Here’s the tip: when you are engaged in a moment of Otherworld-immersion, savour it. Stay in the moment of that imagined experience and apprehend it. No speech, no words, no writing. Apprehend it within your mind. Enjoy the experience.

Here’s the origin: Simon (from Legend of the Bones) called in to GM’s Journal #224 in response to some thoughts I had about Otherworld-immersion. Jason (from Nerd’s RPG Variety Cast) summarised it on our Discord thus:

One thing I like to do with solo games that I don’t do when playing with others is to take time to stop, sit back, close my eyes and just imagine the scene.

Reading McGilchrist’s “The Matter With Things” has helped me realise that the moment we verbalise or otherwise commit an experience to words is when we abstract it and stop experiencing it.

This makes Simon’s suggestion critical to the experience of roleplaying. We need to take time to experience it – imagine it and be there in that situation – before we describe it. This might mean slowing down our play to enjoy the scenes.

In solo play, this is clearly much easier to achieve because you are not under pressure from others to respond. You are alone and can take your time, savouring the experiences you are summoning into consciousness.

In a group game, learning to slow our pace and savour the mental experience of being in the Otherworld might be a key means to increasing the internal sense of Otherworld-immersion.

I can imagine a player listening to the GM’s description of a location and then taking a little time to experience it before making decisions to act or ask questions to explore.

It has helped me recognise that the assumptions of many gamers about how pacing is key to good storytelling leads us to the conclusion that high-speed decision-making and quick responsiveness is desirable.

But this may not be true if emergent story is secondary to our desire for experiencing the Otherworld.

Perhaps slowing down and, as Jason put it, closing our eyes to imagine the scene would be more conducive to an exploration of the imagined Otherworld.

Similarly, when describing the scenes the GM could sketch things lightly and allow lots of space for players to colour between the lines in their mind.

Just a thought to go play around with. Why not savour the experience?

Game on!