have to play with, what more they could roll in, how far you will have to escalate to get what you want. For a cathartic, or kairotic immersive, this puts the whole toolbox on the table to drive the game and the character towards the goal. A cathartic immersive can use what they have to judicioausly lose or triumph and stoke the emotional fire. A kairotic immersive can drive towards that “right moment”.

I’ll think on this some more and let you know, here or on SA if I come up with others.

12. How do you think that different kinds of mechanics interact with immersion? Can some mechanics help you immerse? Can some hinder you in immersion? Or is it idiosyncratic based on the type of immersion a player is looking for?

I’m currently amused with the idea that the combination of the T/F personal type and the T/F gamer type together might map a way to the immersive goal of the player. I for example, am a strong T personal type, with a strong F gamer type, and the immersive goals that I pursue combine T and F activities (strong authoring and toggling between character and player brains to get hard F-impacting scenes). Maybe it is that F Player-F Gamer types will always be those that strive away from those kind of goals and seek a more organic, fully F brand of immersion (such as the kenotic goal).

I’m not saying that’s what I believe so nobody should jump on me about it, it’s just what I’m rolling around in the back of my brain right now.

11. You and Brand have talked about Meyers-Briggs typing for roleplaying in the past. Do you see immersion as being related to this at all? Do you think that immersion is closely associated with the Thinking/Feeling dichotomy at one of the three levels? If so, how does that play out?

Immersion is a process that fulfills a function for the people doing it. What immersion can do that other techniques can’t is fulfill the goal of that particular player. What it does better, is meet the needs of the player employing it. It’s not something dysfunctional nor is it something to aspire to.

For me, role-playing isn’t role-playing if there isn’t a level of emotional engagement. If I can’t feel what the character is feeling, and if the character doesn’t feel like a whole person within a continuity and a context, then it is just unsatisfying because that’s the thing I come to RPG’s for. I mean I’m not going to abandon the whole hobby because I have one bad experience, but if I never get what I come for, I’ll stop coming.

When I play games that make me plug in differently or games that give consistent distortion to my immersive process, I can have fun, but it’s a different kind of fun, more like the fun I might have playing a board game. So the big deal about immersion is that it’s the thing that makes RPG’s unique and valuable to me. It puts the crack in gaming!

Most discussions around immersion really frustrate the heck out of me. There’s so much confrontation, and it’s really so unnecessary. Part of the problem, IMO is the mystification of language surrounding immersion, which, for the most part, is misunderstood. The process of immersion is a complicated thing, and it relies on a lot of instinctive skills that we’re not used to discussing, and have little essential language for.

Negative capability, for instance, I would consider one of the most beneficial skills that an immersive can have in her arsenal. Keats named it as an essential quality of a man of literature… essentially the ability to not be disquieted by a lack of realist assurances while reaching for more. It’s here where an immersive can abandon part of the self in search for the other.

There are other things too: a particular kind of focus, a particular version of multitasking in which the player sets up boundaries in the brain that may seem uncomfortable or unnatural to a non-immersive player in a sort of pat the cerebral cortex (head) while rubbing the medulla oblongata (belly) – like juggling three balls independently in each hand.

Many immersive players, IME, do not like to explore and put language to the processes that they are undergoing because it makes the process feel clinical and investigation can be counterproductive to achieving the state. Some don’t mind looking at it, but can’t explain it because it’s a deeply intuitive process that would be kind of like explaining why it is you write with your dominant hand. Others are rightly gun-shy because there are more than enough people out there waiting in the wings to tell them that immersion doesn’t really exist, or is just plain dysfunctional, or is just a dressed up form of my-guyism.

To make matters worse, because that willingness, language and understanding is not always there, a whole lot of descriptions around immersive play are shrouded in mystical or esoteric language. Many of these terms, IMO are used because they feel accurate in cases where the process is actually mysterious and unexplained for a lot of people. Coupled with the kind of endorphin boost I was talking about in the last post, and the kind of process segmenting that some kenotic immersives can achieve that probably edges into self-hypnosis it’s no wonder that some of the language drifts towards the mystical. The problem is, many of the critics shut down listening the moment one of the more esoteric words enters the conversation.

And on top of all that, with some immersives, there is a tendency towards using language that implies an inability to control the immersive state. They will say things like “I can’t control the decisions my character makes” or “I can’t make the character do things, he just does them.” and critics will growl and moan and remind the immersives that their characters are fictional, which, of course the immersive already knows. What’s the problem here? The end of the statements are missing… usually what the immersive is saying is: “I can’t control the decisions my character makes without disrupting my immersive state” or “I can’t control the decisions my character makes without switching to a mode that is undesirable or not fun for me.”

Why is this a problem? Well it’s not (really, it’s not!) if everybody at the table is on the same page and is operating under a functional social contract, just like any other mode or technique or what-have-you. Anti-immersives complain: “He won’t author!” “She can’t talk out of character!”, “He avoids mechanics!”, these aren’t signs of dysfunctional immersive players, they’re signs that you’re playing with different agendas and have not accounted for it in thes ocial contract.

Some immersives can author, some can talk ad nausea out of character, some are kinky bastards, some can emerge from character on one dime, and go back in on another… and yes, some do dislike or have trouble with some of these things. Identifying that ahead of time will save you headaches in the game, or heartaches when the game falls apart due to incompatible styles of play.

There’s miles of difference between the statements “Your play is dysfunctional” or “Your play sucks” and “Your play is incompatible with mine.” One repels further discussion, the other sets ground rules. One shuts down conversation, the other keeps the door open.

10. What is it about immersion that’s so cool? What can immersion do that other techniques can’t, and what can immersion do better than other techniques?

My play these days is heavily influenced by the likes of one Meguey Baker who wrote some nifty articles a while back: Rituals and Gaming, More Alphabet Soup. In the last five years, with the advent of my Nar experience and the increased power (and responsibility) that comes along with it, my play experiences have become far more exploratory and thus, often play in much more dangerous ground.

Any group I play this way with now has explicitly negotiated social contracts that include discussion of the intent of the game, of the areas that could be troublesome, about player lines (that should not be crossed) and signs (areas where proceeding is OK, but that has a greater propensity to skid out, or where difficulty might arise) and policies set by the group for how to get through it.

For example, the Bitches in the Vineyard game that I play with Brand, Jess Hammer, Jess Pease and Nancy McKeown grew out of a discussion we had on Story Games about how playing female Dog in DitV demanded a game with a gendered premise and about the difficulty that both Nancy and I had had in approaching the game as women playing female characters in the world of Dogs. We decided to attack it by pushing the gender issues by making a group of all female Dogs.

In general, in any game, unless I have reason not to trust the people I am playing with, I have no hard lines in play. However, since this game was focussing on gender issues, and was taking place in the world of Dogs, I figured that fertility would likely be highlighted and knew that one of the other players was interested in specifically exploring that theme. This is an issue that has the propensity to hit close to home for me, and intense play in this arena could trigger an emotional response.

So as part of our discussion about setting up the Social Contract, I put up the sign: I told them what the issue was about, warned them that it could trigger an emotional response, so that they would recognize what was happening if it happened, and we talked about strategies and policies to deal with it if and when it came up. My request was that we go forward with an IWNAY policy, and allow for pauses in game, where needed, and the ability to ask for specific kinds of support if things went wrong. Then a couple of the other players posted signs about issues that could trigger them, and we committed to stick with each other if the going got tough. I think, in part, just because we had the discussion, things won’t go wrong, but if they do, I don’t think there will be any problem getting the hurt party out and whole.

In all of the games I play solo with Brand with either he or I or neither/both of us GMing, we have an IWNAY policy in place that says that everything is fair game to explore, and where we hit a bump, we will carry each other through. There are many space and game rituals that we have placed around our play to help with the transition between real life and game play: an apart-space recap of the previous game to establish a context continuum, a verbatim declaration of the social policy that acts like a pledge: “I will not abandon you.” ritual phrases that begin the games, atmosphere altering influences (lowered light, incense, theme songs etc). With these tools in place, transition into the emotional connection to the game (which is critical to my immersion) is quick and easy, and the transition out to safety is supported and immediate, should it be required (which it seldom is).

9. So immersion is a powerful tool, and one that can do some really cool stuff (as you say here: link to stealing from literary goals article). But most powerful things also present some risks. What can go wrong with immersion? Can it be dangerous?

Oh, she also cries a lot in powerful scenes, and gets all deeply (morbidly) introspective between scenes. It really is less like playing a game and more like having an experience of theatre crafted on the moment.

As for what it feels like…

It’s a deep, intense, cathartic connection to the character, in which I am acutely aware of how the character is affected by the story both emotionally and psychologically, and in which I vicariously experience the character’s emotional state in all of its intensity.

At the same time, I do not cease being myself or having my own emotions. In fact, when immersed, I personally, (as a player, in case that’s not clear) experience a hightened emotional engagement both in investment in the story, and empathetically for the character, (even if I have no sympathy for her).

I am literally of two minds in this process: the character who wants and needs and strives on her own, and myself that wants and needs and strives for the story, pushing the character ever on to the moments of catastrophe that will provide the most dramatically wrenching moments of play.

After playing, I feel a cathartic response – exaltation & relief that is both a psychologic and physiologic by-product of my immersive process. Psychologically, it has to do with the vicarious experience of drama and emotional purging or purification, and physiologically, the intensified emotional response prolonged through the duration of a game can incur a heightened outpouring of endorphins that provide a peaceful, feeling of relaxation and contentment.

In writing this down, I did a post of my own, over at Sin Aesthetics that you might want to take a look at:
Immersion Goals Borrowed from Literary Theory

8. Immersion is a word that means many things to many people. When you immerse, what does that look and feel like?

Brand has a strong primary story socket, with a secondary socket that might be system, it might be setting… it really depends on the day for Brand. I have a stong primary character socket, and I would say that when we first started gaming together, my secondary socket was setting. We were playing participationist games; I was playing my characters in his story & world. Over time, through transitions in our games, our play styles have changed because we practice often, and have choosen different kinds of games. Now the distance between my sockets is much shorter, and story is now definately my secondary socket. Our games made changing worth it, and the nar shared authorship styles made socketing to story more possible and fun for me in a way it couldn’t be as a player in illusionist/participationist games.

7. How do different sockets interact? That is, how do people with the same primary sockets but different secondary sockets interact, and how do people with different primary sockets interact?