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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6962639" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, you can see my reply!I certainly think those things (problem-solving, dungeon delving, and smashing hordes of mooks) are roleplaying as that term was used by "wargamers" in the 70s/early 80s. They involve engaging the fiction of the game via an individual character.But they typically don't involve (and in [MENTION=6677017]Sword of Spirit[/MENTION]'s case apparently never involve) developing and acting out a persona. So they're not roleplaying in that sense (which is probably the more typical contemporary usage among D&D players).Smashing hordes of mooks isn't a big part of my D&D gaming, although it comes up from time-to-time. See eg <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?421018-Among-the-Githzerai-and-into-the-Room-with-No-Doors" target="_blank">here</a> - a play report of a session where the fighter took on a dojo's worth of githzerai in order to prove a point.What is significant to me, from the point of view of the thread topic, is that the fighter proving his point by defeating the githzerai isn't about the player, at the table, engaging in thespian-like moments of characterisation. Rather, it's about making a choice that expresses the PC's desires and self-conception, and then following through in mechanical terms. That's why, as between the two "boxes" I set up at the start of the thread, I put it in the "RP as function/capabilities" box rather than the "RP as acting out a unique personality" box.Likewise for puzzle-solving: see eg <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?484945-Session-report-the-Mausoleum-of-the-Raven-Queen" target="_blank">here</a>. The PCs had to decide what they wanted to do with the Raven Queen's body, and whether or not they wanted to stop her true name becoming known - and if so, how they planned to do that. The events in that session weren't driven by "personalities" but by the interaction (and sometimes conflict) between the PCs goals, which are located not just in the minds of their  players but also are expressed by salient aspects of PC builds (eg paladin of the Raven Queen vs invoker who serves many gods, including the Raven Queen but also Vecna, vs a fighter-cleric of Moradin who has also become the god of pain and jailers; etc).</blockquote>

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