God damn I really like roleplaying, getting to hop into these characters I made up, make up a little story, write out a little scene. It brings me such fulfillment, such a burst of creativity.
I really wish freeform roleplay with a friend or two wasn't so demonized. Oh it's now cool if you have dice and rules because it makes it legitimate, but if you just make a little story with your friends it's weird! "NO RP," goddamn give yourself a little freedom to have some fun! Pretend to be your fursona, you don't need a fursuit for it, roleplay is free!
I think this is the issue I have with tabletop RP and VR, you're so restricted in expression! TTRPG you have rules you have to follow, you have to conform to the story and world. VR you're still you, just moving a puppet, constrained by what the VR space can accommodate and what model you can afford. In roleplay, you can do whatever you want! You make the space, you make the story, you make the characters based on how you write them. The world isn't one made for you, you get to make it!
Maybe this is a side effect of me being extremely hyperphantastic but making up a world and the people who inhabit into it and falling into it on my terms is so much more fulfilling than being in a VR chatroom or a tabletop space that someone else is in control of.
I think my hyperphantasia might be part of the issue of why I can't that deep into furry things nowadays: a fursuit or VR avatar is just a facsimile of what my mind can actually create. What's in my head is so much more vivid than what I can ever hope to have represented in the real or virtual worlds.
Not that the past was some golden age, there was (and remains) plenty of bullshit and drama, but it was so easy to whip up a desc and do things, and it cost absolutely nothing beyond whatever you're paying your ISP anyway.
Is a person you do not need in your life.
Zomi: [Purge them with unholy fire!]
..... Thank you Zomi
This was, and is such an important thing to us. Roleplay has long been a critical sort of self expression, given there’s only so much we can do to our vessel without stepping on one another’s style. We used to practically live on MUCKs and we’re still kind of exist on a MUSH or two.
But we especially feel the rigidity of things like VR, much like Furcadia not having even a quarter of the species that would be needed to handle our system, or the animations being so limited. Describing a vivid scene from our head is so much easier than trying to recreate it in something like VRChat or Second Life.
Definitely something we need more of in our lives, yip! Sadly we can’t even handle group scenes anymore, owing to our ADHD having gotten worse over the years. With a few friends, though, it would be a lovely time, though.
Honestly it… kinda feels like a dying art form and that makes us sad.
The advantage that MU*s have over scening in chat is that MU*s have a sense of place, a topography, a presence that chat doesn't have; similarly, when everyone has a description (and often a profile) available for viewing in advance of any roleplay, they seem more there than if they're merely a name in a chat window.
And yes, the brilliant thing about roleplaying in text is that your imagination is free to travel as far as it likes, to create a depth and complexity unavailable to computer graphics; and this mental imagery is yours, it is uniquely tailored to resonate with you. In comparison, to be presented with a 3D avatar or an illustration is to be constrained by that specific vision, even before one considers the lack of verisimilitude in these representations. The concrete image is profoundly limiting.
