It is something i had wanted to do since i was a teen, we use to role play using cards and paper scoring system and i was extremely interested in the idea of role playing at that time. The dream came through recently, when I joined NoRSim an online combat role playing community. It was finally the right timing as I could have joined other similar rp community some months back.
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What i learned about role play so far is that role play can be as real as reality for most people. It is not suppose to be, but in reality it has the tendency to become real, on the other hand, it can be considered a completely normal behaviour, as in a good actor is one who lives the emotions of his character. If a serious rp'er puts in 4-10 hours daily, emotions would turn real sooner or later.
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This can be dangerous obviously and i had seen one, a fellow member had diabetes attack because of the stress due to actions that was intentionally directed to her, some were unintentional and also a series of uncontrollable events. I observe, in all the events leading to the top event (diabetes attack), there is always a strong initiator/driver who is creating the drama...in chinese we would call this person the one who fans the fire...
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...more observations to come...