Role-playing game

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A role-playing game (RPG) is a type of game where players assume the role of a fictional character, via role-playing. In fact, many non-athletic games involve some aspect of role-playing; however, role-playing games tend to focus on this aspect of behaviour.

In such games, characters gain various abilities based on gameplay and typically involving the use of several statistics (such as strength, dexterity, intelligence, charm, etc.), which may in some game systems be advanced. The term is used for two distinct types of games. One is typically a pen-and-paper game played with dice by several people. The term is also used as a name for a genre of video games that for obvious reasons lack the "role-playing" element of pen-and-paper games but borrow many gameplay elements from said games.

Computerized simulations based upon the aforementioned tabletop rulesets have become more prominent recently. Over the last two decades, these CRPGs have endeavored to incorporate social interaction via networking, beginning humbly in the realm of text based chat rooms, and soon moving to static persistent worlds represented in the text MUD. Currently, these have evolved to incorporate graphical representations of tokens (characters, equipment, monsters, etc.), as well as physical simulations obscuring much of the underlying rules of the games from users. The popular term for the current, Internet driven, CRPG is MMORPG, or Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game.

See Role-playing game (video games) for more information.

In pen and paper RPGs, participants play the parts of characters in an imaginary world that usually is organized, adjudicated, and sometimes created by the gamemaster, usually with the support of rules, simple or complex. Some newer RPGs expand the players' powers beyond dictating the actions of their player characters, making them "mini-GMs". At the most radical, an RPG may have rapidly rotating GM duties, or no GM at all. See also role playing.

Many roleplaying games use a common bestiary of creatures which are easily recognizable.

Contents

History

Of course, interactive and impromptu dramas have included elements of play long before the advent of modern wargames -- the children's games of "Playing House" or "Cowboys and Indians" are in essence very simple role-playing games.

Modern RPGs evolved from wargaming roots in the early 1970s. Where a marker or miniature once typically represented a squad of soldiers (although "skirmish level" games did exist where one figure represented one entity only), in early proto-RPGs each token invariably represented a single character.

Each player controlled the actions of that one character. The first edition rules of Dungeons & Dragons (abbreviated as D&D) betray these roots in the use of a distance scale of one inch per ten feet (or ten yards, outdoors). D&D is considered the first modern role-playing game, and it has influenced nearly every RPG produced since its inception in 1974.

RPGs were originally played on a tabletop, because they involved paper, dice, and, often, miniatures or tokens of some kind. From these origins, RPGs have evolved in different directions. Some RPG rules systems are complex and attempt to be realistic simulations; other rules systems place a priority on game balance or on personality, character development, and storytelling.


Tales from the Darkside

Almost from the beginning of the role-playing hobby there have been those who have leveled accusations of connections to devil worship, as well as claims that RPGs lead to suicide. The most famous case perhaps being the work of author Rona Jaffe that exploited the whole hysteria surrounding Dungeons & Dragons in the thinnly veiled "Mazes & Monsters" mock novel. The book was turned into a mediocre TV movie featuring a young Tom Hanks in the key role of mentally unstable collegian that experiances a psychotic episode and loses himself in the game world.

Such negative portrayals of role-players, ironically, may have originated from an initial inability of some outside observers to properly differentiate between reality and the immersive role-playing aspects of game play. Perception, or rather misperception, has been the major prejudice that role-players have had to face over the years. For instance religious fundamentalists have found the fact that roleplaying characters, for all that they existed solely in imaginary fantasy worlds, were given the "ability" to cast "spells" and use "magic" to be anathema and anti-God. Unfortunately such unwarrented accusations continued well beyond the 1980s and into the 1990s. There have been numerous studies exploring this allegation that have generally concluded that not only does it not seem to encourage suicide, but players of this kind of game are less prone to suicide.

The 1990s also saw many advances in computer technology taking role-paying into new technological frontiers. Computer role-playing games (CRPGs) were already well established in the computer world. However, with the proliferation of home computers, the ability to play games online over BBSes or networks paved the way for MUDs, MMORPGs, and PBeM gaming. Alas the first stirrings of copyright and intellectual property concerns had already been felt during the latter part of the 80s with TSR leading the way in litigation precedents, first against the publishers of the Role-Aids line of game supplements, and later against file sharers.

The 90s proved to be a innovative decade seeing many new role-playing games flooding the markets. Perhaps the most popular RPG from this period was "Vampire: The Masquerade". A game designed as an immersive storytelling experiance VtM lent easily itself to LARPing. However there were darkling glimmers that skirted the fringes of the hobby as well when, all too unfortunately, a series of murders were commited by a gang of teenagers whom the media dubbed a "Vampire Cult". Luckily the backlash was minor, brief, and quickly overshadowed by the buy out of TSR by Wizards of the Coast and the subsequent release of the D20/OGL rules.

Types of RPGs

The term "role-playing game" can be applied to a number of distinct genres:

Popular RPGs

Fantasy Genre

Near-Future Genre

Science Fiction Genre

Horror Genre

Satiric Genre

Superhero Genre

Contemporary Times/Espionage Adventure Genre

Period Adventure Genre

Universal Roleplaying Systems

Others

Notable RPG Developers and Publishers

See also

RPG.NET, MUD, MUSH, MUX, false document, fantasy bestiary, storytelling game, WorldForge, letter games, system agnostic

External links

References

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