Tommi Brander you know, I’ve been chewing on this all weekend and I think you’re right: mechanical positioning does capture what I’m thinking about better than “tactical”. Tactical is too freighted with what-I-want and I think that’s what makes it confusing. But mechanical is kind of perfect, yeah: the procedural game-state at any given moment. The stuff everyone is agreeing to defer to, in another way I suppose, kind of like fictional positioning including all the problems with that.

So thanks for that!