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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7631105" data-attributes="member: 42582">Upthread the notion of roleplaying - what it is, what it isn't - was raised.The closest to a consensus position that was put forward was that it involved playing the role of a character in a fictional world. In a RPG, there is an additional element of advocacy for the character on account of it being a game, where the participants therefore in some sense aspire to do well.A number of posters - with [MENTION=6795602]FrogReaver[/MENTION] in the forefront - seem to take it that (at least in the context of RPGing) roleplaying also involves or requires establishing and maintaining a conception of the character one is playing.I'm curious about this. Is this a particularly strong or focused version of advocacy? Something else?And why are PC emotional states such a focus of discussion in relation to it? If my character is Conan the Barbarian, who - <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600811h.html" target="_blank">as we all know</a> - "came . . . black-haired, sullen eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet", then maybe being a throne-treader is more central to my character conception than exercising control over my character's melancholies and mirths (and lusts, for that matter).And going back to advocacy - isn't one typical feature of RPG play to test the player's conception of his/her PC? Am I really as righteous as I think? As resistant to temptation? As capable of conquest?There are any number of ways a game can test such things. But it's not clear why the arena for testing should, on some principled ground, exclude the emotional life of the PC but not his/her physical life.</blockquote>

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