You often see avatars in Second Life (SL)
with profiles describing their addiction to “Role Play” (RP). While it might be
said that the whole idea of SL is a role-play experience for avatars, to RP enthusiasts,
there is a vastly different meaning to the term. Stareyes Galaxy went out of
her way to seek an authentic, “formal style” role play experience in Second
Life.
In the days before Internet chat rooms,
Usenet groups, and multi-user dungeons, role playing was a structured form of
group exploration where a game master (GM) or dungeon master (DM) typically led
a troupe of well-meaning characters on forays of the unknown in fantasy and
science fiction settings. The action was expressed as the players’ verbal
description of what they would do in any given situation, as the “campaign”
trudged on, with the GM and players deciding on outcomes of the actions
(especially combat) by throwing sets of odd-shaped dice on the gaming table.
The player characters were represented by elaborately painted pewter figures on
the gaming board. As the players
matured, consumption of soft drinks during the RP sessions might transform to
cases of beer. Later, these players discovered the wonders of online gaming,
and RP became a subculture residing in the Usenet groups on the Internet,
typically with an alt.* domain name, and “multi-user dungeons” residing on some
obscure university mainframe computers.
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