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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6683867" data-attributes="member: 42582">Gyagx's D&D is not a board game. In a board game there is no fictional positioning. Gygax's D&D is utterly rife with fictional positioning - arguably, that's the bulk of the game, especially in its pre-AD&D versions.I feel that you are begging the question here - that is to say, you are assuming that the phrase "role playing" has a certain meaning - your preferred one - and then judging all games that call themselves RPGs by reference to that meaning.I already mentioned, upthread, the example of roleplaying for skills development that law students (and other sorts of students) undertake. That has nothing to do with acting, but is nevertheless truly described as roleplaying. By adopting the role (of an appeals court barrister, or a mediator, or a client, or whatever) the student imposes (i) a limit on permissible "moves" (eg an advocate can't address arguments to his/her opponent, but rather must address them to the court, and that in terms requires adopting appropriate court manners), and (ii) a standard for successful achievement.Gygax clearly saw RPGing in the same way. By choosing to play a fighter, I (i) limit my permissible moves in the game (eg no spell casting, no use of magical staves), and (ii) set a standard for success (per Gygax's DMG, successfully playing a fighter means displaying leadership and physical courage). The fact that that's not acting doesn't mean it's not roleplaying.That's not to say that one can't bleed into or engender movement towards the other. For instance, some of the constraints on permissible moves that arise by choosing a particular class role are the result of fictional positioning (eg NPCs look to the fighter for leadership because of the way the fighter has ended up being framed within the fiction, and the player of the fighter who wants to keep the NPCs on board therefore finds him-/herself obliged to have his/her PC take the lead). And that naturally pushes players to engage with that fiction, to wonder about why it is that this particular person ended up becoming a bold warrior rather than (say) a cowardly thief, etc.But there is no necessity or inevitability about immersion-style RPGing of the sort you favour. It's quite possible to engage with the fiction of, and surrounding, a character without feeling compelled to make choices in the game only from the ingame causal perspective of that PC. The word causal is especially important here. A player in (say) Burning Wheel who chooses to use metagame points to pump a skill check may well be making choices only from the ingame perspective of his/her PC - s/he is deciding, from that persepctive, to try harder. It's just that s/he is manifesting that, within the mechanics, via a device that does not itself model an ingame causal process.</blockquote>

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