"are fleshed out in detail and easy to imagine right in the room with me"

Live in fear Bill... live in fear! :-)

See... I know what yer getting at, but that's not how I cyberspace... I don't even WANT to cyberspace that way... I keep relationships like that for meat space where they belong... Cyberspace is too ephemeral, too fluid, too interpretive...

And well, as I've said before, web sites come and web sites go... and while it IS a good one, Mudcat is just a website...

"if it were ONLY a fantasy game"

To a lot of people, (I'd imagine anyway) it IS just a fantasy game...

"And Max is a real person"

I believe Max was grown in a vat by the KGB... :-)