Vincent’s big scary claim:

Character ownership arises from system. Character ownership does not underlie system.

That’s it?

That’s it.

That may be it, but he does take the time to explain what he means, and it’s an interesting way of looking at character ownership. In short, Vincent says that while character ownership may not be an illusion from either an actual play perspective or even a system design perspective, it is an illusion from “the point of view of a technical description of roleplaying.” It might not sound like much of a difference, but it’s an important one (at least for purposes of game theory).