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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8147483" data-attributes="member: 42582">Your first sentence describes something that goes beyond token/pawn stance. It sounds like actor stance. But if the GM "reins it in" and the player, knowing/anticipating this, moves away from gamestate-affecting actions like I ride off into the sunset with the rescued prince to non-gamestate-affecting ones like I regale the rescued prince with tales of my love of pinecones then I feel we've moved back into a version of token/pawn stance with some set dressing laid over the top of it.To answer your second sentence/question: ABSOLUTELY! But that's because I think RPGing, in the context of the games we call RPGs, is not about thespianism or characterisation/pantomime but rather is about the fiction mattering to the resolution of declared actions. And that can and does happen in pawn stance - eg when the player declares "I'll surf down the frictionless corridor of super-tetanus-spiked pits on the doors I've taken off their hinges" and then everyone debates whether the doors are big enough relative to the pits and how exactly this is going to work. I agree with [USER=7026617]@Thomas Shey[/USER] that this is a genuine approach to RPGing which may once even have been predominant.If you read the convention reports it's clearly the spirit in which teams at tournaments in the 70s approached the Giants adventures, and ToH.Your third question seems (? I think - correct me if I'm wrong) to trade on a different sense of "roleplaying" closer to the inhabitation and presentation of a character through play. There was absolutely zero of that in the ToH tournament report I've seen. And I think I've conveyed why I think it's pretty insipid when it is just set-dressing over the top of pawn play ("Let me regale you with tales of <stuff that will have zero impact on the actual gamestate>").When the inhabitation and presentation of the character can meaningfully change the gamestate - ie when there is player agency - then we've arrived at my personally favourite approach to RPGing. But not the only one possible. And probably not the most fun for everyone. I would suck as a participant in the ToH tournament, but I'm sure there were some players there who loved it.</blockquote>

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