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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 9459830" data-attributes="member: 71699">I'm curious whether as you would define it freeform roleplaying such as that recently labelled FKR counts as playing a roleplaying game? The sort of arrangement I am thinking of involves a GM and some number of players. Much as [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] laid out, GM manages setting and antagonists, and players protagonists. GM often makes rulings, serving in that capacity as an enabler of the group's play. Other freeform arrangements include multiple-GM and players-only, but I am not focusing on those here.At times when I've played that sort of freeform, my intent has been to participate in a roleplaying game. Although intent to do something doesn't secure that I do that thing, what I experienced was closely similar to other instances of playing a roleplaying game that were fresh in my mind. There were differences, but those were no more than the differences between playing L5R and playing MotW. Our ongoing play was structured and we stuck to agreements about who could say what.I think the heart of roleplaying is something like a structured approach to an imaginative conversation, that we project ourselves into as subjects. A collective imagining that is governed by agreements among participants. In that light, reflecting on your three conditions"Is explicit -- usually written down." I would just say "known". There are rules (some agreement), and we know something about those rules (could answer questions about them) but they may be implicit, may be fluid. It must be acknowledged that participants can know different rules, or different versions of roughly the same rules, so I do not intend "known" here to mean that all know the same rules. I'm aware of but won't dive into here proposed cases of accidental rule following, which I believe are readily reconciled with. "Has an authority that has defined it." It is right to say the rules have an authority (we choose to put them in force for ourselves) and this is rightly silent on where that authority has its source (could be in us each individually, or in a specific person, or in a book, etc.) To connect authority to the definition of a rule is also right, in the sense that the putting in force for ourselves of a rule relies on our knowing that rule. We put it in force in the way that we know it. One could interpret your phrasing as implying a singular external authority... I don't see that to be necessitated. "Has penalties for not being followed." When we do not follow the rule, something might happen that we would prefer not to happen. Play might cease. Others might censure us. We might feel chagrin. In play, we put rules in force for ourselves because we're conditioned to, because others expect us to, and because we want the experiences that following those rules make available. We skirt penalties along all those lines when we do not follow rules. What I think is necessary here is that to constitute a game, some rules are shared (whether that be through knowing precisely the same rules, or only roughly the same rules.)So to refine your trinary, I might put it that in the context of games a rule typicallyIs known Is put in force for ourselves Is shared with others The above is very general. For roleplaying in particular, I would focus on how those rules condition the imaginative conversation that we make ourselves subject to.</blockquote>

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