First: Of course there is GM immersion. The GM has to be able to “see” the world in his mind so he can describe it adequately to the players. Immersion is more than just “feeling like you’re there”. Nobody at the table thinks they are an actual high wizard or barbarian or sth. You can tell by how they are saying “I swing my axe” instead of actually swinging an axe. Immersion just means how coherent and complete their mental picture of the world and their characters place in it is (which comes with an empathetic connection with the character). The GM is doing the same thing to a lesser degree for many characters (all NPCs at the least, but also the PCs).
Second: Your workflow diagram is only describing the simplest case of “Straight roll with predefined modifiers” and omits the kind of important part of actually rolling the dice and doing math with them.
Third: You entirely neglect the fact rolling a die is often actually fun. Blowing on it. Pleading with the dice gods to give you a good result. Yelling “NAT 20!” or whispering “NAT 1” in dismay (or whatever your systems equivalent is). Putting a badly performing die in prison. Borrowing the lucky die from another player and negotiating lending fees. Rolling 15d6 to see how much damage your nuclear leveled fire ball actually does.
Ultimately, you should play how you and your table enjoy it. I wouldn’t want to play at a table where some players (the GM is a player too) don’t get to make any rolls or have to make all the rolls. You do you, but to me that sounds like a terrible time.
PS: During the pandemic my table switched to a VTT and I enabled automatic saving throws. I had to disable that feature because my players HATED “the computer” rolling for them. They insisted that they must be the ones to click on the “roll saving throw” button. If I tried to take their rolling during live gaming I would loose the table.
Re the first: This is a semantic dance. Immersion is not rigidly defined. I define it as the sense of losing oneself in the diegetic space, usually by identifying with a particular element within it. I took it as self-evident that no one is achieving total immersion, but yes, you are correct there, no one is achieving full immersion. But the GM cannot have even high immersion. They are an individual. The NPCs are many. The GM is the embodiment of the laws of physics, nature, cause and effect, etc. That is not a human, or even sapient, identity with which they could identify.
Re the second: That’s a simplified workflow that applies to basically any GM-based system. Nothing that could be reasonably added would change the fact that the chain is shorter with fewer steps. That’s how real number subtraction works.
n-x<n where x>0
Re the rest of it: I’m sorry. I assumed you would understand that my saying ‘don’t discount this possibility’ is not the same as ‘absolutely everyone must do this my perfect and correct way.’ I assumed you would take it as patently obvious all methods one might approach any game with must involve participant consent, but, okay, let’s start with the full text of Principia Mathematica so we can establish 1+1=2 and then move on to establish a shared moral framework of consent and all the other things that I would consider obvious but you feel the need to spell out explicitly, and then finally we can have a nice, clearly defined discussion about dice.
Several things:
First: Of course there is GM immersion. The GM has to be able to “see” the world in his mind so he can describe it adequately to the players. Immersion is more than just “feeling like you’re there”. Nobody at the table thinks they are an actual high wizard or barbarian or sth. You can tell by how they are saying “I swing my axe” instead of actually swinging an axe. Immersion just means how coherent and complete their mental picture of the world and their characters place in it is (which comes with an empathetic connection with the character). The GM is doing the same thing to a lesser degree for many characters (all NPCs at the least, but also the PCs).
Second: Your workflow diagram is only describing the simplest case of “Straight roll with predefined modifiers” and omits the kind of important part of actually rolling the dice and doing math with them.
Third: You entirely neglect the fact rolling a die is often actually fun. Blowing on it. Pleading with the dice gods to give you a good result. Yelling “NAT 20!” or whispering “NAT 1” in dismay (or whatever your systems equivalent is). Putting a badly performing die in prison. Borrowing the lucky die from another player and negotiating lending fees. Rolling 15d6 to see how much damage your nuclear leveled fire ball actually does.
Ultimately, you should play how you and your table enjoy it. I wouldn’t want to play at a table where some players (the GM is a player too) don’t get to make any rolls or have to make all the rolls. You do you, but to me that sounds like a terrible time.
PS: During the pandemic my table switched to a VTT and I enabled automatic saving throws. I had to disable that feature because my players HATED “the computer” rolling for them. They insisted that they must be the ones to click on the “roll saving throw” button. If I tried to take their rolling during live gaming I would loose the table.
Re the first: This is a semantic dance. Immersion is not rigidly defined. I define it as the sense of losing oneself in the diegetic space, usually by identifying with a particular element within it. I took it as self-evident that no one is achieving total immersion, but yes, you are correct there, no one is achieving full immersion. But the GM cannot have even high immersion. They are an individual. The NPCs are many. The GM is the embodiment of the laws of physics, nature, cause and effect, etc. That is not a human, or even sapient, identity with which they could identify.
Re the second: That’s a simplified workflow that applies to basically any GM-based system. Nothing that could be reasonably added would change the fact that the chain is shorter with fewer steps. That’s how real number subtraction works.
n-x<n where x>0Re the rest of it: I’m sorry. I assumed you would understand that my saying ‘don’t discount this possibility’ is not the same as ‘absolutely everyone must do this my perfect and correct way.’ I assumed you would take it as patently obvious all methods one might approach any game with must involve participant consent, but, okay, let’s start with the full text of Principia Mathematica so we can establish 1+1=2 and then move on to establish a shared moral framework of consent and all the other things that I would consider obvious but you feel the need to spell out explicitly, and then finally we can have a nice, clearly defined discussion about dice.