I'm supposed to do an informal ethnological study before my Evolved Human Behavior seminar begins. I decided to look at roleplaying. In a single statement (and hopefully for the last time): why do you play RPGs? In this case, "fun" is an acceptable answer, but try to go a little more in-depth than that.
I play to experience what I won't in real life.
I play to tell tall tales with my friends.
I play to experience/enjoy/determine* what happens when our characters are put into a situation full of intense, escalating, unavoidable pressure.
As a side note, the more interesting, engaging and important to my character that pressure is, the more fun I have in dealing with it. And that pressure can come from many sources -- combat, political intrigue, the relationships my character has formed, and so on. Also, how we choose to have our characters react to that pressure must be as open as possible, otherwise what's the point?
* I can't quite get the correct word here. Hopefully you see what I mean.
I play to feel what it's like to be someone in a different situation than I am currently in.
I'm to old to go into space, but I want to go, so I play SF RPGs to feel what it might be like if circumstances were different.
I can't go back in time to the Napoleonic age, but I am fascinated by it, so I play Napoleonic era RPGs to feel what it might be like if circumstances were different.
I don't like the word escapism, because that implies I want to escape my current life, which isn't true. I like my life. It's more curiosity. What would it be like if these conditions were true?
-clash
One of my greatest joys in play is to experience intense situations (usually conflict) from a first-person perspective and to be impressed with the fictional content of the imaginary worlds.
-Marco
I play to basically "live" the fantasy stories I grew up on to be the 'hero' of such stories, be they SF, superheroes, or fantasy. I won't be one in real life, that's cool. But telling stories of heroes is important too.
I like this collaborative fiction thing. Make up some characters, put them through some stuff, get a story. Why play RPGs instead of writing? I like doing it with other people, and having the element of chance involved.
Like I suspect many roleplayers, I'm a frustrated author.
I enjoy the storytelling side of the game, I like directing my characters actions in a way defined by his interactions with the other characters, the GM controlled environment and NPCs and the roll of the dice.
I also enjoy socialising with like minded folks around the game table.
I found with computer based RPGs, your character gets squeezed into a limited number of moulds defined by the limited way your character can finish the game/quest/plot. Tabletop RPGs rarely have that problem.
I like to rll dice, eat cheetos, and tell tall stories.
I play to kick ass, get shitloads of treasure, and become more powerful.