Immersion, Interaction, and Organic Worlds
by Charles Dickey
When I engage in a role-playing game, whether as a player or GM, my highest priority is immersion. A few defining points of immersion for me:
- Detailed settings including but not limited to
- Environment – cities, forests, deserts, floating cubes of iron, islands of salt, or whatever else can be dreamed up.
- A Calendar – seasons, cycles, weather, holy days, festivals, days of historic remembrance all hold within them the seeds for quality RP interaction and/or adventure.
- Factions and Causes that the PCs and NPCs can align themselves with
- Player Characters who drive the story, impact and develop the world around them, and develop in complexity as play continues
As a young boy, RPGs—specifically the Red Box D&D set and sprawling out in tens of directions from there—had me at their cover art. I still remember the wonder at which I gazed at Larry Elmore’s sketches of the basic warrior character in that Red Box player’s book, and the sheer awe and increased wonder I felt as I delved into the text of both of those books. There were worlds more exciting and alive with experience than my hum-drum, air-conditioned suburban home could offer, and part of me, at that young age, stepped deeply into these fictional fantasy worlds.
In the past several years, I’ve been pouring my imagination into fantasy again: short stories, a draft of a novel, notebooks packed with a mess of illustrations and concepts, a homebrew campaign setting, a smattering of online games. In all of these endeavors, immersion, cultivating the illusion of reality, is key.
As a GM, I’m learning the value of thinking big and letting go. In running my game, I started with a fairly polished urban setting. I gathered my players and guided them in developing characters to insert into this setting. I carefully set up an adventure plot for them. On the first game night, I opened up with my carefully crafted scenario, then turned it over to them. They considered it all for a minute—from six different perspectives, mind you—and began to engage the world. They ignored key elements of my finely-crafted plot, or missed them altogether. Their characters fought with one another and made an art of belligerence. One character bullied a powerful NPC and almost got killed a few hours into the campaign by a swarm of enormous rodents powered by that NPC’s anger. A key building burnt to the ground. None of this was scripted. At the end of the night, I was frustrated and felt that nothing had gone right. Most of the plot points I had counted on them engaging, and most of the details I had scripted, were passed over, unused. For the GM who had spent hours of time preparing the adventure—set in a game world I had spent even more time crafting—this was a disappointing game session. Yet as time passed and I sat with the events, I began to love them. This chaos was better than anything that I could possibly script!
Running this ongoing game has taught me, in repeated punches to the gut, the importance of sketchy, loose preparation. I’ve drawn maps; plotted probabilistic encounter tables; stocked dungeons; detailed NPCs, gods, political structures, technologies, and economics. I have two notebooks, a full yellow pad of notes, an Obsidian Portal account, and another wiki. I’ve got plans, but when the gaming group gathers, I’ve got to drop those plans and roll with their wants and needs and whims. At this point, I think the best thing I’ve done is make this giant sandbox fantasy world for my players’ characters to root around and attempt to find their own stories in.
As a content developer for Nevermet Press, I’m interested in hearing from the gaming community regarding what a good adventure setting consists of.
GMs, are you looking for crafted, polished adventures that come ready to run?
How willing are you and your players to engage in “railroading” in order to successfully accomplish the goals of a pre-packaged adventure? Also, what level of detail do you look for in setting products? Do you look for stand-alone settings with details on regions, cultures, gods, races, monsters, and history?
Or do you prefer modular settings on a smaller and less detailed scale, leaving room for the GM and players to customize and tailor the setting to fit into an existing world?
Players, what do you look for in a setting?
My favourite style of module is where you give me a setting and a plot based around either a timeline or triggers.
An example of this are the original Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Modules. Here’s a great setting. Here’s a map. Here’s a bunch of NPCs. Here’s a bunch of thing that happen if “if the players go to the Schaffenfest they are there when the three legged goblin escapes’ and then there’s an overall plot that is based on a timeline that happens no matter what the players do.
It’s almost a sandbox but it’s not quite. There is an overall plot and it’s going to happen no matter what the characters do. They can step up and be heroes and interfere or they can react to the changing world around them caused by their innaction.
Death on the Riek had a ton of rules for running trade goods up and down the rivers of the old world. This had nothing to do with the main plot but ended up being awesome. We spent months gametime with the players moving goods, getting rich and running through a slew of random and non-random riverboat encounters and port town adventures. The players loved it and I loved it. Of course while this was going on the ‘main badguys’ were figuring out where a Warpstone Metior had crashed and it wasn’t until nearly the last minute that the players realized that something was going on and that they were better off stopping it then letting it happen (as it’s hard to get rich trading goods between port towns when the area is over run with Demons).
Many of the Expedition series of modules released right by the end of 3.5 also had some of this feel. Here’s this great place, and heres a bunch of stuff that could happen there. While you are all having fun with that, this big plot thing is going on.
Personally as a DM, the latter. Even though I have a preference for prepared settings these days (prep time is not what it used to be) the ability to tweak and modify means your Vault of the Drow is different. It’s telling that the enduring modules aren’t the prescriptively defined ones I think…
I don’t buy scenarios any more, just make my own and work with/retool ones I already own (mostly classic D&D). I try to walk a line between preparation and open-endedness — perhaps the GM’s eternal dilemma is walking this line . . . but I never railroad. If the players are going in a certain direction and enjoying it, why stop that wave?
As for immersion, which has been really important to me as well, I think its more of question of how than what. Some GM’s can almost totally improvise their adventures, which seems to be a skill part imagination, part storytelling, and part salesmanship. But if your players aren’t willing to go all the way, there will be no immersion. If even one of your players wants a more social, relaxed atmophere, he is not going to immerse himself in his character or the setting, and may go the route of cheap jokes to break what s/he regards as too much tension, seriousness, or what have you. I’m sure you’ve been there. I’m not trying to diss scenario creation, because I love making and running them, but even the best scenarios don’t work when the GM can’t run them well, or if they are just not the players’ cup of tea.
Some really great responses–thanks!
@GilvanBlight: What you’ve described, I think, is a really good approach. The possibilities of a sandbox world with an overall plot, which may be more or less hidden from the players, proceeding whether or not they are engaged with it or not. Their participation at some point IS required to keep the world or region safe, but things can go pretty far into chaos and mayhem before they may realize that there’s a big problem.
@Satyre: A well-developed adventure with room for customization. I can see how this would be a popular approach. The module can be run as-is, even stand-alone, or can be tweaked and modified by a GM with the time to do so; or if it needs to be inserted into a larger world, there’s room for that. I think the trick with creating a good product that’s flexible both ways is, as you hinted at, a kind of balance: some details need to be provided, but nothing should be so set-in-stone as to make adaptation of the adventure too difficult or impossible.
@Paul: Your points about immersion are insightful. In the game I’m currently running, which is similar in style to the sandbox-evil plot archetype that Gilvan Blight described, I’ve got a couple of old, experienced D&D players and a few inexperienced gamers. A couple of the inexperienced gamers are chatty and distractable, and I think this has to do with being overwhelmed with the mechanics of the system and not being very interested in learning them, which tends to keep the level of immersion light. As a GM, I have quite a few tools at my disposal to command attention from my players, but I cannot control them, and the level of detail/immersion of the game ultimately hinges on how engaged all of us are in our various roles.