Here via metafandom

Date: 7 August 2005 10:31 pm (UTC)
ext_150: (0)
This is really interesting.

I think there is one thing that I didn't see you touch on which I think might be a factor as well, it certainly was for me. Fanfic is something you can do regardless of whether you know any other fans in person, but tabletop RPGs need a group of people to function. No matter how much you might be interested, if you don't have friends who RP then you're stuck. I think it's possible that more people are interested in RPGs but just have no way to participate.

I don't really know how much that might be true, but it is true for me personally. In high school and early college, I would have loved nothing more than to get into RPing. I read fantasy almost exclusively, including a boatload of Dragonlance novels. But I didn't know anyone who played, and while I occasionally saw ads at the fantasy bookshop for people looking for new players, the idea of calling someone out of the blue and getting together with them is enough, even now, to send me into a panic attack.

Fanfic is a social activity, too. I'm not the sort of person who would write if I didn't have an audience. I need outside motivation or it would just never get done. If I'm the only one I'm entertaining, then I can do so just as easily with the story still in my head. But since my social awkwardness is almost entirely related to my physical self, the internet allows me to "talk" to people and get involved even if I don't know them.

Anyway, as to the questions...

I both read and write fanfic, writing more than reading. I have never RPed, though as I mentioned, there was a time when I would have loved nothing more (I was not involved in fanfic at the time either - no internet).

I don't feel that, for me anyway, they come from a similar motivation. The desire to RP is not at all connected with wanting to explore canon further, it just the desire to adventure in a fantasy world. Yes, the one I was most interested in was Dragonlance, and I also ate the books up with a spoon, but I would have taken any RPG. Fanfic, though, I write out of a desire to explore the characters and situations found in whatever canon currently has my interest. I've never had a desire to write an OC in a canon world just to explore that world; it's that sort of fic that I think is most closely related to RP, but even though RP really interests me, that sort of fic doesn't interest me at all.

So in the end, I can see a similarity for some people, but to me they are completely different activities with completely different motivations.
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