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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rum Ranger" data-source="post: 2174266" data-attributes="member: 30845">Never heard of it because PnP roleplayers tend to be of a different mindset than the ones you'll find on MUDs and MMORPGS.  Granted, most RPers I've met have played those types of RPGs, but most of the ones I've met come to a conclusion that they're mostly timesinks and can become quite addictive.  I never actually payed for MMORPGs like Everquest (tried it on a friend's computer) but I did spend several hours on MUDs like Achaea, Threshold, and Aardwolf.  Never spent a dime on them but I noticed that some people spend hundreds of dollars to improve their characters in games like Achaea (and other IRE games based off the same mechanics) and Threshold (Aardwolf is totally free and openly admits it's pure hackn' slash). My point is that when it comes down to MMORPGs and MUDs, there really isn't much of a point outside of trying to become one of the more powerful characters in the gameworld.  And that requires one to dedicate *a lot* of time and/or money (even if one max's out their level in Achaea they can't even max out one of their skills without getting their hands on credits (which are sold for real cash online) and ranks in skills are far more important in that game than levels).  Threshold's even worse because you have to pay to even play after a certain # of hours and at a certain point one has to pay real world cash just to level up because gold drops are so low.  If you don't spend so much time in online games, your character quickly becomes irrelevant.    While these games pretend they are about roleplaying, in the end they come down to one thing to improve your character: killing huge mobs of monsters over and over again.  You could go into player vs. player combat, but to do so and be effective, you'll have to be pretty powerful.  Add that to the really silly "roleplaying" where people twirl one another in the street or lick each other or something else with those emotes.  Last problem I had was with the "quests" where NPCs give pre-programed speeches and clues can only be recieved if you ask a question in the exact format for the program to recognize.  Even then, one has to solve the puzzle exactly the right way instead of thinking of their own solution. Contrast this to PnP RPGs.  In PnP RPG groups (or even campaigns by email), the story arc is tailor made for the PCs so they feel that they're doing something important or at least feel they're the center of the story.  There's also more than one way to improve one's character than killing the same mob over and over again.  Lastly, PnP RPGs tend to be more lifelike in that NPCs and environments will actually respond to the PCs based on the situation.   That's what I enjoy about PnP RPGs and I've yet to really find an online RPG which can substitute for it (regular CRPGs can't replace it, but they have one thing MMORPs and MUDs lack: the fact that the story arc is centered on the player rather than an online community where the player is a small fish in big pond).</blockquote>

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