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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9790997" data-attributes="member: 42582">Free-form roleplay seems like it involves fictional position. LARPing is different, because at least a fair bit of the position is actual, not fictional. In Diplomacy, too, the position - of having alliances or being betrayed - is actual and not fictional.I dunno. There seems to be a lot of different stuff being said.For instance, you're talking about "character-driven" choices over playing to win: the "aesthetic concern" that Laws wrote about in OtE. But in some boardgames/wargames, at least, what really seems to be going on is simply the setting of a variant win condition: eg can I win a game of MtG while only playing Goblins in my deck? Or can I win a game of Risk while only operating from this particular set of territories?And some of what is being talked about is not about game play at all, but the aesthetics that surround game play: like voicing a "character" while playing Cluedo. Equating this with the voicing of a character when playing a RPG seems like a category error to me. Miss Scarlet saying something sassy about the rope in the ballroom is just having fun at the table, but isn't a move in the play of the game; whereas my PC saying something to a NPC is actually making a move in the game, which then has to be resolved to find out what happens next.</blockquote>