Role Playing Is Like Chess

I started doing online role playing roughly 6 or 7 years ago, though for the past 2 years at least I've been on an RP hiatus. I just lost interest, and I lost contacts with people. My primary source of RP has always been Furcadia (before you ask, no I don't consider myself a furry and don't think yiffing really constitutes RP), in addition to the once-in-a-blue-moon forum RP or quick session in an IM window.

Anyway, I did an RP earlier tonight that lasted a long time, and it was fun, interesting, cool. I'm using a classic character I've had for years, but I'm re-inventing him in some aspects and giving him at least temporary oddities such as communicating through metaphors, symbols, and examples. (It's fun to think that way.)

And I realized: RPing is fundamentally quite simple. You put yourself in situations, and write about it with other people. The nature of this makes pretty much every RP unique in many respects, even if there's strong similarity at some points or there's an overall theme. So this is a lot like Chess. Chess is fundamentally simple, you only have a certain amount of pieces with a certain amount of valid moves. But while each game may have similar openings and other aspects, they nevertheless tend to be fairly unique. And fun, interesting, cool because of it.

Anyway, just my thoughts about two things I've long enjoyed. We'll see if I fully come out of my RP hiatus; it takes up a big chunk of time! So can Chess, too, which is why I don't play it that much anymore either.

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Posted on 2010-06-20 by Jach

Tags: personal, thought

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