This seems like a thinly disguised 'People who disagree with me are stupid! Anyone else agree?' thread where no one really wants to have their opinions challenged, so I'm not going to bother arguing with anyone.
Back in the early '90's I spent alot of time playing (and sometimes coding for) some of the earliest sorts of massively multiplayer games. They were text based and many were inspired by various pen and paper games - Battletech and Vampire:The Masquerade for example. Alot of you are probably familiar with the games, which - dispite often being quite elaborate - were text based called by various achronyms beginning with MU*, such as MUSE, MUSH, and MUD. Some of them, or at least their descendents, are I think still around if you want to do some retro gaming. They are to modern MMORPGs sort of what Zork or 'Enormous Cave' is to modern computer RPG gaming.
The games could basically be separated into two broad types: MUDs which had automated combat systems that allowed you to fight and overcome various problems and MUSHs which generally didn't and relied on players (sometimes with the assistance of a judge) to arbitrate various game events.
In theory there was no particular reason why the game play of the two types of games should be any different. Nothing really prevented a MUD from being RP heavy and nothing really prevented MUSHers from doing anything but hack and slash. But in practice, the two environments could not be more different. No one in a MUD actually role played, or at least, no one bothered to try after the first few hours of experiencing one. There wasn't much point. That wasn't were the core gameplay of a MUD was, and you simply weren't particularly rewarded for doing so. Conversely, in a MUSH, combat was extremely rare (and generally frowned on), because it wasn't particularly rewarded. People spent almost all of their time engaged in various melodramas (and alot of them in tinysex, it must be admitted).
There is nothing really that prevents you from spending alot of time role-playing in a game of monopoly. You can add alot of color about how you feel as a shoe, or an old hat, or a dog if you want. It's somewhat amusing even. But the only real reason you might do it is that the gameplay of monopoly is so otherwise unengaging that you are bored. No one really considers monopoly a role-playing game, because that's not the sort of play that is really encouraged by the rules. You can always be 'in character' for any game you chose to play to add some interest to it, but for most games you don't bother and even if you do that's not what you spend most of your time doing.
