Casting Shadows

Immersive experiences are typically seen as a positive be they those we have in a cinema, with a video game, reading a novel, and so on. If the quality of the experience is described as immersive it connotes a certain quality. That quality is often not further explained. In most cases, it is likely that it does not matter that no additional clarification on that point is forthcoming. We ‘just know’ what it means. Yay, us.

Of course, the term immersive is used to describe roleplaying also. Here, however, the lack of clarification of the particulars of that experience is an example of when it does matter. RPGs are not media to be consumed for the players, nor are they as singular an experience as the consumption of media tends to be, ie: listening to music, watching a film, or reading a book. With RPGs, we are participants in the creation of the experience and do so through different active and passive means. We listen. We speak to give description, to ask questions, to give responses, to explain or negotiate, and to provide dialogue, and so on. We are likely to use some tools as we play, such as dice, cards, miniatures, images, maps, or versions of such things on a device or virtual tabletop. We imagine. If we find an RPG session to be immersive, in what are we finding ourselves immersed, and what does that mean in that context?

Defining Immersion and Engagement

To help explore the topic of what can be meant in general, and what we specifically mean in a given example when we wax eloquent about immersion, I like to separate things into two defined experiences, that of immersion, and that of engagement. Immersion can suffice on its own, but as usual, the more things a word applies to the more ways it can subtly interfere with communication.

For my purposes, I split the topic into immersion to cover the largely passive elements of the experience and engagement to cover the largely active elements of the experience. For example, I might recognize that a session was immersive if I had a strong sense of visually imagining the surroundings of the characters, a clear mental picture of an NPC’s face, or the smell of a corpse on a deserted beach at low tide. In contrast, I might recognize that a session was engaging if I rolled dice for violence or battled hypothermia with a look to confirm my character’s endurance score and a turn of a card – not as a statistical tool but as an analog of physical strikes or the teeth-clenched will to live. Similarly, the tactical and descriptive discussion of players intermixed with the dialogue of characters as a chase runs, or as a combat cuts into us, can be filed under engagement for purposes of assessing how what we play, the system we use, the tools we use, the people we play with, and the procedures that shape the way that we play merge to serve or interfere with our goals.

Why make this distinction?

To be clear, these are two personally-defined lenses through which to view the same experience based on what is happening when that experience has been recognized as occuring. When thinking about a session, we can therefore consider moments where we were or were not immersed, as well as moments where we were or were not engaged, and then examine why.

By making this distinction, we can isolate more of the experience of a moment and examine what matters to that experience with fewer distractions. Further, this also lets us explore the phenomenon more effectively for those who find themselves better able to respond to specific aspects of play than others. By this, I mean what is here defined as immersion and engagement can commonly be experienced by most players, and so some of those players respond more strongly to the inputs covered by immersion, where others respond more strongly to those covered by engagement.

Examples of Immersive and Engaging Experiences

Immersive RPG experiences often revolve around the feeling of ‘being there’ or at least of being able or ‘almost able’ to see the imagined situation our play is creating. The descriptions and personal knowledge of the settings, as well as the relationships with the characters in it, spark visualization and a sort of concrete conceptualization for those not that prone to mental imagery alone.

Engaging RPG experiences often revolve around personalizing the memory of action. No real blow was struck but we can feel or almost feel the impact of it in our memory. The mechanisms of play and the tools we use in play rapidly and almost subconsciouly inform us of the changing conditions in the imagined situation our play is creating.

When looking back on immersive play, our memory includes things like visualization of what the character saw, as if we saw it. We might remember dialogue as if it had been spoken to us, or we might feel an echo of emotion the character would have felt were they real. Our senses, our attention, and the sensory input we imagine in play interact in our memory of that play experience and leave us with a stronger sense of having been or almost having been there than imagination might produce on its own.

Most discussion of immersive experiences seems to revolve around immersing in the perspective and even identity of the character, but it is entirely possible and quite common (just less-discussed) to find the scene or its scenery to be immersive, or the coming together of story elements into a richer tapestry to be so. Where our attention can focus, there too can immersion be found.

When looking back on engaging play, our memories are no less vivid but they arise from what we are doing as players of the game. It is in this kind of experience we get the other reference most commonly made about immersive play experiences, that of losing track of time or other considerations. We become so focused on the imagined situation and what is happening within it that the real world around us fades in consequence.

You’re talking about attention!

The link here, of course, is our attention. What attracts it? What holds it? What responses can and do arise from attentiveness to a particular aspect of play? How narrow or wide, specific or general, fragile or durable can that attentiveness be in order to produce a sense of immersion or engagement in play or afterward?

If we want more of this experience, or want it to happen more consistently, what do we have to do – or stop doing – to facilitate it?

Research and our tables

Since the 1970s, there has been research in around what has become popularly called the flow state and as roleplaying gamers, we can see definite links to that research and our experience. We may grow excited about how terms like ‘being in the zone’ or ‘the autotelic personality’ reflect or suggest a connection to times where the imagined situations of play held more of our attention that the room we were in, or our understanding of the imagined characters in those situations was more signifiant in the moment than our understanding of the real people playing them.

Not much of the research places a focus on the roleplaying game as we play it. Further, the varied nature of our play contributed to by the diversity of games to play, people to play them with, and places in which to play them makes the exploration more personal than such studies of more consistent activities. That leaves part of the exploration to us – if the experience matters to us.

The General Discussion of this Topic

I don’t find much progress has been made with this topic in RPG circles since people first started talking about it in the first year of D&D’s availability. Despite all the positive excitement about the idea of immersion in general, I think it is evident that not everyone values immersive or engaging play equally, or at all. There are those who claim to be transported into the game world and there are those who claim any report of immersion is false or delusional. The rhetoric levied in both directions can get quite hyperbolic so it tends to prevent discussion. This is exacerbated by more often being merely statements of preference rather than useful reports of experience, play, and play practices. Our preferences for what constitutues enjoyable play are neither universal nor important outside of the groups we choose to play with. Discussion of this topic, however, is not about preference, it is about experience. Immersion and engagement are replicable experiences reported throughout the history of the hobby from varied cultures of play among groups who have had no contact with each other. This type of focused attention happens. If we can accept that, then the next logical step is to identify what aids it so that those who seek it can reach it with greater satisfaction.

Where is that discussion now?

Generally speaking, due to the varied activities that occur during an RPG session and how different they can be, one of the core concepts of the experience is that it is both short-lived and fragile. In support of that perspective, in my play groups, where we often play in horror settings where we choose to create a strong sense of genre and atmosphere, we speak of things which distract us from doing our part to maintain it. These are things like calling for or making rolls, expressly stating game rules, using gamespeak and jargon, or employing other mechanisms of the game. By comparison, a game that devotes most of its rules to defining which player gets to give shape to the story and how much scope is giving to that shaping abandons players looking for systems that help define skill outcomes from a character perspective.

A recent example from my play relates to the Call of Cthulhu campaign I am running and how calls to roll for Sanity can occur at the most inopportune times in regard to immersing in the perspective of the character. Rolling the dice in a moment of terror or horrific revelation definitely distracts from the passive or receptive mental lens of our character’s imagined senses – at least for a moment. This is an important distinction of its own. Were we playing with a different focus, one that does not depend on the first person experience of the character’s situation, the effect of these ‘distractions’ is diminished. Swing far enough away from that first-person perspective and the use of system takes on positive and engaging aspects and the in-character play becomes distracting. Alternately, sufficient play and familiarity with the switching of attention from one aspect of play to another – and a refinement of how large and significant a switching cost a person makes to do so – can transform our experience of a moment of immersion followed by a moment of disruption, followed by (hopefully) another moment of immersion into an experience of immersion interspersed with moments of engagement. One solution does not fit all problems.

A pure focus on distractions from focused attention could devolve into complaints. It often does, with fingers pointed at bad GMs, bad, players, and bad games. It can also become discussion of what we can do to mitigate or obviate that distraction – and how that will affect our enjoyment of the system’s effect on play. If we change things enough to reduce distraction from the atmosphere of the imagined situation, we might change them so much as to reduce our enjoyment of how the system models, limits, and informs our actions, reactions, and interactions in play. That can diminish or remove our satisfaction in making decisions as players of that game. The distractions aren’t the important thing.

In my experience, though some situations might suggest a certain fragility or limited duration for immersion or engagement, the hold the game has on our attention can also be quite robust. I have run games while driving, while on a busy train, in noisy and crowded Seoul coffeeshops, and other such suboptimal locations – and found the play to be immersive, engaging, or both. Can it be both fragile and durable, or is there something else which is more important, such as our ease in switching our attention between things of interest and back again?

Fiddling around without thought, honest reporting, and earnest experimentation can just make things worse. Sadly, this can in turn lead to a lot of talking head videos on YouTube telling you about your 5 biggest mistakes, and that sets conversation back months or years.

Considering this conversation is almost as old, within a year or so, of the launch of the hobby, it’s time we stopped reseting to zero and got a move on, right?

Are you experienced?

I put out a call for thoughts on this topic a few months ago for the Casting Shadows Podcast and have gotten some interesting call-ins in response. At the time of writing, that episode was intended to be part 2 of 2, but as usual, things have grown a bit and we are now in an ongoing series.

Links
Here is the short lead-in episode called On Immersion and Engagement.
Here is a related call-in episode: Reflections from the Road
Here is Support Material: Layers of Play
Here is the second full episode on immersion: On the Fragility or Durability of Immersion