What's the difference between primal play and dominance?

Dominance runs on instruction: someone says what happens and someone else follows. Primal play drops instruction entirely and runs on instinct, which is why it usually involves no titles, no protocol and very few words.

A primal hunter isn't giving orders, they're chasing. A primal prey isn't obeying, they're running. The dynamic can look like dominance from outside and feel completely different from inside.

Because the play itself is wordless and fast, primal needs more negotiation beforehand than almost anything else, and a stop signal that works when somebody is out of breath and cannot speak.