I used to play Traveler and D&D. Also a really obscure game called "SPACE QUEST". BTW, this is not the "Space Quest" everyone sees today.
This was similar to Traveler, however, the game was far more complex in the ship design & operation, the physics of spaceflight, and it even went so far as to include Spectral and Luminosity Classes, orbital mechanics, civilization levels and types, planetary atmospheres, flora and fauna, etc. Took days to set up a ship, crew, and the nearby stars. Prob why it never took off. I wonder how many people have this RPG book on a shelf somewhere. Not many I would bet. They only printed it once and it was a limited run at the time.
However, computer gaming was getting its legs at the same time. My first computer game was a game called Adventure that we would play late at night on the IBM-360 mainframes. Then Zork came out for the Commodore and Atari and all bets were off.
BOOM! Computer gaming became huge. Eventually overtaking paper RPGs.
Now with the ease of the Internet, graphics, and the speed of personal computers, RPGs have come into their own on the PC. (Everquest is but one early example).
Also the face of the chat room is changing. These are virtual worlds with physics, textures, walls, lawns, forests, bushes, libraries, rooms, (whole towns), etc. that you can walk thru using the avatar of choice and seeing out of your avatar’s eyes other avatars walking thru this same virtual word and being able to congregate and chat. BTW, brick looks like brick; add marble, cement, flora and fauna, wood, lakes, waterfalls, pools, metal, etc. These look real.
There are whole websites devoted to nothing but textures to build a world/community to add to the existing ones out there already. I know of one, I have access too, that would take you months to explore all the different places. There are Castles, gardens, forests, towns, homes, etc. Even one person made a New York street complete with cabs, noise, and high-rises you could get into (Including riding the elevators). You could take cruise on a cruise ship, swim, ride wave riders, etc. Snow would fall, there was night and day, the moon phases would change. I even walked by a lake where I could see the stars reflected in the water. How cool is that.
I remember being in one of these “worlds” where we were just a bunch of avatars standing around in front of a bar and grill on a cobblestone street. It was like really being there. However, the folks I was casually chatting with were from all over the world. Mostly from the USA, Canada, Britain, France, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, and Spain. A few were from South America, Asia, Eastern Europe and the like, but that was not often. It was kind of strange walking down a realistic looking street with a group of folks chatting away, knowing in the back of your head, these were people sitting at computers from all over the world.
Add VR headsets, and you could almost forget you were in a virtual world as apposed to the physical one.
Some people took this to the extreme as well. I saw marriages, fights, cliques, families, occupations, virtual money, property bought and sold, all in this "cyberspace".
This is not just a fad either. It is growing FAST. Even the US Army has gotten involved. They are using the VR software from one of these online communities to set up virtual combat simulations for training.
The "Matrix" is not as far off as you may think. BTW, I am not talking a war with machines, but the virtual logging into a world that looks and acts like the "real" one.
I was semi-hooked on Gemstone II or III, I forget, for a few months in the early nineties. If you died, the good news is you came back to life. The bad news is you were broke and naked. You had to kill rats for money to get re-started in life.
The first time it happens to you, it's a gripping drama. The fourth or fifth time, it's "Screw this game!"
