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RE: On the importance of empathy in roleplay

in #roleplaying7 years ago

And this is why role-playing as an empathic operation and an empathic experience is good for you. It gives you an opportunity to try and understand the total obedience to some sort of morality, in a sandboxed experience where it's safe to play with those kind of ideas.

But that's the danger, of course, as some would say it. You are safe to play with those kind of ideas in the context of role-playing game. It's just like how there is a strong component of the "alt.right" which is engaged in a long-term LARP, in a sense, where they pretend to be anti-Semitic hyper-conservative partisans while trolling because it's a relatively safe space for them to role-play and engage with those ideas.

That's part of why I don't really take anything about the alt.right seriously in any context, and I am endlessly amused by those who do – but that's an entirely different field of discussion which probably doesn't belong here.

Regardless, the idea of playing with philosophies and moralities that don't align with things that you necessarily agree with is one of the most important things that we do in the course of role-playing games. It's also one of the most fun. And it is simultaneously one of the most dangerous from the perspective of a certain point of view.