How does one “play” with dolls?

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My sister and I used to play with dolls all the time when we were younger. Mostly, it was toy pokemon rather than people for us, although my sister liked Barbie toys, too. We played together a lot. Although my little sister could play by herself, the toys did not have much of an appeal for me if I was on my own. Alone, I’d play for maybe half an hour, if that but with her, the games could go for many hours.

For me, playing with dolls was a way to create an imaginary world, try to come up with characters with creative back stories and try to create scenarios where these characters reacted and interacted any way I wanted, often with ridiculous, funny results. It was also a fun way for my sister and I to play together. We could be spontaneous and silly with each other and have interactions without any real consequences.

We played like this for years. I think I might have been a young teen when I stopped, even though I probably would have quit sooner if my sister hadn’t wanted to play so much. And I’ll be honest, although I was sort of embarrassed to play with them in the later years, once we got going, I still found it fun. I wouldn’t have been able to still play for hours if it wasn’t. I think my little sister knew that too.

Looking back, it seems like these games with my sister actually helped me out a little with learning about real interaction between people. There was the direct communication going on between me and my sister as we played. Then there were the actions we played out through our characters, which, while often ridiculous, over the top parodies of real life social situations, often had the same basic layout.

I can’t really distinguish between playing with dolls and stuffed animals because I didn’t do much of the latter.

Gah, imaginative/social doll "role play" was always too uncomfortable for words.
However, I have been observing my three year old niece. She has many dolls, and seems to utilise them in different ways depending on the dolls. With the baby dolls, she will treat them like a baby - dress and change them, feed them, hold them like babies and rock them, push them around in strollers. With more barbie-like dolls, she will walk them around and make them talk to one another, ride plastic horses, go shopping together, have picnics - anything that she has seen humans do in a social sense she will copy using the dolls. It may be a cognition aid, to understand and explore these social actions she sees around her, and the different roles of different people - babies, adults, how they interact with animals, etc.
when I was a child I had dolls, but it's a miracle my parents never committed me, because they didn't stay intact long. I improved on them. Shaved their heads, gave them full body tattoos, extra arms and legs, spliced barbie dolls with dinosaur legs, made them wings, tails and antennae out of various materials, taped them to remote control cars, etc. My dolls were intrepid explorers and test pilots. They got pushed over waterfalls in makeshift boats, shot over cliffs on arrows, surfed on empty water bottles. I remember a few times normal kids tried to make me "play" with the dolls, but they would often construct elaborate conditions to the scenarios, complicated back stories, inconsistent "rules" that ensured their dolls came out on top - it all turned into another way for children to dominate me, which I refused to do. I still can't - my niece will hand me a doll and say "you can control her," and try to initiate some kind of social scenario and the whole process still makes me sick.

Some dolls come with many clothes that you can put on them and a house that you can furnish. I can see some fun in doing that (changing clothes etc) although I wasn't given such dolls as those things were for girls. Those dolls were "human-shaped" as opposed to "stuffed animals". Probably kids have fun creating a world where those beautiful-looking dolls live.

Stuffed animals are more like cute pets. Stuffed animals are not creepy like dolls.