I believe in God, and I'm a Christian.
As a typically ambitious player, I did what all others of that ilk do: Everything I could do to gain advantage for my PCs and rise in level as rapidly as possible.
I foresee online gaming changing when there are good audio-visual links connecting the participants, thus approximating play in a face-to-face group.
Of course as children, we all, in all cultures and societies, learn behavior from observation, imitation, and encouragement of various kinds. So by the suggestion made, we all 'pretend' most of the time.
Pen-and-paper role-playing is live theater and computer games are television. People want the convenience and instant gratification of turning on the TV rather than getting dressed up and going out to see a live play. In the same way, the computer is a more immediately accessible way to play games.
I hated school, didn't like the discipline.
I wasn't popular in the home office because I wasn't chicken. I'm just a risk taker. I have gut instincts.
I had the experience of having my grandmother in a nursing home at the end of her life, and had dementia set in with my father. He was in a nursing home with dementia at the end of his life, but it happened for me personally 10 years ago. My father was much older than my mother, so I experienced it as a pretty young person. People's parents die at various ages, but my father died of mortality. He died of being an old person. Illness and stuff happened, but essentially, he was old and he was going to die.
Downplaying their faults is pretty much the point of campaigns. But we do count on them living with the constant terror of public rejection.
Anyone who has ever accomplished anything of any consequence, didn't know how to get what they want, they only knew that they were going to get it. You don't know how to do something, until after you've done it. Our problem is, we set goals to do what we think we can do or what we've already done. There's no inspiration in that.
The dew-bead Gem of earth and sky begotten.