The Psychology of Immersion: Tricks to Make Your World Feel Real

Immersion’s the secret sauce of TTRPGs — it’s what turns a dice roll into a ‘holy crap, I’m there’ moment. It’s not the rules, or the dice or even, to a certain extent, how well thought out the setting is. A good immersive game can literally carry you to another time and place, when your game is immersive you can lose track of time, get so deep into character you forget to eat, and the real world feels like it’s someone else’s problem.

So, how do you do it? How do you run a game that feels like your players are not just a group of friends sat around a table? There are myriad ways to get your players invested in the game. Small tricks such as adopting a NPCs body language or even just running the game by candlelight can make all the difference.

Here are a few tips that I have picked up over the years to help really pull your players into the world because with Immersion comes fantastic roleplaying.

Neurologically, immersion is linked to transportation theory, which suggests that when people become absorbed in a game or a story, their real-world awareness diminishes. Brain imaging studies show that engaging stories activate multiple areas of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex (responsible for decision-making and empathy) and the mirror neuron system, which allows us to experience characters’ emotions as if they were our own.

Additionally, vivid descriptions and sensory details trigger the brain’s sensory cortex, making players “see” or “feel” what’s happening. When narratives create emotional highs and lows, the release of dopamine and oxytocin enhances memory and emotional bonding with characters.

Good storytelling also leverages suspense, relatability, and structured pacing to sustain immersion. Techniques like deep character development and world-building help maintain cognitive engagement, ensuring the audience remains invested.

Ultimately, immersion happens when a game or story engages both the mind and emotions, making fiction feel as real and compelling as lived experiences.

Sensory Descriptions: Painting the World with Words.

One of the most intimidating things about running a game, no matter the system, is the fact that you, as the GM, are literally the rest of the world. Still to this day it blows my mind that the players have only the one thing to be mindful of and we Game Masters have dozens and dozens of things to consider.

Part of basically ‘being the world’ is in the details, you don’t have to shower your players in purple prose to improve immersion, in fact, rattling off a paragraph of immaculately written discription can take your players out of the game.  The best way I have found is to invoke the senses.

There is no need to describe every pint of ale in the tavern, or every pebble on the beach but picking out a few details and running with them.  Be selective and pick one or two senses to focus on for each scene.

Sight: What’s the lighting like?  What can they see? Is it a colourful scene or are the hues more muted? Small details can really make a difference here and bring a scene to life.

Sound: Is there a babble of voices that stop as they enter an unfamiliar tavern? Or, how about the eerie echoing silence of the crypt they are in?

Smell: often neglected but very engaging is the sense of smell.  Describing the earthy smell of the woods after the rain or the cloying coppery smell of the aftermath of a melee can help add layers of realism and pull your players in.

Touch: How different textures, temperatures and sensations enhance realism.

Taste: Food and drink as worldbuilding tools can be very effective, from the spiced tomato soup and malty black bread in a gas lit Inn in Ravenloft to a bitter dwarven ale in the halls of the Thunderpeak mountains.

As the GM you need to be able to spin on a dime from being the teams wise and humble monk NPC, to the wisecracking familiar of the wizard and back to the crazed rambling monologue of the Big Bad Evil Guy all seamlessly and without it seeming that the Monk has swapped sides.  So how do you do it? How can you make these disparate and distinct personalities to all seem like different people, especially, if like me you’re not the best at accents and voices?

The answer here is subtly.  A tilt of the head, a nervous tap of the foot, the speed and pitch of your dialogue. Consider watching movies with an eye to stagecraft. Stuck for a Necromancer’s mannerisms? Try imitating Allan Rickman’s character from Die Hard.

Use your posture, speech patterns and physical habits to differentiate between the many roles that you have to fill as a DM.  You don’t have to be a master at voices, but if you are playing remotely (via Discord for example) it becomes all the more important to give every character a unique verbal style (like maybe one character never curses but another can’t utter a sentence without a profanity).

Also, don’t underestimate the power of a dramatic silence or pregnant pause if you find that you have to give a BBEG speech, it can buy you a few seconds to think about what to say next and adds to the dramatic tension, just don’t overuse it because it can come across just like you’re speechless.

The last thing to remember is that when you are playing as an NPC although narratively, they serve the plot and really only exist for the players benefit out of game, in game they are real people who get angry, laugh, get upset and have visceral reactions.

If your players have taken the time to write out a backstory, or to forge a relationship in game then you should absolutely bring this into the game here and now and make these personal details front and centre in the game.  This way a proud paladin could get embroiled in a scheme with a thief’s guild, all because their wayward brother had a favour to ask.

It’s worth noting that this technique is most effective when you’re using and adapting information the player has given you, it makes it more personal. Even if your players haven’t given you anything much to work with, like maybe they are novices or are too busy, maybe you could speak to the player and ask if they mind if you give them a background.

Choices also matter, I’m not saying that the universe should split asunder because the party’s monk has decided to become vegetarian, but certainly it’s something you need to bare in mind should someone serve spoiled meat to the party to poison them, instead you should as the game master remember if they anger an NPC then that person should act differently to them than if they had treated them well.

Players like to think they have an impact on the world, that their choices matter.  Reward your players for their investment in your game by showing them that what they have done has a tangible effect.

A good rule of thumb here is that if the GM treats the world as real, then so will the players, another good way to coax out player engagement, comes from the world of sales: ask open questions, don’t give them a binary choice between yes and no. Using open questions can engage their creativity and promote engagement.

You can use music to improve immersion, there are dozens of YouTube channels that offer roleplay themed ambiance, everything from lively tavern music for your D&D game, to an ASMR of a echoing space hulk for if you fancy busting out the M4RA Battle rifles for a bug hunt in a derelict spaceship in the Alien RPG.

If you’re stuck for a soundtrack, consider the instrumental soundtracks to epic movies, anything by John Williams is normally a good bet.

There are also lots of paid resources available from companies like Syrinscape and Tabletop Audio that are well worth the investment if you want to create the right atmosphere with anything form tense battle drums (maybe for a face off with a Orc tribe that has been dogging a local town) to eerie whispers in the dark to enhance your Call of Cthulhu game.

If you are playing in person then seriously consider your lighting.  If you’re trying to create a spooky atmosphere, it can help with the willing suspension of disbelief if you have some candles lit, maybe use a web casters ring light to backlight yourself as the GM.

Also, something that is well worth your time is handouts; journal entries, maps, hastily scrawled notes or symbolic items (a pendent from a flea market for example) all help your players buy into the story and the world you are trying to create.

The GM as an Immersion Conductor.

One of the things that as a GM comes with time is a sense of when to gloss over things, and when to really drill down and slow things for a narrative beat. It could be that you have to adapt on the fly.  For example, I was GM in a game of Call of Cthulhu and I had a whole scene planned in a haunted house. Due to a comedy of errors involving one of the investigators getting run over by their own car, the players were in stitches and the mood shattered. So, rather than a spooky old mansion full of Lovecraftian horrors, they found a fire in the grate and a cozy study, the horrors were still in there for them, but I just had to bide my time to unleash them later, once the players were more receptive to spookiness.

Pay close attention to the body language of your players, if you can see them zooning out the adapt on the fly to help them back in.  a Trick I use is to have a in character brain storming session and address them in character to ask them what they think.

Conclusion

Some of these tricks might seem a little bit corny, but they all add up.  Small things from the lighting that you use and the background music and ambiance that you use can weave together to make a more engaging and immersive experience for your players.  Try these tricks at your next session and let us know how it goes