Willing Suspension of Disbelief Creates an Immersive RPG Experience

Even with the light from your torch the stairwell’s end cannot be seen. As you cautiously make your way down each step, the cracks and crevices on the sides of the wall quiver and writhe in time to the torch’s flickering flame. 

Unseen cobwebs flutter against your eyes and face. There is a rushing sound like one unending breath that you hear too close to your ear. You see something move in the shadows just outside the torch’s glow. You hear a scratching, chattering cacopho-

*crackle, crackle*

*crackle, crackle*

” Hey pass over those Cheese Puffs”

Sigh… The dreaded words that quell the willing suspension of disbelief in an immersive RPG.

“Pass me the ______” ( food or beverage )

           As a DM, if that blank is not filled by the words “Holy Avenger” or some other fantasy item, it really deconstructs the built up tension.

Thus undermining the work that we, as DMs, put into setting the mood of  encounters.

While experienced players can still hack it when it comes to mood disruptions they still lessen the overall experience for everyone.

Why is that the case? A quirk in human psychology allows a person who is listening to a story to believe what they are hearing while they are listening is plausible. In this story mode frame of mind, one can get really involved with the events and characters’ feelings that are presented by the storyteller.

This phenomenon is called the willing suspension of disbelief. We set aside our reactionary aversion to nonsense and our disbelief in fictions. The rest of the waking day, we are in fact mode and if someone came up to us on the street and did something extraordinary our minds would assume it to be a trick. While one is willing to suspend that reactionary disbelief that person can get caught up in a fantastic tale.

Many a famous wordsmith cultivates a skill in telling someone just enough information to get a person’s mind into story mode without getting them bogged down by an over explanation of the fictional facts that brought them to it.

The Willing Suspension of Disbelief is Used to Create an Immersive RPG

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an English poet, literary critic, and philosopher, coined the terms  suspension of disbelief or willing suspension of disbelief. He showed their power in his epic poems: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan.

A.K.A. Wordsmith level 20

Samuel Taylor Coleridge suggested that if an author could blend a “human interest and a semblance of truth” into a fantasy, the reader would suspend their judgement about the plausibility or implausibility of the story.

Another way to have someone engage their suspension of disbelief is to create cognitive estrangement. This is where a person’s ignorance of facts fuels your ability to promote your fictional events and characters in a believable manner.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge felt that it was the writer’s imperative to create the fertile ground in which the willing suspension of disbelief can occur. In this current era, many authors have hoisted that responsibility upon the reader.

The Willing Suspension of Disbelief is Used to Create an Immersive RPG

As I come to a close I want you to ask yourself two questions.

1. Do you want to be the DM that hoists the suspension of disbelief upon your players?
2. Do you want to be the DM that draws players in with a rocking story where the players don’t realize how badly they need to use the restroom until you pause for a break?

I challenge you to be a DM of the second kind.  I also challenge you to subscribe to Nerdarchy on the YouTube , Like  Nerdarchy on Facebook, and wherever you find us on the interweb.