five aspects of cleesh

02 Dec, 2025

"Immersion" has too many different meanings, so I won't use it. Instead, I'll borrow Sandra's demented but charming appropriation of text adventure spell keywords for neologisms and call the thing I'm referring to cleesh.¹

Cleesh is a relationship between player and PC - let's call them Marcia and Blackleaf. Cleesh as a whole exists to the extent there obtains:

• volitional cleesh, where Marcia and only Marcia controls Blackleaf's voluntary actions, and Marcia can affect the pretended gameworld only through such actions
• epistemic cleesh, where Marcia's credences about the pretend world match those of Blackleaf
• affective cleesh, where Marcia feels everything that Blackleaf would feel, without Blackleaf being exposed to the emotions from the other parts of Marcia
• motivational cleesh, where Marcia's reasons for taking actions-as-Blackleaf match Blackleaf's own reasons for taking those actions
• performative cleesh, where Marcia's actions-as-Blackleaf match what Blackleaf "would have" done

Note that there is an asymmetry in most of these. Blackleaf is a subset of Marcia; Marcia can know things, take voluntary actions, and feel things that have nothing to do with Blackleaf's own knowledge, actions, feelings, and so on. "Immersion," "deep in-character immersion," or "unity of perspective" sometimes imply or are taken to imply that the non-Blackleaf parts of Marcia recede entirely, and that this is either impossible or dangerous. Full cleesh is impossible and cleesh can be dangerous, but cleesh is not about the absence of the taste of Doritos or feelings of table camraderie.

Blorb is, in a sense, GM-facing cleesh.

volitional cleesh

This contains the ideas of tactical infinity (you can take any action your character could take) and the traditional GM/player division of labor (I have control over my character, GM has control over everything else.)

Note that the boundaries of authority may be fairly blurred insofar as the boundaries of what counts as a "voluntary action" is blurred. For instance, making a will roll to resist an addiction or panic represents something that, in the real world, is neither 100% nor 0% voluntary.

Things that violate or can interfere with volitional cleesh include:

• GMs moving the story along in a way that includes narrating PC actions
• any non-lifepath character generation system
• metacurrency
• the lines (but not veils) of "lines and veils" insofar as they concern character action
• the X-card

epistemic cleesh

I say "credence" rather than "beliefs" because this is an area where probability matters. If we are using pretty standard osr encounter rules, then Marcia knows that Blackleaf has a 1/6 chance of encountering someone in the dungeon in the next ten minutes. Does Blackleaf know that? Maybe it's close enough, maybe not!

Things that violate or can interfere with epistemic cleesh include:

• absence of volitional cleesh (since you that certain things are or aren't possible that your character wouldn't)
• system knowledge, insofar as what you can guess from the system differs from what your character would be able to guess from living in that world
• genre awareness and knowledge of what kind of stuff your GM is into
• belief that the GM will do things for the sake of narrative structure or satisfaction, outside of the scenarios where this itself might have diegetic grounding like gloranthan heroquesting or something
• genre emulation not itself grounded in simulation
• the lines (but not veils) of "lines and veils," generally
• characters having a lot of tacit knowledge that would be hard to internalize
• reading the parts of the setting that are secret from the character
• the fact that the GM thinks some innocuous detail is actually salient enough to mention
• the GM going "are you suuure you want to do that?" except insofar as that matches gut intuitions or hesitation your character would also feel (see grey areas in voluntary action, above)

In many ways epistemic cleesh is the hardest to achieve, because your brain picks up on so many cues.

affective cleesh

This is more or less a question of bleed; affective cleesh occurs to the extent there is extensive outbleed and little inbleed.

I have defined affective cleesh differently than the volitional and epistemic forms. Marcia may cleeshly act and believe in ways that have nothing to do with Blackleaf, but to be cleesh those actions and beliefs should be Blackleaf's insofar as they concern the pretended world. Marcia, however, might have feelings that concern the pretended world that Blackleaf lacks without breaking affective cleesh. For instance, Blackleaf might be a self-satisfied braggart whom Marcia abhors. If you could not feel two contradictory things at once, then Marcia would be in trouble; but in fact she can very easily feel both pride at being Blackleaf and loathing of the motherfucker.

(In fact, I'm unsure about the extent to which the absence of inbleed should really be a part of this; I am curious about the thoughts of others.)

Things that violate or can interfere with affective cleesh include:

• absence of volitional or epistemic cleesh
• lack of social space at the table to experience certain emotions
• not wanting to experience character emotions that are icky or painful
• moreso than the other forms, skill issues (consider this a placeholder for much greater discussions)

motivational cleesh

You have motivational cleesh when your reasons for acting correspond to your character's.

Ironically or not, and in contradistinction from affective cleesh, this may be easiest to achieve in gamey or beer-n-pretzelsy play with very clear external objectives: if Marcia-as-Blackleaf is trying to solve a mystery, or prove she's up to the challenge of slaying a dragon, or kills an orc to steal its stuff, or defends her partymates because they're a team and high-fives them when they win, those are all in alignment.

The locus classicus of metagaming, knowing that fire burns trolls when one's character doesn't, presents a nicely clean case of epistemic non-cleesh forcing a choice between performative and motivational cleesh. In this situation, Blackleaf would (let's say) attempt to shoot at trolls with regular arrows rather than fire arrows, because the effective reload rate is such that he can more efficiently damage most creatures that way and (after all) he wants to defeat the trolls. Marcia can describe Blackleaf doing this in order to preserve performative cleesh and "avoid metagaming," but avoiding metagaming plays zero part in Blackleaf's own motivations. Alternatively she can have Blackleaf shoot with the fire arrows, even though he wouldn't do this.²

Things that violate or can interfere with motivational cleesh include:

• absence of volitional, epistemic, or affective cleesh
• social pressure to contribute to group outcomes and let the adventure happen
• having the kind of character that doesn't want to engage in the kinds of things you gathered around the table to pretend to do
• non-diegetic incentives

performative cleesh

This is the most surface-level, discussed, and above all visible aspect of roleplaying; in some people's minds I feel it is what roleplaying is. I'd be inclined to refer to performative cleesh without the other kinds as something inorganic, more like acting than roleplay.

If the other aspects of cleesh are present, performative cleesh follows. When they are absent, you may want to act out performative cleesh anyway, for no other reason than that they enable the rest of the table to get back into the groove.

a pricey good

I was going to say that cleesh is neither good nor bad. I feel that would be the the most justifiable thing to say, but it would not be the most honest, because what I believe in my heart is that cleesh is good; it is the reason to engage in this medium when there are so much less convoluted ways to enjoy a good story, or test one's skills to the limit, or hang out (although maybe this is still the best way to do all of them at once.) But it doesn't come easily, so I make no judgement about deprioritizing it, or prioritizing it with necessary compromises, and so on. Themes that emerge in the above include both "stuff it would be almost impossible to avoid" and "people not feeling fucking awful," so. But! I still want more, all else being equal, and one of the things I always enjoy more of is hearing how people achieve more of it.

joeskies

do the riddick moves

Speaking of which, this is so OP and makes combat sooooo much less boring. Obviously being able-bodied and in-person make this easier, but to the extent that you can, like, larp it up a little bit.

narrativism but only in the feywild

So, like, do the "rpgs are collaborative storytelling" thing (with all the gnustonic tricks or storygamey moves that implies) but only while in the Faerie realm, which actually works like that. The minute you step outside the mushroom circle it's a year and a day later, the ground is solid beneath your feet, blorb applies; but when you step back in, unknown spaces get back-filled with drama, you can win or lose but only after three acts building to it, and the GM will ask you what do you think is in the locked chest?³