Conversation Options and Protagonist's Personality

[John Yossarian]

Naked Ninja, I saw your name in blue somewhere, so if it's not a mistake, you are probably the first person to go from regular, to weasel, back to regular then to mod or whatever in about two weeks. To quote the senator they're discussing in GD, "woot,woot".

 

[galsiah]

But that does not make it any less LARPing, as it is completely divorced of the involved game mechanics and logic.

And so is playing to "win" the game. For a player who primarily wants to roleplay his character, it's entirely unclear that "winning" the game is the point of the game. "Victory" in an RPG is not part of the mechanics of the game or the game world - it's all just stuff that happens. Pursuing an end in an RPG is always based outside the mechanics - it must be as soon as there is more than one allowable ending (and it's also arguable whether any ending is the point). It's all LARPing in some sense. The only difference is the amount of interest in and support for that LARPing. It's about what makes for interesting/entertaining play.

Exempli Gratia, When you play chess, you are not LARPing if you want to win as "victory" is part of the game's own logic, just as survival and defeat are (even if abstracted).

Bad example, since chess is hardly an RPG. However, you say it yourself: "victory" is part of the game's own logic. That is not true in an RPG.

However, I'll even disagree with the validity of your thinking on chess. The purpose of playing chess is NOT to win. It's to have an interesting game. When I play chess, I'm pursuing entertainment - victory is an occasionally important subgoal. Will I make dubious decisions if it makes a game more interesting? Yes. Will I make intentionally not-great-but-interesting moves against players with less experience? Again, yes.
I do this to make the process of playing more interesting and entertaining - in pursuit of my ultimate goal: entertainment.

Am I LARPing chess? Surely I am - such decisions are based on aims outside the mechanics of the game.
So what?

i suck at examples

Indeed you do.

I love Latin, by several reasons.

Fair enough. Feel free to use it. Just don't expect people to think you're not daft for saying Exempli Gratia rather than e.g. "e.g." is brief, correct and widely understood. Exempli Gratia takes considerably more effort to make yourself less understood. It's hardly odd to expect communication to be your primary goal in making a forum post.