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  1. - Top - End - #31
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: A model of immersion

    A lot of the talk about diagonal movement issues in 4e reminds me of a WW2 wargame I played that had what was commonly called the ‘clown car’ rule. The rule was you could load as many infantry as you wanted onto a single transport vehicle. As one can imagine this rule caused a lot of derision and was held up as an example of the flaws in the game design. When someone finally asked what was the largest number of infantry anyone had loaded onto a single vehicle the answer was 15, which was well in line with historical usage and far fewer than the critics of the rule were painting the problem to be

    It turns that the practical problems of exploiting the ‘glitch’ were far greater than any benefit, so the simple one sentence rule did it’s job just as effectively as half a page of text differentiating how many infantry could fit onto different classes of vehicle.

    However the fact the rule exists still causes a lot of angst amongst people who complain it ruins ‘realism’ (read as ‘immersion’ in RPGs) because it didn’t map onto their perception of reality.

    On the other hand firing smoke was only permitted against acquired targets. People complained that they couldn't fire smoke to mask an approach on a speculative or approximate basis. In their map of reality they felt that firing smoke like that was the ‘realistic’ thing to do.

    I posted images from field manuals from The US, Britain and Germany all of which explicitly stated that tactical smoke screens could only be fired against acquired and identified targets, and for Germany and Britain required authorization from higher up the chain of command than the battles depicted on the tabletop. It turned out that smoke rounds were both rare and expensive and even the US army with by far the largest supply of smoke rounds of any combatant couldn't just lob them in against every possible target. Firing smoke on a speculative basis not only wasn’t done, but couldn’t be done.

    Despite clear evidence their perception of reality was wrong, and based on modern munitions and supply, so many players complained that the next edition of the rules allowed speculative smoke.

    The issue isn’t ‘realism’ or the practical effect of the rules, the issue is how people perceive what ‘immersion’ should be. It doesn’t matter if the perception is wrong or impractical, if enough people believe X should be Y then immersion suffers.
    Last edited by Pauly; 2021-11-19 at 03:53 PM.

  2. - Top - End - #32
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    Default Re: A model of immersion

    Quote Originally Posted by Pauly View Post
    The issue isn’t ‘realism’ or the practical effect of the rules, the issue is how people perceive what ‘immersion’ should be. It doesn’t matter if the perception is wrong or impractical, if enough people believe X should be Y then immersion suffers.
    This. Immersion, realism, etc--they're all in your head. And frequently perceived immersion-breaking "realism violations" are actually quite in line with reality. Or, from within the fantasy world, are quite in line with the new fantastic physics.

    One of the big issues with the Guy at the Gym idiocy is that it limits edge-of-the-humanly-possible characters based on what the DM/player (who rarely are such specimens of humanity) imagine people can do. Same issue with "that map isn't realistic, real <X> don't <Y> like that!" complaints. The world is a weird and wacky place, so much so that it's actually one of the least "realistic" things out there if you stop and look at it. Low probability events happen all the time.
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  3. - Top - End - #33
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    Default Re: A model of immersion

    Is this thread about immersion or the reasons why people don't like 4e? I mean I can tell you why I don't want to play 4e, it is like the other editions of D&D but more so.

    For immersion (and immersion in the "in-character" sense) I think that "Conscious Competence" can actually work if the mechanics closely reflect that of what is going on in the world. Like in a rules-heavy survival-focused campaign, if you are working your way through the food and water supply kind of like your character would be, then it is very easy to feel connected to them.

    Quote Originally Posted by Grod_The_Giant View Post
    With FATAL, I'm not sure the distinction really matters. No matter how close you are to your fellow players when you sit down at the table, you'll end the session surrounded by enemies. And most likely projectile weapons.
    FATAL is one of those systems that you shouldn't look up a ruling during the session. Or after the session. Or before. Just sit down with a blank piece of paper and start collecting house rules. ... The blank piece of paper game actually sounds like fun if you had the right group of homebrewers. Work out your core mechanic and basic stats as part of session zero and go from there.

    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    Its weird too that the universal answer to any fault or issue with any edition of D&D that I comment on gets responded to with "your DM is bad or doing it wrong".
    D&D 4e is a weird case because there is a way to play 4e that avoids many of these issues, but you kind of have to figure out how to do that yourself. Or you can ask people now, people have figured it out. Point is, the rule-book probably will not help you or your GM that much. I'm still not sure where 4e came from, maybe they looked at all the 3.5e optimization talk and figured that is what people wanted or something. I'm not sure if the "right" way to play the game now is even what they intended. But every time I played 4e we were fast and loose with the rules, went with what felt right if that was different from what we were supposed to do and it worked well enough.

    To Pauly: Those are some fun stories. I have nothing to add to it, but I enjoyed it.

  4. - Top - End - #34
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    Default Re: A model of immersion

    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    Every issue I mention with every edition of D&D cannot be "the DM is wrong" every time for every different DM.
    People get really attached to their favorite edition of D&D and don't like hearing that other people don't like their ThingTM. Combine with lingering trauma from edition wars, they're going to favor whatever explanation exonerates their ThingTM. When a problem is brought up, there are three basic ways to respond:
    • Painfully finicky legalese arguments about how it actually makes perfect sense, and your issue doesn't actually exist. (I remember getting this a lot in early 5e arguments about skills)
    • An admission that 4e's rules have significant flaws and break down in all sorts of edge cases, and that the game doesn't do a good job of encouraging GMs to adjudicate conflicts with common sense and rule-of-cool mentality. (If I'm remembering correctly, it kind of pointed you in the exact opposite direction)
    • "Well, my GM makes it work just fine, so the problem must be with you." (Which is sort of the same as point two, but wrapped up in aggressive denial)

    Digging out my old 4e Player's Handbook and looking at your specific issue with the "come and get it" aura...oh yeah, there are flaws here. The explanation of the "Target" is painfully rigid compared to the writeup in, say, the 5e PHB, and Keywords are... I don't know why they bother tracking keywords for damage types, since the power descriptions already specify "radiant damage" or whatever, and Effect Types seem woefully underused. Like, the power in question would make a thousand times more sense if it was explicitly labeled with something like "Charm" or "(physical) Force." Seriously, every time I talk about this game I feel like grabbing the designers by the throat and yelling "you were so close!"

    So the rules have a flaw. Can the group make the power work anyway? Sure, but that's the Oberani Fallacy--just because you can GM your way around a problem doesn't mean there's not a problem.

    It would be one thing if the game knew that this sort of question would come up and gave you advice on how to handle it. Exalted 3e, for instance, is probably the single crunchiest RPG I've ever played, and it opens the main rules chapter by saying "ignore the rules if they're not fun."
    The Golden Rule: If you don’t like one of these rules, change it. If a rule is getting in the way of having fun, throw it out. If you have an idea that would work better for your group than one of the rules here, go with that. Nobody knows better than you what you’ll find fun.

    The Orichalcum Rule: This is a big game with lots of rules, set in an even bigger and more complex world, and players are endlessly inventive. If you ever find that by following the letter of the rules, you get a result that doesn’t make sense in the course of the story, the rules are wrong, the story is right. If the rules suggest something dumb or nonsensical or just plain not fun, ignore them or change them. Story comes before adherence to the rules.

    The Storyteller’s Rule: A lot of the rules in Exalted, especially the combat engine, are heavy abstractions rather than faithful simulations. Storyteller, if it seems to you like a player is using the letter of the rules to muck up the spirit of the game and the fun of the story, then that particular rules loophole doesn’t work. You are explicitly empowered to call shenanigans whenever it seems necessary— the rules can’t account for everything, and any interpretation of a Charm or other mechanic away from its intended function isn’t legal unless you say it is.
    It's not a free pass to have flawed rules, but at least it's an acknowledgement that they need to be dealt with. If you want to target an ally with Come and Get It and I say "sure, that seems like something you should be able to do," I'm not only following RAI; I am, technically, still obeying RAW. "Your GM is doing it wrong" is at least sort of a correct answer--if the books say you'll have to use your judgement occasionally and you don't, I think a bit of the blame sticks to you no matter how nonsensical the RAW.

    4e, on the other hand? Skimming the likely-looking areas of the PHB and DMG, I don't see anything even resembling "rule zero." Nothing that even hints at the idea that you can ignore rules that aren't working. You can't blame a GM for being rigid when there's literally nothing in the books that say they shouldn't be.



    tl;dr: I rambled a lot and got way off topic, sorry. I guess I'm agreeing with Telok and Talakeal after all?


    EDIT: To get back to the actual point of the thread, one reason for immersion-failure that I don't think we've mentioned enough is "rules contradicting logic." I'm not talking about square cows, but choices where the best thing to do mechanically is different from the best thing to do logically. If you have a Star Wars game where a random stick is a better melee weapon than a lightsaber, or a tactical combat RPG where hiding behind cover is actually more dangerous than standing in the open, all the unconscious comprehension in the world can't save you.
    Last edited by Grod_The_Giant; 2021-11-19 at 09:58 PM.
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  5. - Top - End - #35
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    Default Re: A model of immersion

    So Grod_The_Giant managed to say everything I was trying to say to Telok, except clearer and in more detail (and then some), so go with that.

  6. - Top - End - #36
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    Default Re: A model of immersion

    The DMG for 4e has a section that discusses creating and implementing house rules and says you can feel free to change things you don't like if you want or create a new rule because some weird corner case happens.

    It's even listed in the table of contents, under the DM's toolbox section on p.189
    Last edited by oxybe; 2021-11-20 at 12:44 AM.

  7. - Top - End - #37
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    Default Re: A model of immersion

    Quote Originally Posted by icefractal View Post
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    There's another factor that I think makes me unsatisfied with 4E and 5E (and a number of other RPGs) - the idea that you can become a Super-Killer and maybe a Super-Spy, but nothing else - not a Super-Teacher or a Super-Leader or a Super-Builder. That great and mighty spells exist to zap someone into dust (or prevent being zapped), but if you want to improve conditions in a city ... eh, idk, that's too complicated.

    And I'm not saying that's anti-immersive, or even unrealistic (given that we're talking about fictional settings here). But I find it depressing.

    And no, 3E doesn't support this as intended mechanics either. It's more like how you can use TAS tricks to program Tetris inside Mario. But at least you can do it.
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    There are few paranoic classes in 3.X, epic destinies in 4e (you can look at the list here:https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Epic_destiny), that have a theme that suppose you become a non-killing-machine but rather an explorer, an old wise sage, a king, or whatever. Disappointingly, the actual powers granted tend to not match those (you're still mechanically getting better at being a killing machine), but a GM could extrapolate additional non-combat abilities from the theme of the class/destiny.
    Last edited by MoiMagnus; 2021-11-20 at 06:29 AM.

  8. - Top - End - #38
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: A model of immersion

    Quote Originally Posted by Grod_The_Giant View Post

    EDIT: To get back to the actual point of the thread, one reason for immersion-failure that I don't think we've mentioned enough is "rules contradicting logic." I'm not talking about square cows, but choices where the best thing to do mechanically is different from the best thing to do logically. If you have a Star Wars game where a random stick is a better melee weapon than a lightsaber, or a tactical combat RPG where hiding behind cover is actually more dangerous than standing in the open, all the unconscious comprehension in the world can't save you.
    This is an immersion level higher than ‘can you do the rules’ immersion.

    For immersion there has to be a believable game world. This includes
    - A world you are willing to believe exists (for me this is where D&D falls apart)
    - A world that has a coherent logic that can be described by rules.(Soft magic environments such as LotR have to overcome this problem)
    - Rules that give an experience consistent with the world as described. It doesn’t have to perfect in every rule, but every discrepancy risks pulling you out of immersion. Small things here and there players are willing to hand wave, but the more it happens the less likely people are going to stay in immersion.

    Without these elements immersion never happens. Again this is all based on what players perceptions are.

  9. - Top - End - #39
    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: A model of immersion

    So, all the talk about "Flow State" and "Unconscious Competence"? Dead on. Everyone who cares should learn this stuff.

    But "4e is anti-immersive because it's not 3e"? No, that completely misses the mark, at least for me.

    Pretty much, I agree with everything @Telok said about 4e. Everything. So much so, I'd have to literally quote everything @Telok said to properly state My agreement. My experiences, and those of my local echo chamber of 4e hate are quite similar.

    The thing is, I can tell… well, I've played RPGs with 7-year-olds. And they, or my Evil Overlord mandated 5-year-old advisor substitutes, can give me reasonable actions for most games. And an intelligent person, savvy in the corresponding fields, can take the actions they, I, Talakeal's players, and a playground Determinator list off, and rate them from best to worst. In most games, there'll be a really strong match between what the expert says, and what a Determinator says for what order to put those ideas in.

    But not so with 4e.

    IMO, Talakeal said it best:

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    I feel like 4Es breaks from immersion come from a disconnect between the game’s rules and how scenes play out in real life or in fiction.

    It's not that 4e doesn't play like D&D, is that it doesn't play like the fiction that lives inside anyone's head.

    Once again, Talakeal for the winning sound bite on this topic:

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    HP is a pretty bad rule, but conceptually it makes sense; if you hit someone they get hurt and if you hurt them enough they die.

    Most RPGs have rules that make sense when you explain them to a 5-year-old. In fact, that's kinda my definition of what makes something an RPG.

    4e doesn't have that. It's not

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    Right. THat's the key. If you accept "it's a new game", you're consciously putting yourself at stage 2 or 3, and so aren't engaging in the "default" behaviors.

    It's not that it's a new game, it's that it's a completely different reality, divorced from all reason our minds are trained to process, far beyond that of the little hoops one must accept from other games, far beyond what one can reasonably explain to a 5-year-old. When you try to view it, not just as a game, but as a role-playing game. When you try to view it in character.

    Third time's the charm:

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    Compare that to the utter confusion of my first few minutes playing 4E where if my paladin attacks someone, and that someone attacks anyone (whom I consider an ally), they take radiant damage because....Pelor's Space Lasers? Unless of course I walk away, or if the ranger or the fighter attack them after I did, which cancels my effect, and of course I get yelled at if I attack something after the ranger or the fighter did because now I am cancelling their effect.

    Yeah... that tracks as a reasonable abstraction for how combat works in real life or fantasy fiction.

    There is no simple in character flow state.

    I can't get a 5-year-old to play 4e competently in character, I can't explain to them how 4e rules work except by saying "a Wizard (of the Coast) did it", except by giving them rules rather than character perspective.

    And, afaict, even the Playground, home of many of the best minds, and collectively the best site on RPGs I've found, respond with lots of, "yeah, this stuff doesn't make sense", and no instances of, "here's what makes the game make perfect sense to a 5-year-old".

    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowhere View Post
    the stuff about competence can help, but I don't think it's the main factor.

    to me, the most important thing about immersion is to be able to pretend that what's happening is real. and for that, i believe the most important thing is logical consistency.
    i work very well with 3.x, because it has some decent underlying logic for how things are supposed to work. fighters can use abilities in a way that you would expect a fighting guy to. wizardry has some basic premises, and spells work according to them.
    4e? to quote roy, "you have the ability to alter the past by impressing yourself, but you can't swing your sword the same way twice in a row?" How am I supposed to suspend my disbelief for that?
    and i also don't like 5e for some martial abilities that work in a similar way.

    before someone mentions it, no, this is not the "guy at the gym fallacy". It's a matter of consistency. I can perfectly accept a superhuman warrior punching through walls, or blocking a sword with his teeth. I can't accept this superhuman warrior being able to do it once per day - you either can punch through walls, or you can't. i can accept a stamina mechanic like dragonage, where physical abilities have a cooldown of sorts. and of course, vancian magic is perfect for explaining once-per-day abilities.
    Yeah, all this, too.

    4e might be fine as a game, but it doesn't make any sense.

    3e sacrificed fun in the name of balance. 4e sacrificed reason in the name of game.

    Both were bad calls.

    EDIT:
    EDIT: To get back to the actual point of the thread, one reason for immersion-failure that I don't think we've mentioned enough is "rules contradicting logic." I'm not talking about square cows, but choices where the best thing to do mechanically is different from the best thing to do logically. If you have a Star Wars game where a random stick is a better melee weapon than a lightsaber, or a tactical combat RPG where hiding behind cover is actually more dangerous than standing in the open, all the unconscious comprehension in the world can't save you.
    Well put. I'm not sure if it's exactly the same as my "7-year-old" test, but I think it captures a similar concept, that the rules should generally closely match the fiction that lives in our heads.
    Last edited by Quertus; 2021-11-20 at 10:03 PM.

  10. - Top - End - #40
    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: A model of immersion

    Rereading the OP, I think it deserves a more thorough examination than my post gave it.

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    On the subject of immersion:

    I have a model of immersion that I think is pretty accurate - as in, it pretty accurately predicts when people won't be immersed, why it matters to some people more than others (usually people that are long-term players). Even why 4e completely shatters immersion for some people while other people are fine with it. And I can completely explain where I think 4e made some serious, serious missteps in their design (even though I disagree with many about what they are).
    Four claims: accurately predict immersion, why immersion matters more to some than others, why 4e shatters immersion for some, what 4e did wrong.

    I only really addressed the 3rd point.

    So let's see what all we've got.

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    At a high level, I think:

    immersion = Flow State + Focus on the Fiction + Focus on Character

    What's Flow State? Okay, so to explain this I like to start with the four-level model of competence.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence

    Short version:

    Unconscious Incompetence: We don't know that a skill exists, and can't do it. For instance, someone that had played 1e and started playing 3e would have no idea about optimizing builds for hitting certain prestige classes. They're unaware that it's a thing at all.

    Conscious Incompetence: You know that a skill exists, but can't do it. For instance, after seeing a 3e build, the 1e player goes "well, holy shirtballs, I didn't know you could do that. That's cool, but I have no idea how to do that."

    Conscious Competence: You know that a skill exists, and you can do it when you focus on it.

    Unconscious Competence: You know that a skill exists, and you can do it without even thinking about it. In fact, you might have a hard time thinking about it or explaining what you're doing.

    Realistically, Unconscious Competence links back to Unconscious Incompetence, as you aren't thinking about what you're doing, and so don't know of the additional things you could do to get better.

    Okay, so to hit a Flow State you have to have Unconscious Competence in the game you're playing. It's a requirement. You're thinking about the problem space, not the usage of the tools you have. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
    Yup, good stuff so far. Immersion requires (has as a prerequisite) system Flow State requires system Unconscious Competence.

    However, you've failed to make optimal use of your tools. As long as we're talking about "Flow State", let's acknowledge that

    Immersion = system Flow State + fiction Flow State + character Flow State

    Which means that fiction Unconscious Competence and character Unconscious Competence join system Unconscious Competence as prerequisites for immersion.

    There's a reason why I want to play existing characters, a reason why they're more valuable to me than new characters, and that reason is familiarity. Flow. (Well, OK, that's one of the reasons) I want a character's actions to reach Unconscious Competence; everything before that isn't valuable to me.

    Fiction Flow State might seem suspect - after all, shouldn't the players have to slow down and actually think about a mystery? But, like I told Talakeal earlier (in another thread), there's a difference between making the game hard, and making a game hard to play. Similarly, there's a difference between making the fiction thought-provoking, and making the fiction inaccessible.

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    Chess doesn't hit "immersion" because there's no fiction and no character. In an immersive situation, the rules disappear, you're identifying with your character, and you have a connection to the world.
    Here, I'm afraid I'm missing something. I just hear "role-playing". What am I actually supposed to hear here?

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    This leads to a few predictions. Primarily - immersion will be broken when Flow state is broken
    Yes. But it's when *any* of the requisite Flow States are broken.

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    - essentially when players have to start focusing on the rules and how to apply them.
    True, that is one cause.

    That said, I've played RPGs with 7-year-olds who have never opened an RPG book, who are ignorant of the underlying mechanics, and are simply playing the character.

    And I've played RPGs with 7-year-olds who grok standard / move / full round action, 5-foot-step, threatened areas, attack of opportunity, etc.

    So there's a number of models of play to run through this idea.

    -----

    I'll end there for now, because my battery's about to die.

    Thoughts so far?

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    Default Re: A model of immersion

    What the heck fiction was 4e or 3e ToB emulating with its thing were you had to forget how to do a move in order to learn a new one?

    I could see learning to chain two moves so quickly a fluidly that they were effectively one move. I can see getting better at a move to be able to pull it off more often or with greater effect. But knowing 'foo parry', 'foo charge', and 'foo smack', then having to never be physically capable of doing one of those ever again in order to learn 'foo disarm'... What the heck was that supposed to represent?

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    Default Re: A model of immersion

    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    What the heck fiction was 4e or 3e ToB emulating with its thing were you had to forget how to do a move in order to learn a new one?

    I could see learning to chain two moves so quickly a fluidly that they were effectively one move. I can see getting better at a move to be able to pull it off more often or with greater effect. But knowing 'foo parry', 'foo charge', and 'foo smack', then having to never be physically capable of doing one of those ever again in order to learn 'foo disarm'... What the heck was that supposed to represent?
    Actually? That makes sense to me.

    Say what?!

    Well, sort of.

    Imagine some physical activity - it doesn't matter what. Martial arts, dancing, tennis, race car driving.

    Imagine you've learned to do it wrong. Or that you've trained your instincts for one particular move, and that that move is getting in the way of learning a new move.

    I've experienced that many, many times. Can you think of something like that in your own life, or at least imagine it?

    So, in order to learn to "do it right", or to learn the new move, you need to actively suppress your reflexes that have you doing things the old way.

    Now, that said, the mechanic is still a silly one, because presumably all of a given school - all of "desert wind" or all of "diamond mind" - is self-compatible. And it makes even less sense for a Sorcerer.

    But the basic concept, of not doing a thing in order to learn a new thing, isn't as alien as it sounds.

    Hard to explain to a 7-year-old, unless they have experience holding their pencil wrong, or tying their shoes or wrapping presents multiple ways, or some such. But still ostensibly a part of the human experience.
    Last edited by Quertus; 2021-11-23 at 06:15 AM.

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    Default Re: A model of immersion

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    Actually? That makes sense to me.

    Say what?!

    Well, sort of.

    Imagine some physical activity - it doesn't matter what. Martial arts, dancing, tennis, race car driving.

    Imagine you've learned to do it wrong. Or that you've trained your instincts for one particular move, and that that move is getting in the way of learning a new move.

    I've experienced that many, many times. Can you think of something like that in your own life, or at least imagine it?

    So, in order to learn to "do it right", or to learn the new move, you need to actively suppress your reflexes that have you doing things the old way.
    Problem: When I took up kendo I didn't have to forget how to fence epee. In fact my epee style became more aggressive and effective after taking kendo classes.

    When I learned functional programming and SQL I didn't have to forget anything from any of the other programming or scripting languages I know.

    White water kayaking, canoeing, and rafting are all different styles of going down rough sections of rivers. I didn't have to forget how to do a kayak roll in order to learn how to ferry in a two person canoe.

    Learning belly dancing didn't make me forget ballroom and when I get to learn tango I'm not going to forget ether of the other dance styles.

    Unlearning a bad habit or a consistent mistake you make is one thing. Forgetting a dance step because you learned a new one doesn't happen.

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    Default Re: A model of immersion

    I really don't think that "complies with reality" is really part of it, based on personal experience.

    Again, D&D has some real groaners. The way armor works, hit points, etc. There's just a lot of stuff that fails logic if you think about it at all, and try to correlate to the real world (note that most heavy immersion people in 3e that I've seen on this forum basically use the argument "well, the world is actually the way D&D describes it").

    Armor? Can have some "harder to hit" aspects, but is inconsistent - lots of things that should impact you if you're armored just.... don't... if the armor protects you. Hit Points work great for two guys hitting each other with swords, but result in illogical results in so many other cases (can't die from falling down a cliff, charging a bunch of people with crossbows makes complete sense and is no danger, lava, etc.).

    But we've internalized that, not only through D&D but through all the games that copied D&D's design. We don't think about it, because we think in the terms of how that works, and don't try to correlate it back to reality. And so everything works the way we expect (even though "what we expect" is based on "how D&D works" rather than "how reality works"), and so we don't get dropped out of Unconscious Competence. (Personally in the 80s I never got past those, and so started playing GURPS. I've recently decided I just don't care about that illogical stuff and so don't pay attention to it.... and thus, immersion).

    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    Problem: When I took up kendo I didn't have to forget how to fence epee. In fact my epee style became more aggressive and effective after taking kendo classes.

    When I learned functional programming and SQL I didn't have to forget anything from any of the other programming or scripting languages I know.

    White water kayaking, canoeing, and rafting are all different styles of going down rough sections of rivers. I didn't have to forget how to do a kayak roll in order to learn how to ferry in a two person canoe.

    Learning belly dancing didn't make me forget ballroom and when I get to learn tango I'm not going to forget ether of the other dance styles.

    Unlearning a bad habit or a consistent mistake you make is one thing. Forgetting a dance step because you learned a new one doesn't happen.
    While I mostly agree with this, fighting is often reaction-based enough that a part of training is just getting things to happen almost automatically, so there's still some truth there.
    Last edited by kyoryu; 2021-11-23 at 11:51 AM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    I really don't think that "complies with reality" is really part of it, based on personal experience.

    Again, D&D has some real groaners. The way armor works, hit points, etc. There's just a lot of stuff that fails logic if you think about it at all, and try to correlate to the real world (note that most heavy immersion people in 3e that I've seen on this forum basically use the argument "well, the world is actually the way D&D describes it").

    Armor? Can have some "harder to hit" aspects, but is inconsistent - lots of things that should impact you if you're armored just.... don't... if the armor protects you. Hit Points work great for two guys hitting each other with swords, but result in illogical results in so many other cases (can't die from falling down a cliff, charging a bunch of people with crossbows makes complete sense and is no danger, lava, etc.).

    But we've internalized that, not only through D&D but through all the games that copied D&D's design. We don't think about it, because we think in the terms of how that works, and don't try to correlate it back to reality. And so everything works the way we expect (even though "what we expect" is based on "how D&D works" rather than "how reality works"), and so we don't get dropped out of Unconscious Competence. (Personally in the 80s I never got past those, and so started playing GURPS. I've recently decided I just don't care about that illogical stuff and so don't pay attention to it.... and thus, immersion).



    While I mostly agree with this, fighting is often reaction-based enough that a part of training is just getting things to happen almost automatically, so there's still some truth there.
    The thing is, in other editions of D&D the times when armor and HP make little sense are weird edge cases that almost never come up in actual play, and do break immersion on the rare occasions that they do. 4E on the other hand, has the craziness front and center at all times.
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    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    While I mostly agree with this, fighting is often reaction-based enough that a part of training is just getting things to happen almost automatically, so there's still some truth there.
    I could agree if it was about unlearning bad habits or something. I've had to do that and it isn't easy. But epee & kendo? If I go into HEMA and learn to use a spear will I forget how to lunge or parry with an epee? No.

    Skill builds off previous skill. Now, if I go from SQL queries one day to C# programming the next it might take me 15 minutes to shift gears. Hot swapping from one style to another, epee to kendo, kayak to canoe, may hiccup me for a few minutes where I make some errors*. But learning a new thing, like a dance or fencing move, does not make me forget how to do things already learned.

    *one of my current pet peeves is that near all programming languages use "==" for equality testing and "=" for assignment, but SQL uses "=" for equality and assignment (just with a keyword before the assignment). If I've been deep in flow of one it takes 3 or 4 mistakes for me to switch gears to the other.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    Problem: When I took up kendo I didn't have to forget how to fence epee. In fact my epee style became more aggressive and effective after taking kendo classes.

    When I learned functional programming and SQL I didn't have to forget anything from any of the other programming or scripting languages I know.

    White water kayaking, canoeing, and rafting are all different styles of going down rough sections of rivers. I didn't have to forget how to do a kayak roll in order to learn how to ferry in a two person canoe.

    Learning belly dancing didn't make me forget ballroom and when I get to learn tango I'm not going to forget ether of the other dance styles.

    Unlearning a bad habit or a consistent mistake you make is one thing. Forgetting a dance step because you learned a new one doesn't happen.
    That would be a "no, you can't relate". Sadness.

    So, we got the meme "Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named" from confusion when I referred to him by name vs my account name vs me. I referred to them and all my characters by name because people kept telling me that my experiences were impossible when I spoke more generally.

    You've just told me that my IRL experiences are impossible.

    Granted, it's slightly different - it's not "forgetting", so much as consciously retaining your reflexes. With conscious effort, you probably could pull off the old moves. Of course, if this was in the middle of a fight, by then, you'd probably be dead.

    There's many things that I've done with Unconscious Competence, that I had to lose that, lose the ability to act in Flow State, in order to learn a similar trait / talent. No, I didn't completely forget the old skills, but they were no longer reflex by the time I learned the new skill.

    Like… say i was suddenly given my body from 20 years ago. Or my "baby teeth". I used to have reflexes to use those, but I don't any more. Do you? Or did you update and replace those reflexes as your body gradually (or suddenly) changed?

    No, not all skills require replacing old ones. So your examples are useless - they don't disprove the point. They merely indicate the things you searched for in your memories.

    Some things are brown. You not remembering anything brown doesn't disprove that.

    Some things can conflict with existing reflexes. You not remembering such things doesn't disprove that.

    But I'll continue to hope that you can remember or imagine that such can be and is the case.

    Like… I had to give up my instinctive paddling technique to learn a more efficient way to row. Or I had to give up my instinct to say that people have shirts, and shirts have buttons, in order to grok database programming.

    And you really learned multiple dance styles without having to fight your reflexes? Lucky. I've got 3 left feet.

    For me, the most obvious (if trivial) example may well be the location (and configuration) of the gear shift. I really can't hold multiple gear shifts at Unconscious Competence level. I cannot transition smoothly between multiple vehicles, back and forth. At best, I can slowly train my reflexes for which is my current car, or try and be at "Conscious Competence" for multiple / new.

    And… this is all alien to you?

    -----

    Of course, this whole conversation really ties into the topic of what breaks flow state, and, specifically, what breaks flow state in 4e. How new skills don't start out at flow state, and how learning new ones technically can sometimes take you "off your game" for skills you've already mastered.

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    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    I really don't think that "complies with reality" is really part of it, based on personal experience.

    Again, D&D has some real groaners. The way armor works, hit points, etc. There's just a lot of stuff that fails logic if you think about it at all, and try to correlate to the real world (note that most heavy immersion people in 3e that I've seen on this forum basically use the argument "well, the world is actually the way D&D describes it").

    Armor? Can have some "harder to hit" aspects, but is inconsistent - lots of things that should impact you if you're armored just.... don't... if the armor protects you. Hit Points work great for two guys hitting each other with swords, but result in illogical results in so many other cases (can't die from falling down a cliff, charging a bunch of people with crossbows makes complete sense and is no danger, lava, etc.).

    But we've internalized that, not only through D&D but through all the games that copied D&D's design. We don't think about it, because we think in the terms of how that works, and don't try to correlate it back to reality. And so everything works the way we expect (even though "what we expect" is based on "how D&D works" rather than "how reality works"), and so we don't get dropped out of Unconscious Competence. (Personally in the 80s I never got past those, and so started playing GURPS. I've recently decided I just don't care about that illogical stuff and so don't pay attention to it.... and thus, immersion).
    In HP's defence, I'd like to say that there's a difference between the concept of HP, and the implementation. And, further, that even if HP themselves are implemented "right", that doesn't prevent damage from being implemented wrong, allowing creatures to survive bathing in molten rock or molten gold because damage wasn't calibrated appropriately.

    Or, yeah, reality just works differently, and that's perfectly reasonable.

    Or Mr. Incredible wasn't bathing in lava, it's describing events that way that's the mistake.

    But none of those are HP's fault.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    That would be a "no, you can't relate". Sadness.

    You've just told me that my IRL experiences are impossible.

    Granted, it's slightly different - it's not "forgetting", so much as consciously retaining your reflexes. With conscious effort, you probably could pull off the old moves. Of course, if this was in the middle of a fight, by then, you'd probably be dead.
    Ok, I see the break, its definitions.

    You're talking honed reflexes and I'm talking learning. Yes, if you fail to practice something it will take more work to use it. If you don't dance for a year or six months then you get rusty and have to think about what you're doing until you get back in the flow.

    Now, while I was learning kendo I didn't fence epee. When I went back to epee I was rusty. My parries weren't as fast and my point control wasn't as precise. But at no point was I unable to perform anything that I could do before. Being a fraction of a second slower isn't being completely unable to do something. Not fencing epee while training in kendo didn't make me unable to parry or feint in epee, it just made me slightly worse. Of course if I'd done both at the same time there wouldn't have been any skill rust and I could have learned new things in both styles at the same time.

    It's not me saying that your experiences are impossible, we were talking about different things. But 4e and 3e ToB didn't do "skill rust", they did total amnesia of your maneuver. If you traded "jumping stab" or "electric zap" for "whirling slice" or "fire fist" you didn't just get worse or slower at what you traded out, you literally couldn't do the things you did last week no matter how hard you tried or what the circumstances were. And in 4e it applied to noncombat utility powers too.

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    One possibility is that 4e powers were all supposed to represent actually extraordinary++ things. So the comparison to "normal" things isn't apposite--these are powers you can't just train to do on a routine basis, they're effectively slottable superpowers. Now that possibility imposes other immersion/fictional constraints, but not the "forget one to learn another" weirdness people were expressing concern about.
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    Default Re: A model of immersion

    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    Problem: When I took up kendo I didn't have to forget how to fence epee. In fact my epee style became more aggressive and effective after taking kendo classes.

    When I learned functional programming and SQL I didn't have to forget anything from any of the other programming or scripting languages I know.

    White water kayaking, canoeing, and rafting are all different styles of going down rough sections of rivers. I didn't have to forget how to do a kayak roll in order to learn how to ferry in a two person canoe.

    Learning belly dancing didn't make me forget ballroom and when I get to learn tango I'm not going to forget ether of the other dance styles.

    Unlearning a bad habit or a consistent mistake you make is one thing. Forgetting a dance step because you learned a new one doesn't happen.
    *golf clap* nice post.
    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    If I go into HEMA and learn to use a spear will I forget how to lunge or parry with an epee? No.
    I learned tae kwon do before I learned how to box. I still know how to do both, but I'm old enough, and out of practice enough, that I can't do some of what I used to be able to do. And if I hit something hard enough, I think I may break my own hand (again).
    Skill builds off previous skill.
    This also applies to flying. I learned on fixed wing. Then I became a helicopter pilot. Then I taught new pilots how to fly fixed wing. Each experience unlocked new and better skills. (But you do have to remember what you are flying, since that single engine trainer really can't hover! )
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    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    One possibility is that 4e powers were all supposed to represent actually extraordinary++ things. So the comparison to "normal" things isn't apposite--these are powers you can't just train to do on a routine basis, they're effectively slottable superpowers. Now that possibility imposes other immersion/fictional constraints, but not the "forget one to learn another" weirdness people were expressing concern about.
    I don't think of it as corresponding to specific "moves" that the PC "knows" in character. Taken holistically, the powers taken make up what kind of maneuvers they're good at, but also more generally what their style of fighting is, what kind of opportunities they spot or take advantage of more often/easily, and even just what kind of things happen when they're fighting. Switching out powers is just the style developing over time and some things that used to be particular strong suits of the PC (compared to their environment) fade into the regular back-and-forth of combat while other strengths come to the forefront. Similarly, the player's judgment of what they can accomplish given the powers they haven't expended yet doesn't correlate to the character having "used up" ways of swinging a sword, but of what they can accomplish given the situation they find themselves in.

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    The thing is, in other editions of D&D the times when armor and HP make little sense are weird edge cases that almost never come up in actual play, and do break immersion on the rare occasions that they do. 4E on the other hand, has the craziness front and center at all times.
    HP rarely breaks immersion in 4e because it's never treated like meat points, so those jarring moments when the meaning of it suddenly changes don't occur.

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    Default Re: A model of immersion

    Anyway, my point is really that it's not "realism" or lack thereof that breaks immersion in the long run. It's when there's a break from how you expect things to work.

    Which, when you're new to roleplaying, is the same thing. Also, if you're familiar with a game that acts mostly like the new game, but then suddenly acts differently, is the same thing.

    But, if you can stop applying your out-of-game knowledge and just accept the game, after a while it becomes how you expect things to work, and then immersion becomes possible again.

    Note the "if" statement there. Again, with Fate, for it to become immersive I effectively had to consciously decide not to use my normal-game instincts and accept that is was weird. And then I was surprised to find immersion creeping back in.

    As long as you're thinking "it shouldn't work like this", you can't hit Unconscious Competence. You're at Conscious Competence, as you're thinking about what you're doing.
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    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    Anyway, my point is really that it's not "realism" or lack thereof that breaks immersion in the long run. It's when there's a break from how you expect things to work.

    But, if you can stop applying your out-of-game knowledge and just accept the game, after a while it becomes how you expect things to work, and then immersion becomes possible again.
    This starts on the premise that you'd want to accept the game as it is. No matter how screwed and nonsensical.
    Drowning healing? Of course, that's how the game works. The ability to heal people by suffocating them to within a inch of their lives is not a design mistake that breaks immersion; it's part of the game and you'll stop complaining about it once you're used to it.
    Soon, you'll see it as natural, and you'll scoff at any game where you cannot heal your friends by sticking their head in a bucket
    Last edited by King of Nowhere; 2021-11-25 at 08:33 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    Note the "if" statement there. Again, with Fate, for it to become immersive I effectively had to consciously decide not to use my normal-game instincts and accept that is was weird. And then I was surprised to find immersion creeping back in.
    I won't say that you didn't have such an experience with Fate or that your model does not sound plausible, but looking back on all those systems i have played, i have never seen immersion increase with familiarity. Instead i have felt the opposite : the more system mastery i had and the more the rules faded to the background due to flawless use, the more grating it became to encounter those unintuitive artifact that only exist because rule quirks. What i am willing to overlook when everything is still new and shiny is more eye-catching when the rest is familiar ground.

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    If the flow state thing was true, the D&D 3e and GURPs would be among the least immersive games I've played. That's true for GURPs but not for 3e. It was immersive long before I learned the rules well enough I didn't have to pause the game to look things up.

    Those pauses were always annoying because they reduced the total amount of play time available in a session, and sometimes because they threw off pacing, but they didn't always hurt my or the other players immersion materially.

    Edit: I should add, thinking about rules doesn't always seem to impact immersion negatively ... but a battlemat and miniatures always do!

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    So, a quick recap before picking up where we left off,

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    immersion = Flow State + Focus on the Fiction + Focus on Character

    This leads to a few predictions. Primarily - immersion will be broken when Flow state is broken - essentially when players have to start focusing on the rules and how to apply them.

    Immersion = system Flow State + fiction Flow State + character Flow State

    And immersion is broken when any of the requisite Flow States are broken.

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    Perhaps even more explicitly, when the general flow and procedures of how things work changes. (Using similar procedures but with different math doesn't seem to impact things as much, observationally).
    I'd contend that, more generally, it's when procedures cannot be matched to the fiction. Consider, "I ask the girl what time it is".

    GM responds with…
    • She tells you the time.
    • you gain the "knows the current time" trait.
    • make a reaction check.
    • roll charisma.
    • roll sense motive.
    • roll Small Talk, Seduction, Sense Motive, Bluff, Perception, and Style.
    • OK, but what's your approach?
    • you take 12 strength damage and gain 17 karma.


    If you don't know the system, some of these might produce a "huh?" disconnect from flow. But if you know the system, most of these make sense, follow logically from your stated action. But at least one of these things is not like the others, does not match up with the fiction that lives in our heads of how these things play out. That's what causes a long-term disconnect from flow state, when the rules cannot be reconciled with the fiction.

    Or, more generally, how long a system will keep you from achieving flow state strongly correlates with how long it takes to reconcile / equate the rules with the fiction.

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    Anyway, my point is really that it's not "realism" or lack thereof that breaks immersion in the long run. It's when there's a break from how you expect things to work.

    I think what you're calling "the long run", I think of as a more transient problem, compared to the true long-term issues of irreconcilable differences between the rules and the fiction.

    And some rules cannot be reconciled with the fiction. This is what produces a true long term / permanent impediment to Flow State.

    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    looking back on all those systems i have played, i have never seen immersion increase with familiarity. Instead i have felt the opposite : the more system mastery i had and the more the rules faded to the background due to flawless use, the more grating it became to encounter those unintuitive artifact that only exist because rule quirks. What i am willing to overlook when everything is still new and shiny is more eye-catching when the rest is familiar ground.

    These rules that, once the system knowledge is sufficient to achieve Flow State mechanically, but still break Flow State at the fiction layer, are what permanently hinder role-playing / immersion, and force one to play the game as a game of rules, not roles, as something other than an RPG.

    That said,

    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowhere View Post
    This starts on the premise that you'd want to accept the game as it is. No matter how screwed and nonsensical.
    Drowning healing? Of course, that's how the game works. The ability to heal people by suffocating them to within a inch of their lives is not a design mistake that breaks immersion; it's part of the game and you'll stop complaining about it once you're used to it.
    Soon, you'll see it as natural, and you'll scoff at any game where you cannot heal your friends by sticking their head in a bucket

    Drown Healing flows perfectly fine in The Princess Bride. And, in fact, there's no reason why it wouldn't make perfect sense in any world with Healing Surges as a means to initiate such.

    Drown Healing is perfectly fine as a part of a world's physics. But that truth does *not* mandate that *all* worlds *must* use Drown Healing else be incoherent.

    OTOH, Drown Healing doesn't "flow" so well in systems where health is exclusively "meat points".

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    if you can stop applying your out-of-game knowledge and just accept the game, after a while it becomes how you expect things to work, and then immersion becomes possible again.

    Note the "if" statement there.

    As long as you're thinking "it shouldn't work like this", you can't hit Unconscious Competence. You're at Conscious Competence, as you're thinking about what you're doing.

    So, yes. *If* you can accept that asking a girl the time logically leads to taking 12 strength damage and gaining 17 karma, *if* you can accept Drown Healing as possible in Princess Bride, *if* you can accept 18 Dex, 3 Str as humanly possible, *if* you can accept "guy at the gym" powers having daily limits, *if* you can accept the unreasonable as reasonable, then, yes, you can once again achieve Flow State.

    My measure of an RPG is just how much it asks of you in that regard.

    "When you hit things, they get hurt; hit/hurt them enough, and they die"? Yeah, I can handle that. A 7-year-old can tell you that that's reasonable.

    "Only let your strongest person lift the weight, and, if they're better at lifting weights than you are at choosing or clearing paths, they'll do better blundering through random overgrown paths than if you try to help"? "You cannot simultaneously find out the time, flirt with the girl, and learn anything about her (let alone use this conversation to blend into the crowd against the people who are searching for you) - choose one"? No, sorry, never gonna happen. Those are rules for games, not for RPGs.

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    So, 4e.

    4e is anti-immersive for many people, and I will never in a million years deny that. It's also not (demonstrably) anti-immersive for many others.

    So..... why?

    Because 4e is a terrible design for players of 3.x. It is the Uncanny Valley of D&D. While Fate was obviously a different game, 4e looks like "standard D&D". Until it doesn't. And that's the problem.

    Remember how I said that Fate made me drop to the 2nd level, but it was obvious that it was doing so? 4e doesn't do that. 4e is a different game, with different expectations, and often different procedures.

    So if you take a 3x player, throw them at 4e, they're thinking "cool, D&D, but with different math." And that's generally doable. But then.... where is the Knock spell? It's not there! Why do Fighters have daily abilities???? That's wizard stuff! Why is this monster doing so much damage at 1st level, that'll kill a new character!

    And so on, and so on. Their expectations are completely violated. Unlike Fate, which said "hey, this is different, you're gonna have to think about it", playing 4e is akin to driving down the freeway and suddenly hitting a brick wall. And then another. And then another. Note that 5e keeps a lot of 4e design, but packages and presents it in a way that is much closer to 3e and prior versions, and has the numbers more "in line" with those versions. And that's enough to prevent that jarring disconnect that happens.

    So, why did 4e not bug me, personally? Because I'm not a heavy D&D player. I barely played 3e. I stopped playing 1/2e in the mid 80s, and migrated to other systems. So when I came to start playing 4e again, I wasn't in that state of deep unconscious competence. And so 4e didn't yank me out of it. I had no expectations to be broken.

    But for someone deeply into 3.x? Yeah, it's going to slam you out of immersion, HARD, every single time.
    All that this says about 3e to 4e is that, if looked at through a 3e lens, it will take a really long time to achieve flow state in 4e. And I'll not argue that.

    My contention is that 4e flow state can only be achieved by treating it as a game, and explicitly *not* as a role-playing game. By abandoning the in-character perspective, and playing the *rules*.

    However, bringing up 5e is interesting at this juncture. Because, with 5e Bounded Accuracy and Mother May I, you never know what your character can do. Can they climb that wall? Get that girl to give them the time of day? Who knows?

    Ah, but if you play with the same GM long enough, eventually, maybe you will know what DC they'll set for things, and what things they'll bypass rules / rolls altogether for.

    So, for some systems, immersion requires Knowledge: GM flow state to be achieved, as well.

    Immersion = system Flow State + fiction Flow State + character Flow State + [Knowledge: GM Flow State]

    Make any sense? Better than chopped up elephant bits?
    Last edited by Quertus; 2021-11-26 at 05:01 PM.

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    Ogre in the Playground
     
    Planetar

    Join Date
    May 2018

    Default Re: A model of immersion

    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    It's not me saying that your experiences are impossible, we were talking about different things. But 4e and 3e ToB didn't do "skill rust", they did total amnesia of your maneuver. If you traded "jumping stab" or "electric zap" for "whirling slice" or "fire fist" you didn't just get worse or slower at what you traded out, you literally couldn't do the things you did last week no matter how hard you tried or what the circumstances were. And in 4e it applied to noncombat utility powers too.
    As far as I'm concerned, if I ever had to GM 4e again (which is unlikely, but you never know), I'd probably allow players to swap at long rest any power for another previously forgotten power, and probably also allow players to swap between encounters an encounter power for a previously forgotten encounter power.

    I'm pretty much convinced that the reason for this "amnesia" mechanics is a resource constraint: they don't want PCs to get more daily or encounters powers as it would dilute how much it costs to them. Then they could have added a more complex resource system (where instead of replacing an encounter power by another encounter power, you now get to use one of the two at each encounter) but chose to go with a simple but more restrictive solution.

  29. - Top - End - #59
    Bugbear in the Playground
    Join Date
    Oct 2016

    Default Re: A model of immersion

    Quote Originally Posted by MoiMagnus View Post
    As far as I'm concerned, if I ever had to GM 4e again (which is unlikely, but you never know), I'd probably allow players to swap at long rest any power for another previously forgotten power, and probably also allow players to swap between encounters an encounter power for a previously forgotten encounter power.

    I'm pretty much convinced that the reason for this "amnesia" mechanics is a resource constraint: they don't want PCs to get more daily or encounters powers as it would dilute how much it costs to them. Then they could have added a more complex resource system (where instead of replacing an encounter power by another encounter power, you now get to use one of the two at each encounter) but chose to go with a simple but more restrictive solution.
    One thing I heard was that allowing the swap out prevented characters petering out if they you picked the wrong skill that they were stuck with. Players had long complained about how you had to map out your high level characters from chargen and this was a way to allow flexibility.

  30. - Top - End - #60
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Daemon

    Join Date
    May 2016
    Location
    Corvallis, OR
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: A model of immersion

    Quote Originally Posted by Pauly View Post
    One thing I heard was that allowing the swap out prevented characters petering out if they you picked the wrong skill that they were stuck with. Players had long complained about how you had to map out your high level characters from chargen and this was a way to allow flexibility.
    And with a "gain a new power at (just about) every level" paradigm, not swapping them out means you'd have this catalog of useless, superseded powers. In large part because the difference between higher level powers and lower level powers was pretty much just numbers. Same basic effects available from 1-30. So in most cases, it was the equivalent of the same gear treadmill that 4e had with gear, just with powers.

    Which means you could think of it as powers growing in strength like Pokemon evolutions (ie change the name as well) rather than actually getting completely new ones.
    Last edited by PhoenixPhyre; 2021-11-26 at 04:35 PM.
    Dawn of Hope: a 5e setting. http://wiki.admiralbenbo.org
    Rogue Equivalent Damage calculator, now prettier and more configurable!
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    NIH system 5e fork, very much WIP. Base github repo.
    NIH System PDF Up to date main-branch build version.

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