Saturday, October 3, 2015

...of Immersion and Verisimilitude: Pull a seat up at the Table

One of the finest examples of Old School Random Tables
Random Tables. I've made no secret of it in the past, I absolutely love them. While still high on the post from last night, I celebrated by buying up PDF's of a ton more random tables from RPG Now. (My version of going out and painting the town red, but with less hangover the next day).

While spending the day browsing all of the new acquisitions, not only was I filled with joy and inspiration (which would be worth it alone even if I wasn't actually using them in play), but I was also suddenly hit with another trendy word from video game design:  Immersion, defined as, deep mental involvement.

While contemplating that word, another one sprang to mind, one that I'm quite fond of: Verisimilitude, or something that gives the thing into which it is integrated the appearance of being true or real.

In this case, it is Random Tables, as many as I can get my hands on, from as many sources as I can, crammed full of all kinds of little nuggets of inspiration and ideas that I wouldn't have come up with on my own, that I can stash away until needed, unremembered, and in most cases UNREAD, that give me the deep mental involvement and appearance of being true or real that helps create for me another of those words mentioned last post: Simulation.

Now the same may or may not work for you, but I think it is worth consideration that you find whatever that thing is that gives your games a sense of Immersion and Verisimilitude and include it.


10 comments:

  1. Hey there, the image isn't displayed correctly, just an FYI.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Odd, I'm seeing it ok. I know sometimes when I view from work though I won't always see the images. I assume it's some kind of corporate server or firewall thing...?

      Delete
    2. Even when I click on it that is all it shows.

      Delete
  2. I am at home and all I see is, "Image hosted by Tripod"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Again, odd. Browser maybe. I'm using Google Chrome. I think I'm just going to host a copy of the image & avoid the problem regardless. :)

      Delete
    2. I am also using Chrome and I just cleared my cache, so it's not that either.

      Delete
    3. Hopefully fixed now, I just uploaded it direct and eliminated the middleman. ;)

      Delete
    4. I see it now, probably the best approach. I do that on my Arduino/Raspberry Pi blog, which is on Blogger.

      Delete
    5. Yeah, when shopping around for images, I didn't realize I was actually hotlinking to the URL's. I got the mistaken impression that Blogger was making a copy of the image when you entered it.

      Still new to this whole "Blarg" thing. *lol*

      Delete
  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete