myth's livejournal!

The following is an excerpted and slightly edited version of my reply to a thread entitled "Why do people like RPGs?" on the Penny Arcade forums. I didn't get many responses (except for someone claiming that "the core mechanic [of an RPG] should be actual role-playing"), so I'm reposting it here. I'm interested to hear the thoughts of the (many) game design-literate folks who read this LiveJournal. Am I completely off-base? Can I refine this idea somehow? I feel like my basic thesis is right, but that I'm not quite capturing all of the particulars.

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