You might remember me talking about Diplomacy a while ago as the origins of roleplaying. Once again the question pop up about rules supporting roleplay. Today I read what Roger had to say about D&D being a role playing game or not. Naturally, it made me think of Diplomacy again.
When you look at the rules of diplomacy, they don't tell you to speka in funny voices. Neither do the rules of D&D, or T&T or any other first generation rpg. They are directions to facilitate play of the game by giving room for personal touches, while steering it along some common ground. Roleplaying just happens.
Roleplaying is an emerging quality of play. Those qualities are often the most valuable in a game. Some games have rules for X, which just happens to make most gamers do Y, since it's natural in that context. Sometimes you design for it, sometimes you don't.
I've realized one thing about those games which work really hard to facilitate a certain style of play. They often have a lot of space in them, like places of rest where you can find out what is natural in that context. Even there roleplaying is an emergent quality. Even when you have rules for social interactions and narrative control there's space in the rules. That's the rules that support roleplaying.
At least that's what my tired brain just found fascinating. Tell me about it.