Tales from the Rocket House
What Is Simulationist-Immersive Roleplaying?
Simulationist-Immersive Roleplaying creates an authentic, self-consistent game world which allows players to immerse themselves in their characters, allowing them to experience the events, emotions, and decisions that take place from a completely in-character perspective.The GM moderates events as they would happen within the world, basing the decisions entirely upon consistency with the world and its occupants, physics, metaphysics, etc., using randomizers when necessary. The GM’s role is to create an internally consistent game world that the players’ characters can operate within, interacting with player characters through NPC’s and the world itself.
The players can Immerse themselves in their characters, operating from a deeply in-character perspective. The mechanics require only those decisions from the players that their characters can conceptualize. The players make decisions based upon their understanding of their characters, acting in the moment, and will often surprise themselves and the other players.
The benefits of Simulationist-Immersive Roleplaying include freedom of action, the ability to deeply explore other perspectives, the chance to surprise not only the other players, but yourself, and the opportunity for spontaneous, extremely intense events to arise that may be utterly unexpected at the time, but arise completely out of the unforced interactions of the characters and are, thus, natural. Simulationist-Immersive Roleplaying maximizes the one thing traditional (pen and paper or live action) roleplaying games do better than any other medium: allowing a player to develop, explore, and inhabit another persona, to act from the motives and perspectives of that other in ways that surprise even the player. Video games provide a better challenge than gamist RPGs. Novels, plays, and movies deliver better stories. But until a virtual reality system is created with an AI smart enough to cater to literally anything the players can imagine, traditional roleplaying games are unparalleled in the creation of speculative empathy.
So What Are the Fundamental Elements of Simulationist-Immersive Roleplaying?
Simulationist gaming is probably the easiest style of gaming to run, “just don’t make any decisions based on drama/narrative or challenge.” But it’s also the easiest to run badly. The Fundamental Elements are there not only to allow the players to play Immersively, but also to make sure the game experience doesn’t end up a boring, wandering, bickering mess.I’ll be addressing these in more detail in further columns: this is only an overview.
1) The “Real” World: The GM plays the world as consistently as possible, considering only ‘what would really happen,’ treating the consistency, the ‘realness’ of this fictional world very seriously. There can be no plot considerations, no challenge considerations. The only things that can get in the way of playing the world ‘in-character’ are human considerations. Each group will have lines that should not be crossed with regard to content matter, trigger issues, etc., and those must be respected. But only human decency interferes with the world consistency, not TV Tropes, ‘the rule of cool,’ or storytelling.
2) Event-Rich Environment: Without a preplanned plot to keep things moving, it is vitally important that the GM create an event- and agenda-rich environment, with NPC’s who have agendas of their own of a scale that the PC’s can affect. It’s better if there are multiple factions of NPC’s with different agendas, and if the majority of them are neither pure good nor pure evil (having a clear villain or two in the course of a campaign can be good for player and PC morale, but for the most part the NPC’s should be people: believing what they are doing is either good, necessary, or justified, being driven by motives they may not fully understand themselves, and often showing their true natures by just how far they’re willing to go to get what they want). This isn’t an invitation to emotionally torture the players through their characters, but to put them into an ecosystem with a lot going on. It’s important that the NPC agendas will actually affect the PC’s, otherwise they may as well not exist.
3) Proactive Player Characters: Because the GM won’t be pulling the characters into the thick of things through a preplanned narrative or series of challenges, it is absolutely vital that the player characters have agendas, desires, plans, secrets, goals, loyalties, and so on built in from the beginning. The players need active characters who will go out and do things, moving the game ahead without needing a plot to push them. The GM needs to respond positively to player (and PC) initiative and agency, to nurture and encourage it.
4) Gimme One Reason to Stay: In a related note, the player characters need to have connections to each other so that they will actually work together. They may end up turning on each other and killing each other later, but the one thing they can’t do is meet in a tavern and then decide not to work with each other. Has anyone in the real world ever met somebody in a bar and decided to immediately trust that person to have his back in a life and death situation? When players are Immersed deeply in their characters, the PC’s will act like people, not clichés, and so they’ll need reasonable reasons to work together.
5) Player and Player Character Agency: Gameplay focuses on character decisions and character knowledge. The characters must have agency, some ability to affect the world in ways that don’t seem futile. The world doesn’t revolve around the PC’s, but the game does. Make the PC’s powerful enough that they have a real chance to make things happen. This could be physical power, social power, legal power, financial power, etc. Remember that the players are deeply Immersed in their characters, and so session after session of hopeless futility can be psychologically and emotionally draining, if not traumatizing. The human factor is of vital importance here, because of the intensity inherent in Immersion.
6) Always In-Character: Players should never have to break character unless they’re ordering pizza or answering the phone. Players impact the happenings of the game world through their characters, and nothing in the game or game mechanics should force them to operate outside their character mindset. The GM should do the ‘firewalling,’ and not give players knowledge that their characters don’t know. Character sheets should not be shared or posted to a game blog or wiki (this both aids in Immersion and allows PCs to keep secrets from each other).
This concept speaks to the Immersion (deep in-character) portion of Simulationist-Immersive Roleplaying. It’s not required that all players immerse, only that the game’s environment supports Immersion for those players who desire it. Other players can play in a more actor or authorial style in this style of game.
7) Mechanics Are Physics: The game mechanics represent what can happen in the game world, and how frequently it will happen (based on die rolls and probabilities). The truth is, the Simulationist-Immersive thing is a lot easier to do in some games than others. Games that are highly complex or extremely tactical often force the players to focus on mechanics, breaking Immersion. Many Immersive players cannot stand personality mechanics in which the dice tell them what their characters do or feel.
It also helps a lot if the game makes some general attempt to be realistic (a loaded word that many here find somewhat offensive, I know). If a human character can’t die from a single gunshot wound, or even from having a revolver emptied into her chest, the game system is clearly not going to be a good fit. Likewise, if a moderately skilled hacker can break into the Pentagon by rolling a 20 on 1d20, that’s straining things a little (5% of hacking attacks get through to the Pentagon? Ouch). It’s worse if that hacker can “take 20” and do it automatically, given enough time.
Every role playing styles theory states that game mechanics and play styles are separate things, but in practice, that has never been the case. RPG theory had its genesis in a GURPS vs. D&D flame war on rec.games.frp.advocacy (an old USENET group) when people started asking why? Why do some people like GURPS and some like D&D (and later, Theatrix, World of Darkness, and Amber)?
Different uses of and preferences for game mechanics were fundamental to the formation of RPG theory, the rec.games.frp.advocacy Threefold, and the Forge theories that piggybacked on what rec.games.frp.advocacy began. Narrative control mechanics have been fundamental to the (Narrativist) Indie revolution. Tactical options and game balance are fundamental to (very Gamist) D&D Fourth Edition. Game mechanics that allow players to remained Immersed in their characters and which serve to approximate reality at least passably well are fundamental to Simulationist-Immersive Roleplaying.
A Slight Disclaimer.
(Feel Free to Skip This if You Don’t Remember the Threefold Days). Those of you who remember rec.games.frp.advocacy may realize that I have brought one of the play stances, namely the Immersive, or Deep In-Character, stance into what might otherwise be a discussion on general in-game decision styles. I have two reasons for this. The first is that “Simulationist-Immersive” is new, yet familiar, and can be clearly defined without being muddied by conflicting Threefold and GNS meanings for ‘simulationist.’The second is that the Immersive/Deep In-Character play stance is closely linked to, and many would say dependent upon, a Simulationist style. By giving a practical definition and outline for how to set up a game that is friendly to simulationist players who prefer a deep in-character stance, you lose nothing, as players who prefer other play stances (such as authorial or actor) will still be able to play within their preferred stances within such an environment. The Immersive stance is the most fragile, and if it can survive, the others can, as well.
Final Thoughts
The next few columns will explore these seven Fundamental Elements in detail, giving past examples of things that worked (and a few examples of things that didn’t). But as much as I’m ringing the Simulationist-Immersive cowbell, I don’t expect many people to care about it in the abstract. Relatively few people care about roleplaying game theory, but quite a lot of people care about roleplaying games.So what I would like to do – and see others do – is create purpose-driven, creator-owned, fully playable, Simulationist-Immersive Roleplaying Games that draw attention not only for their play style but their settings, their mechanics, their execution, their fun factor. In other words, I’d like a Simulationist Indie revolution. Because as much as I like talking theory, I like games even more. So I’m hoping that a lot more than just talk will come out of this column series.
See you next month, and may you have a safe, blessed, and happy holiday season!
