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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5810173" data-attributes="member: 42582">OK, but I think you've deferred all the challenging bits via the phrase "in a roleplaying game".Suppose I start from here, and add in:*the fiction should include a signficant amount of content of which particular protagonists are at the centre; *the system should focus to a signficiant extent on mediating the fictional deeds of those protgaonists. Clearly I've now narrowed your summary. Do you think I've narrowed it too far to be useful? Or would I still capture some central and perhaps typical cases of RPGing? This includes my two mooted additions to chaochou's account, but leaves out system. I agree with chaochou that if it hasn't got system of some sort, than it's not RPGing. I think that this leaves out system - or, alternatively, it assumes a "drama"/"free roleplaying" approach to resolution. I mean, suppose there is a big battle going on, and PC X suddenly confronts his/her rival warlord. "Drop your weapon and surrender" says X. If the GM (or whichever other participant has responsibility for determining what the rival does in the fiction) calls for a die roll (say, an Intimidate skill check) is this part of the roleplaying process, or orthogonal to it, or antithetical to it? I agree with chaochou that this is part of roleplaying - the mediation of fiction by system. When the system involves dice rather than free narration it doesn't become less roleplaying. Whereas I think that there is no need to deconstruct it - it tends to break down on its own as soon as certain sorts of issues are thrown up by the rulesets that people are using - like reaction rolls and social skills (which I gather are the issue being discussed on the thread the OP forked from), or the role of fictional positioning in 3E and 4e combat, etc. </blockquote>

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