There's an oft repeated motif in films where someone is in intensive care with an IV plugged into a vein. The camera zooms in on the IV bag and catches the intermittent drip. I imagine the patient in a coma experiencing each drip as a big downbeat. It becomes what life is all about. It's sort of how I see RP stuff. Relatively long periods of senselessness punctuated by a small drip of excitement. Just enough to keep the character alive but not so much as to jolt the player awake as to how near dead their lives are. If I were in a coma I'd hook up with SL.

In late adolescence, with luck, people begin to orchestrate their lives. What began as dumb role playing takes on some order as they learn to coordinate and accessorize dress, manners and jargon. They see themselves as cool and ostracize those who haven't managed the basics. SLifers are at the same stage but need to experience scenarios uncommon, uncondoned or 'unpossible'.

I've been watching and touching base with RP stuff online since the late 90's. I think it's going to be big, much, much bigger than it's present horizons suggest. Sort of Reality TV meets Godzilla and his vampire mistress. OK, if you don't have a life, can't get one, or, like me, don't want one.

just my loose change

It actually sounds like SL is the only place I've seen in a long time that actual roleplaying occurs as it sure doesn't happen in all the grinding games (WoW, RF, RS, etc, etc)

Roleplaying isn't about stats and numbers those simply give a frame work to resolve actions in more complex games, roleplaying is about storytelling and interactions. Roleplaying is just cowboys and indians played by grownups.

Most "rpgs" and "mmorpgs" arn't in anyway shape or form a real roleplaying game and don't offer a roleplaying experiance.

Let's face it as a GM you're always shocked when instead of following you're well laid out adventure all the players decide to head off on a complete tangent and go sun bathing in Hawaii. Just can't happen in most of these rpg games, it's "kill the monsters, get the item, gain the xp, pown some noob, repeat" and more often then not it's "kill monster, kill monster... 100 monsters later congratulations you have improved by10%..."

So for once SL almost sounds interesting, but I don't think proper RP will be about online for a long time yet. Other then in IRC lol and forums.

I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking this when I ask, again "what does a bunch of overweight escapist losers dressing up in goth clothes and slutty dresses in a virtual world have to do with tech news?". Seriously, at this rate I'll be begging for political diatribes to fill up the columns for want of anything less droll and inane than yet more blatherings about second life.

I've pretty much stopped preparing material for my sessions on IRC, because no matter what I prepare, the players will do something ENTIRELY different in any and all cases.

Offer them a great run in ShadowRun, they'll do it. Suggest they use stealth, they'll go in guns blazing, suggest they brute force their way in and they'll go and spend an eternity figuring out how to get in quietly.

Yes, the fun of GMing ShadowRun and DnD 3.5e on IRC.

I think my most interesting experience so far in Second Life is finding out my "Mistress" ..is actually a guy.

While (s)he fooled me totally, I can't help but wonder if her seemingly easy acceptance of finding out that I was a guy, too, was real or just the result of being very detatched from her avatar.

To some, Second Life is roleplay, and that is it. They can play a transvirtual avatar, do things they wouldn't want to do in real life and as soon as they log off, the game is gone. But how can you roleplay without your in-game character reflecting your real life self? So is playing transgender in an online world maliciously deceptive, or just good roleplay?

Role playing is fine, but if you want to do that either 1) play a computer RPG which has definite start and end so you can remember it when you've finished (and then go do stuff outside) or 2) go to a LARP, dress up and meet new people.

Spending your time in SL is useless unless it quickly leads to meeting real people..

Second Life Roleplaying has to be the ultimate indication of recursive uselessness.