This is a great post. I think it illustrates a couple of significant things.
First, I think it highlights the external/internal aspect. When we talk about resolving social interaction by free RPGing, are we meaning that players should set about inducing emotional responses in others? That's a huge part of social interaction in the real world - we smile at people, yell at them, sometimes manipulate them. Or are we meaning that players should imagine that such things are happening to their PCs, and induce appropriate emotional responses in themselves?
I can't speak for the Nordic LARPers, but nothing I hear about (say)
@Lanefan's table, or similar sorts of description of free RPing, makes me think that people are advocating for the external manifestations of social behaviour. That players should actually set about getting other players to make decisions for their characters by seducing or bullying or charming or manipulating them.
They are talking about the internal aspect - the player imaging their PC being subject to certain things. And what those "certain things" are can be determined in all sorts of ways.
Second, I think it highlights the issue of social disruption vs just-keep-on-playing.
@Crimson Longinus posts "in TTRPG you usually only act as much as you can do by sitting on your chair" but that doesn't get to the point I asked, which is
Do people really storm out in anger?. In your LARPing something like that really happened - and the game couldn't just keep going! But when I pretend that my character is storming out in anger, but I'm not actually angry with anyone, that's not a modelling of a real-world process. It's sheer authorship, and again the authorship can be structured and decided in all sorts of ways.
One is a sphere of rational negotiation. The other is not.
In situations which aren't like the one
@niklinna describes, the script and the performance are not the same thing.
What happens if each player feels that their PC really wants the hand of Violette? Then they will never relent. But in real life people sometimes relent in such situations. And what makes them relent are factors that simply don't come to bear when two friends are performing their PCs to one another at a kitchen table.
For example, in the real situation one person realises that their friendship is more important to them than their romance, and hence gives up on the wooing in order to save the friendship. But at the RPG table there is no actual friendship that is at stake (assuming, once again, that we're not in a situation like the one
@niklinna described). So nothing stops each player sticking to his conviction that his PC will not relent. (And this is just one example. Many more could be given.)
The basic structure of the issue, in game play terms, is
finality - bringing something to a conclusion. The factors that produce that in real-life social encounters aren't present in a RPG which involves conversation among friends. (Unless it's in the sphere of rational negotiation, in which the relevant factor - the balance of reasons - is present.)
I've got doubts about this.