2. games A form of network interaction incorporating aspects

of role-playing games, interactive theater, improvisational

comedy, and "true confessions" magazines. In a virtual

reality forum (such as Usenet's news:alt.callahans

newsgroup or the MUD experiments on Internet and

elsewhere), interaction between the participants is written

like a shared novel complete with scenery, "foreground

characters" that may be personae utterly unlike the people who

write them, and common "background characters" manipulable by

all parties. The one iron law is that you may not write

irreversible changes to a character without the consent of the

person who "owns" it, otherwise, anything goes.