Taken from TnB. All credit to Omar.
In this brief guide I hope to cover immersion and how to become better immersed as well as things that come as reprucussions from being well-immersed in your roleplay.
Immersion - How indistinguishable the roleplay is from what you'd actually expect as if you were in the game yourself.
In my opinion, how immersive a segment of roleplay is can be a big contributor to how enjoyable said segment ends up being. I, for one, started to play Hl2RP becuase I liked the feel of hl2 and the concept of the game; a totalitarian society ruled by the Combine, so naturally thats what I expect it to feel like while I'm roleplaying. It needs to be acknowledged that the environment of the server vastly changes the manner of to which a person roleplays. Althought I don't intend for this article to be about canon it is important to realise that it DOES have an effect on immersion. If you can get into the roleplay it can generally affect the outcome in a positive way and yield a higher level of enjoyment for all parties involved. I figured that I'd write a little guide so that you all can have some tips on how to stay immersed and what things should be avoided to keep it that way.
Immersion and how to maintain it:
Glossary
I.OOC influence
II. Useful materials to promote immersion
III. Realism
IV. Chat
V. Ventrilo
VI. Fullscreen vs WindowedI. Try to eliminate all OOC distractions and/or interuptions.- You may not think it will create any kind of atmospheric difference but keeping all other programs closed while you roleplay and focusing completely on the task at hand can greatly affect how attuned you are with your character.
- If you have an OOC aid, for example will say a wallhack, not saying that any of you do; try deleting or turning it of becuase it removes the element of suprise that had reered itself up by random Combine attacks or zombies in ravenholm throughout the campaign and you'll notice a susbstantial amount of oppurtunities that you may have otherwise avoided.
- Turn off any background music unless it is beneficial to the situation, i.e. action music during a shootout, enhanced ambience, etc.
II. Although some add-ons put a hamper on immersion, add-ons like the following can actually improve the experiance.-Realistic Blood Effects
http://www.garrysmod.org/downloads/?a=view&id=47291-Realistic and Better Optimized Water Effects( I haven't tried this mod yet)
http://www.garrysmod.org/downloads/?a=view&id=117062-The list can go on but I there are many addons like these that you can find through a few searches on garrysmod.org.
III. Realism-If you aren't doing something realistic or playing a character believable within the Half-life universe than you won't feel as if that's actually what you're doing. To remedy this try thinking how your character would think as if he were in the world of a post-alien invasion that swiftly repressed the human race; not how you would react to such a situation.
-Despite this guide not being about realistic characters it can have a deep impact on how you view the Half-life universe.
IV. Keep out-of-character chat to a minimum.-Say everything you need in L-OOC or G-OOC in a short and conscisive manner to avoid multiple interuptions of roleplay that should only happen on a few, scarce occasions.
-Try to avoid joking if you can control yourself, it isn't really necessary and generally doesn't help the task at hand AT ALL.
V. Ventrilo-Overall, ventrilo is nothing but a detriment to roleplay and just ends up being a source of metagame and distraction; generally as a rule of thumb you should try to only use ventrilo before and after you go on the servers. Through personal experiance I also felt better immersed in the roleplay and more inclined to roleplay well when not in vent.
-Ventrilo usally turns out to become a fuel for OOC driven acts and you begin to act more as how you would IC rather than how your character would.
VI. Fullscreen opposed to windowed-Often, when a player is playing in windowed mode they're more persuaded to browse through other things rather than keeping completely focused on the task at hand as well as giving the player a better view on what is going on in their surrondings as well as being more aware of who is talking to them and who said what and when.
-Generally the game runs smoother in fullscreen which is a positive thing.
Overall, this guide was meant to be an informative set of suggestions on how you, the player, can keep your roleplay experiance authentic and immersive.
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