Daniel Mackay, in “The Fantasy Role-Playing Game”, argues that continuity is vital to the “imaginary-entertainment environments” in which an immersive game takes place. When a game takes place in an existing realm of context it is important that the GM (GameMaster) keeps the gameplay within that context in order to maintain the illusion for the game players. This can become increasingly difficult to manage, as an “imaginary-entertainment environment” grows ever bigger with more content, rules, and norms. In fact, environments can begin to have divergent rule systems as they grow in scale. Mackay argues three different ways to maintain the immersive illusion in these environments.
- The GM can close out all other contrary systems of narrative that disagree with the specific storyline that the GM wants to explore.
- The GM can open the game up to all officially licensed material, and there by ignore user-generated storylines.
- The GM can moderate the systems that are used and therefore he/she can control how the story unfolds, making sure to not allow any contradictory systems to come into play.
This is a quote from Baudrillard, which Mackay uses, I found it particularly poignant.
The medium itself is no longer identifiable as such, and the confusion of the medium and the message (McLuhan) is the first great formula of this new era. There is no longer a medium in the literal sense: it is now intangibly diffused, and diffracted in the real, and one can no longer even say that the medium is altered by it [Baudrillard 1994].
As new and different types of media are added to a fictional world, an “imaginary-entertainment environment” loses it boundaries of a single medium. It can grow to a point where it lives in a wholly new and different context, one that feels and acts as piece of history. It becomes alive to those involved.
