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Masks in the Woods
John Tynes, a tabletop RPG developer well-known for work on products for Pagan Publishing and Wizards of the Coast, has a piece in this week's Escapist about the power of the tabletop roleplaying experience. He compares it to the experience of roleplaying in a Massive game, and finds it lacking. From the article: "There is no golden age here. There's just another group of players who tried to tell some stories and couldn't bend the tools to their will. The tools even made things harder in some cases - as in the contentious area of IC vs. OOC chat. Endsong says the guild started with local chat being in character. But more and more members switched to using voice communication via TeamSpeak. If you thought roleplaying online via text messages was a challenge, try it with a headset." Please note - this article contains some disturbing descriptions. No sarcasm, reader beware.
Face-to-face roleplaying brings body language, facial expressions, voice pitch and human interaction to the table (pun intended).
... until we reach the nirvana of immersive 3D, holodeck-like technology ... will ever compete with that.
Not sure how on-line roleplaying
His whole article can be summed up like this:
"I went to a marionette show, and you know what, movies look more realistic."
Reason why there is hope for the future generation #364:
"I wish my grass was emo so it could cut itself."
This issue has come up with me several times. Some people are able to shift gears back and forth fairly quickly, and saying "Pass the chips" between rolls isn't a big deal. Some people seem to treat IC like some sort of holy meditation and get annoyed when you break it.