FW: [MUD-Dev] MMORPGs & MUDs

[Skaei at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/7/2002 4:59:55 PM Central Standard Time, 
Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com writes:

> Anyway, what the hell is a role-player and why would he want to
> play a computer game? Surely RP is about human interaction, and
> the computer isn't really a great tool for that. I wonder if these
> disgruntled role-players aren't expecting other players to be
> literary genious, veritable Tolkeins arrayed to place them as
> heroes and villains within a magnificently scripted plot.

First I apologize for the HTML format.  AOL 7.0 doesn't allow you to
change from the default HTML to plain text as previous versions did.

IMHO, a role-player is a person who enjoys taking on the role of
something/someone else for purposes of escape and entertainment.
Three reasons why they would choose a computer come to my mind
quickly:

       1 - The accessibility to a larger gathering of people

       2 - The ability to not have to deal with face-to-face
       encounters.

       3 - The wide variety of environment offerings to RP in.

Some may subscribe to the view that you mentioned above about
computers not being a great tool for human interaction.  I would
differ slightly with that statement only by offering that it depends
on what level of human interaction the user is wishing.  I don't
think that RP requires face to face human interaction.  If it did,
RPing would not have survived this long on the Internet.  From email
based RP's to message board RP's to multiplayer games, time has
proven that all RP needs is a group of relatively like minded people
who realize the computer/software is nothing more than a means in
which to get them all together.  What happens after that is up to
them. :)

Chris


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