CP3S said:

Tobar said:

You're like me in that you like to take a back seat style of escapism into the galaxy, but roleplayers are doing the exact same thing. They just like to take an active part in the galaxy.

So they aren't actually taking a "backseat" then? The whole "active" part denotes more of a driver's seat sort of situation... Don't you think?

I was referring to the escapism. I'm not saying that roleplaying is exactly the same thing as reading a story or watching a movie but that they were more similar than Anchorhead's posts made them out to be. The people sitting there roleplaying are using their mind's eye to picture what is going on in their game. It's just a different form of escapism, as everyone that has replied so far seems to agree with and was my original point. Cosplay is something entirely different and I would agree would be a breach of the fourth wall but not simple roleplaying.

But then again, I might just be confusing reading the books with actually playing a session of the game. As I've never actually played a tabletop RPG, I just enjoy reading the source books for them. My post was also a sort of reaction to this quote from the previous page:

Anchorhead said:

I just assumed it was some silliness belched out on the "bio" pages of the Lucas Franchise machine. Which to me, has always felt weirdly uncomfortable, a sort of role-playing extension that is so fleshed-out that it borders on disturbing. Particularly for adults.

As Anchorhead has said he likes the stories that show what kind of things normal people face in the Star Wars galaxy and that's basically what those books are all about. They establish what it's like being an average joe in that galaxy. All the interesting background bits you find in the Tales books and the stories that came after all originate from those source books.