So let me get this straight
The end result, though, in either case is that you're trying your best to think from "inside" the character you're portraying.
gets the response
That degree of immersion would be comparable to method acting, but that does not seem to be what Oofta was describing.
Because this is really starting to sound like you just have an issue with me, personally, not what I'm saying. I've repeatedly explained that I try to approach the game from the perspective, with knowledge of, motivations of my PC. Think about what it would actually be like to be that PC. In other words "...think from 'inside' the character".
As Wikipedia would describe method acting, I try to play my character "...identifying with, understanding, and experiencing a character's inner motivation and emotions." But somehow, that's not good enough for you because you go off into tangents about Meisner and Stanislavsky, somehow getting around to [emphasis added]
If the PC doesn’t know something but the player does and the player acts as they imagine the PC would without that knowledge, what they’re doing is the Meisner technique. The Meisner technique is an evolution of Stanislavsky’s system, but it’s distinctly different, in that it involves drawing from analogous experiences to the character’s to approximate the character’s reaction, as opposed to the original Stanislavskyian method of trying to actually reproduce the character’s experience.
As the professor I learned the Meisner technique put it: Stanislavsky would have said you can’t effectively portray a prostitute if you’ve never turned a trick, whereas Meisner would advise you to think back to a time when you felt like a w**** to inform your portrayal of a prostitute. Translating that to D&D, Stanislavsky would say you can’t act like you’ve never fought a troll before if you have in fact fought a troll, whereas Meisner would advise you to think back to the first time you fought a troll to inform your roleplaying when your character is fighting a troll for their first time.
Which seems to mean that I would have to think of the first time I fought a troll which is of course impossible. I seriously doubt that Heath Ledger thought back to when he became a sociopathic anarchist mass murderer in order to play the Joker. Yet he was still considered a method actor.
If you're insisting that I think back to the time that
as a player I played a PC that fought a troll ... that isn't relevant at all. Even if I did remember, they were completely different PCs coming from completely different mindsets
If you're defining method acting as thinking about some situation I tried something and it didn't work for reasons I didn't understand? That's something I can do. I also take into consideration the personality of the PC when I do that. We're playing Curse of Strahd where we were invited to dinner. So I imagined what my PC would feel based on situations where I've been in a position where someone else had all the power and was potentially a threat to some goal of mine (in D&D, of course, the stakes are a bit higher). Then I try to put myself in their frame of thought. How my PC would respond to that emotion and context to role play accordingly.
If that isn't similar to the approach used by method actors, I don't know what else would qualify. No, I don't care about Stanislavsky or Meisner. As you said above, the definition of method acting is too vague and [edit to add: most] people don't care or know about specific subtypes of method acting.
Last, but not least, I never said I was a consummate method actor when I role play. I just attempt to use
some of the techniques associated with the style. That includes occasionally imagining what it would be like if a troll kept coming back from the dead because we didn't burn it with fire. It has nothing to do with solving the puzzle of why the troll doesn't die, it's about that moment of "Why the f*** didn't that work!" panic or "Huh. Guess it's time to try somethin' else." pragmatism or "Can we just leave now?" fear. All based on how the PC approaches the world and how they think. In other words, trying to get into the mind of the character I'm portraying. AKA something like method acting.