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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5626192" data-attributes="member: 42582">I guess you're entitled to your opinion. (I'm not enitrely sure what the emoticon is for.)But if we were playing Against the Giants as per the example I gave and that you quoted in your reply, I don't even know how you would tell that I was in Author rather than Actor stance. Probably thousands of tables have played through G2. I imagine many of them must have had at least one player go through the decision process I described: the terrain of the Rift, the encounter set-ups and the rules of D&D make it quite a likely question to arise. Given that in playing D&D I have to think about risks and damage in terms of hit points, how can you tell when I'm metagaming and when I'm not?That was part of the point of my example: that D&D's hit point mechanics makes the difference between Actor and Author stance virtually imperceptible. Again, in my view this is why many of those who wanted clear-cut Actor stance play went for RM, RQ etc instead. While those who keep playing D&D because they like the "plot protection" element of hit points are thereyb opting for a mechanic that obscures the line between ingame and metagame (as is implicit in the very notion of "plot protection").Going beyond the particular example, I don't accept your notion of "levels" to RPGing, such that "Actor stance" is the highest level. And I could provide an argument for that preference, if you like, along these lines:The thing that makes an RPG truly unique is the capacity for a group of participants to shape a dramatically satisfying story, at the same time as each of the non-GM participants (ie the players) has responsibility only for advocating for one particular protagonist within the fiction. (On the relevant notion of advocacy, <a href="http://isabout.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/the-pitfalls-of-narrative-technique-in-rpg-play/" target="_blank">see this blog</a>, esp under the heading "The standard narrativistic model". The core idea is that, once gameplay is underway, a player makes choices only on the basis of his or her PC's needs and desires, without having to have any broader conception of what would make for a good story.) This requires adopting Author stance, because sometimes a PC won't him- or herself know what choices in a given situation will best lead to his or her interests being realised. Anyone who tries to play RPGs without at least attempting to experience this "Author stance" element of an RPG is really trying to substitute one kind of enjoyment for another - namely, a certain passive form of "let's pretend" rather than active participation in co-authoring a worthwhile story.All this shows is that most people who have clear aesthetic preferences, and have thought a bit about them, can articulate those preferences to some extent. But it doesn't show that there is, in any sense beyond an individual's preferences, some "hierarchy" of sophistication, or of genuiness, in roleplaying. Or that those who prefer to play in one fashion rather than another are doing it wrong.</blockquote>

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