"Advanced" use of virtual worlds? (Re: [MUD-Dev] MMORPGs & MUDs)

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

From: "Matt Mihaly" <the_logos at achaea.com>
> On Thu, 7 Feb 2002, Miroslav Silovic wrote:

>> Which brings us to the point: I *don't* fake my characters. They
>> do have their own life, and when I roleplay them (or act them, if
>> you prefer), I do become somebody else for the duration.

> No you don't. It's like claiming that virtual worlds are somehow
> "not real". They are real, because they are part of reality.

No, they're not.

  real: Being or occurring in fact or actuality.

  virtual: Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in
  actual fact.

A virtual world is "not real" by definition. To claim otherwise is
to commit a fallacy of equivocation.

> Any character you play is part of you, because it is a sub-set of
> you.

You seem to have an awful lot of difficulty understanding the basic
concepts behind roleplaying.

Feregar, one of my characters in a pen and paper campaign, was
afraid of mushrooms. If he saw mushrooms, he would try to avoid
them. If he couldn't, he would panic and insist on destroying them
immediately.

I am not afraid of mushrooms, and I certainly do not panic at the
sight of them. To suggest that Feregar is merely a subset of me is
ludicrous.

> Characters don't have emotions. People do. Characters are
> data-sets and/or ideas.

But they are ideas of people. And an idea of a person can have an
idea of an emotion.

When Feregar sees mushrooms and can't get away, he panics. I may be
perfectly calm as I describe how panicked Feregar is behaving, and
Feregar's panic is certainly NOT a subset of my own calm. But the
character that represents the idea of Feregar also represents has an
emotion

> Well, you have a pretty good idea how it feels to impress a human
> wearing a description that says "I am a dragon" at the least.

No, that would be actual experience. He would KNOW how that feels,
because that is exactly what he has really felt.

But he only has "a pretty good idea" how it feels to impress a
*real* dragon. And the idea is real, even if the dragon is not.


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