What aspect of Roleplaying Games has had the biggest effect on you?
Probably the community aspect. I got into tabletop gaming when I went to college, where the only person I knew on campus was a roommate I barely knew from high school. Joining the campus gaming club introduced me to the local gaming store, and between them I had social circles that still stand. Those friends were pretty key in keeping me sane enough to finish school, which was responsible for my current job, and giving me a reason to move to the town where I currently live. Cooperative tabletop gaming probably affected every part of my life aside from my family.
Contrast that with online gaming, where I don’t still talk to a single person I met via MMO. I’m not exactly sure why that is. It may be because an MMO is a single entity; when a campaign ends you can run another with the same or different people in the same or a different place, but when you stop playing an online game you leave the entire community behind. It may be because online gaming is mostly antagonistic, even if it’s against a computer opponent, so there’s less focus on the society of the table and more focus on who’s pulling their weight. It may be because of the limiting factors behind having a pre-built game, which gives us less room for contributing to it and thus less of that personal expression necessary for building a rapport as friends. It’s probably a combination of this and other things. Suffice it to say that while I cut my teeth on video gaming and I still play games online, they haven’t touched my day-to-day life nearly as much as tabletop has.
If this were a Facebook post, I would comment a heart emoji.