Role-Playing, my $0.02

Master_Razor

When I was a freshman in high school I became a part of Gaia Online. I left about a year ago due to noob invasion. It is there that I learned a lot about role playing.

Now for a corny dictionary definition:

role-playing,

1.	a method of instruction or psychotherapy aimed at changing attitudes and behavior, in which participants act out designated roles relevant to real-life situations.

2.	the modifying of a person's behavior to accord with a desired personal image, as to impress others or conform to a particular environment.

I role-played in forums a lot. I've seen a lot of different styles of role-playing along the way. Non-literate role-players would seperate their actions by using asterisks or some other symbol. They might use 3rd, 2nd, 1st person or even no point of view at all. To elaborate, I'll give you an example.

3rd person: *Razor does this*

2nd person: *You do this*

1st person: *I do this*

no pov: *Does this*

Also, people might use past tense or present tense. More examples:

Past: *He did this*

Present: *She does this*

Then there was literate role-play, which was really like collaborative novel-writing. Literate role-play does away with the symbols showing where action is. It is written in 3rd or 1st person (2nd person on rare occasions, except for the premise) and most often in past tense. I very much enjoy literate forum role-play, it's a great form of escape from the boredom of reality.

I've seen all sorts of subjects for role play. I've seen nearly every genre one can think of made into a role-play (fantasy, romance, sci-fi, mystery, horror, etc). A few popular themes have been vampire/wearwolf (extremely popular but very weird), war, 1 on 1 romance / love triangle, slave (slightly disturbing), and countless others.

I always liked starting up role-plays like these, with my favorite subject being medieval fantasy. I especially enjoy an element of combat in a role-play.

Well anyway, there's my two cents on role-playing.