What is Roleplaying?

Every single roleplaying game has at least a short paragraph (and sometimes an entire section) in the front titled "What is a Roleplaying Game?", I guess on the assumption that a certain number of people picking up the book will have never heard of roleplaying. Considering that these paragraphs are usually buried in the first chapter of the book, I wonder if the uninitiated ever stumble across them.

Nonetheless, I'm going to repeat essentially the same information here!

A roleplaying game is make believe for adults. Since "make believe" is child stuff, adults have to add complicated rules to make it "mature" and acceptable. Then, they strip out those complicated rules and give it a fancy label like "diceless", going back to make believe but with an adult label.

Roleplaying consists of people pretending to be somebody else. It's acting, essentially, but usually without all the body movement of acting. You'll sometimes hear about roleplaying in the work place. Corporate consultants started using the idea in the 90s, about a decade after psychologists discovered it, but gamers were there first. (At least I think so; this is all subjective based on my experience.)

In a roleplaying game, one person takes the part of the gamemaster. She (the convention in roleplaying books is to refer to gamemasters as "she" and players as "he") acts as a combination referee, story writer, and movie director. The gamemaster's job is to create a world — or use one that's already been published — where the game takes place, come up with a story — or use a published story — called a scenario for the players to play, and then adjudicate what happens based on the players actions. A gamemaster is also called a referee, a storyteller, and a host of other game-specific names (from Dungeon & Dragons' Dungeon Master, to Spycraft's Game Control, to Call of Cthulhu's Keeper of Arcane Lore — Keeper, for short — to the Nobilis Hollyhock God). "Game Master", or GM, is widely used as the generic name for this participant in the game.

The other participants in the game are called players. They take on the persona of a character within the game. A character might be a 1920s Sam Spade-like detective, or he might be an Elven warrior from Middle Earth. He could be captain of a starship, or sailor on a World War II submarine, or a superhero, or just an average guy walking down the street. The universe where the game is set will dictate the kinds of characters a player can create.

The GM invents a story in whatever game universe the game is set. For instance, if the game is Spycraft the universe is a world very similar to the James Bond movies. If the game is Sidewinder, the universe is the American Wild West of the 19^th century. The universe doesn't have to be based on reality, though it often is. Call of Cthulhu is set in the 1920s, but where the monsters of H.P. Lovecraft's fiction are alive. Dungeons & Dragons is often set in fantasy worlds not unlike Tolkien's Middle Earth (and, yes, there are roleplaying games set in Middle Earth). There's a Star Wars roleplaying game, a Matrix roleplaying game, and roleplaying games based on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Conan the Barbarian, Sherlock Holmes, the Second World War, and Hong Kong action movies.

The GM's story moves the game along. The GM might invent a murder mystery, such as some rich guy is killed in his house, and the players' characters have to solve the mystery. The GM might send the characters on a quest to save a kidnapped princess. The characters may have to stop a terrible monster in the wilds of New Jersey, or the wilds of Mordor. The GM puts together the story, complete with clues and a cast of characters. Usually the GM figures out a way for the characters to get through the story, too, but that's just in case the players get stumped.

How much direction is required by the GM depends on the type of story. Some games are essentially miniatures wargames. The GM creates a map of an area, writes down where the monsters appear, and then the players move through the area killing things. After the set up, there's very little for the GM to do but move monsters and roll the dice for them. Other games require more GM control. The players interact with the non-player characters (called NPCs) of the universe, asking questions, befriending them, or making enemies. The GM has to take on the persona of each NPC. Some games feature players competing against each other in big political or conspiratorial games. In these settings the players run the whole thing pretty much by themselves, with the GM acting as referee and the source of plot complications.

The players "generate" their characters. This is where the adult rules come in. It usually involves dice, and most often it involves dice of more — or less — than six sides. Four, eight, ten, twelve, and twenty-sided dice are all common. They use dice to come up with various attributes of the character, depending on the game system. Some game systems don't use dice but give players points that they spend on various attributes. Some games even use a combination of points and dice rolls.

The attributes might indicate the character's strength, how clumsy he is, how smart, or how good looking. Some games go so far as to generate eye and hair colour, and exact height and weight. Most modern games also have some sort of skill list. These are things the character can do. The player might not be able to repair a computer or speak Chinese, but his character could. The game rules give every player a fair shot at creating a character they like, with enough abilities to be interesting but with room for growth.

After the characters are created, it's off to play the game. The GM will describe the setting of the game. At some point the GM will ask each player what they are doing. The player tells the GM, and the GM lets them do what they said they were doing, or tells them they can't do it, or uses the rules to figure out whether or not they can do it. For instance, if the game was set in the Wild West, the players might all be cowboys. The GM would describe the saloon where they were resting. The GM would then say something like, "The local sheriff runs into the saloon and yells, 'The afternoon stage coach has been held up! I need a posse!'" The players would then have to decide what they are going to do. Are they law-abiding citizens who will get their horses and help the sheriff? Or are they bank robbers who will take the opportunity to rob the bank while the posse is gone? Or perhaps they'll just sit in the saloon, minding their own business, until something else happens. Let's say they all go to help the sheriff. While riding out to the stage coach they are shot at by bandits. One player wants his character to jump off his horse and crawl for cover. Another wants to shoot a bandit while remaining on his horse. Can the characters do these actions? Can the first player jump off his horse without hurting himself? And if he is hurt, how badly? Can the second character hit the bandit? This is where the rules and the dice come in.

The GM's job is to make sure everyone has fun. Except for a rare number of games that have competition as a premise, the other players do not compete against the GM. The players pretend to be their characters and participate in the story. It's like reading a book or watching a movie, but with the players participating. It's like make believe, except that the GM tells the others whether or not they can do a stated action, and how well, using the game system's rules as guide. The GM might dictate that the character on horseback can't shoot at the bandit because it's too hard to hit while riding. Usually the game rules will cover this situation, but if they don't the GM has to figure it out by herself. She may even "cheat" for the sake of the story. Perhaps the bandit is Black Bart, who has to make it to the next town in order for the story to work. The character shoots at Black Bart, hitting him. The GM might roll the damage herself, so that Black Bart will miraculously survive. Or she might have Bart duck at the last second. Or, she might just let the player roll the dice and if Black Bart dies, he dies. Then she might have to change her story altogether. Perhaps Black Bart was going to ride to the next town to hole up with his brother. Now her story changes, and Black Bart's brother is going to want revenge on the man who shot Bart.

The fun in roleplaying games comes from pretending to be a character. Players are encouraged to talk like their characters. A player playing a cowboy could tell the GM, "I walk up to the sheriff and ask him if there's any reward for joining the posse," but he's encouraged to do something like, "I'm going to walk up to the sheriff. 'Say, sheriff, there any reward for capturing this here Black Bart gang?'" The GM would then interact with the player by pretending to be the sheriff. This is where NPCs come in. The GM plays the part of every NPC in the game, acting like that NPC and dictating what the NPC does. The GM tries to make them feel like individual characters. This is the hardest part of being a GM, since not all GMs have the same acting ability; not every GM can pull it off. Because the GM runs the NPCs, the players never know what's happening behind the scenes. Maybe the sheriff has been bribed by Black Bart. Maybe Black Bart is a Pinkerton agent under cover. The players will never know unless they dig into the story.

Another key aspect of roleplaying is the ability to dictate the direction of the story. There are roleplaying games for computers and game consoles, but they tend to be "linear". The player usually has to follow the script to get through the story. So called "pen and paper" RPGs have a human deciding the outcome, but that human can change the direction of the story at any time. Often a better story comes along when the players do something the GM hadn't thought about. For instance, a western computer typically don't allow the players to join Black Bart's gang the moment the shooting starts. Pen and paper RPGs can handle this, as the players have greater freedom in what they do and the human GM can alter the story as needed.

The style of play is different from one game group to another. One group may use miniature figures to show where their characters are at any moment. Their games might be more like a tactical wargame. Other groups might like murder mystery stories, whether they are straight detective stories or based around some kind of horror element. Other groups don't want a lot of realism, they just want to be heroes, like Conan or Captain Kirk.

After a scenario is completed, the characters are usually rewarded for the way their players ran them during the game. This is usually in the form of experience. Characters will improve at skills, and sometimes attributes, as the game (known as a "campaign") continues. This gives players incentive to keep playing the same character. It also gives players an incentive not to just throw the character away doing stupid things. If a character dies, the player will usually have to create a new character from scratch, losing all those hard won experience points or skill increases.

In roleplaying there truly is no winning or losing. It really is all about how you play the game. Sure, an entire party might be killed off by some monster in Victorian London, but if it was exciting and heroic, and the players killed the monster too, then they could very well feel like they "won". The idea isn't to win like in a conventional game, but to enjoy the story that the players and the GM mutually create.

As I said, it's make believe. With rules. And usually dice.

What are Roleplaying Games?

Roleplaying games are the books and accessories used to facilitate roleplaying. You have a pretty good idea, from above, how roleplaying works. Roleplaying games allow all of the stuff, above, to happen.

Roleplaying games have two main parts to them: the game mechanics and the game universe.

The game mechanics control how the game is played. These are rules that tell you how to create a character, how long a "game turn" represents, how far a character can move in a game turn, whether or not a character can shoot a target with a gun, whether or not a character can cast a spell, etc., etc. These are the rules that dictate if a character can do something and how well they succeeded at doing it.

Game mechanics come in many forms. Some games have "character levels", where characters don't gain any ability until they've accumulated enough experience points, and then *poof* they suddenly jump up to the next level. Often in these games, every character of the same type (or "class") at the same level can do the same thing. Some games give characters skills. Each character can have a unique combination of skills and skill abilities. One character could have a high score in the Read Chinese score but a poor score in their Pistol skill, while another character could have a high pistol score but no ability in reading any language. In these games, characters increase abilities in the skills a little at a time. There are also games that use both character levels and skills, and games that don't use skills at all.

Even when games have a similar method of handling character abilities, like having a list of skills, the actual method of determining outcomes is different. Chaosium's BRP (Basic RolePlay) system gives characters a skill value from 0 to 100. They roll dice that generate numbers from 0 to 100. If they roll their skill level or below, they succeed. If they roll greater, they fail. Steve Jackson Games' GURPS (Generic Universal RolePlaying System) gives characters skills of 0 to 18 (roughly). The player rolls three six-sided dice, adds them up, and compares the result to their skill. Again, rolling over their skill is bad, rolling under is good. Arc Dream's Godlike is entirely different. Characters have "skill levels" from 0 to 10. They roll a number of ten sided dice equal to their skill level. They succeed if at least two of their dice roll the same number. The higher the number, the quicker the character succeeded at what he was doing, but the more dice that match the better the result.

The game universe is the background in which the game is played. If it is a Star Wars game, then the game is set in the Star Wars universe. If the game is Call of Cthulhu, the game is set in world as it was in the 1920s, with H.P. Lovecraft's monsters running loose. The universe can be a published roleplaying product, it could be a world taken from a book the GM read, or it could be something the GM made up all by herself.

Sometimes the game universe and the game mechanics are strongly connected, other times they are weakly connected. Originally there was a strong connection between the mechanics and the universe. Fairly early on, though, game companies realized that they could use the same mechanics in different universes to come up with entirely different games. Usually the game mechanics are published in the same book as the game universe, so you have one book to get you started. Game companies usually produce "sourcebooks" with additional universe information, and "supplements" with additional game mechanics options.

Some rule books are all game mechanics, with no universe information at all. GURPS, for instance, has no game universe information in its core rulebook. For that you have to buy one of their sourcebooks. Sometimes a game company will give the game mechanics away for free so that you'll buy sourcebooks. ACTION does this. Usually the sourcebooks are made to work with a particular set of mechanics. GURPS books reference the GURPS rules. D20 sourcebooks reference the Dungeons & Dragons rule books, or the D20 Modern book, etc.

Some game companies produce products with no mechanics. These are generic sourcebooks that can work with a number of game mechanics. This lets the player play in a particular universe while using their favourite rules.

It used to be that most games came with most of the game mechanics and at least some of the universe information in them. The explosion of the D20 rules (descended from the original Dungeons & Dragons) has produced a ton of games with virtually no mechanics in them. You have to buy a D20 or OGL (Open Gaming License; essentially an unofficial D20 game) book with the core rules in order to play the game. GURPS has done it this way since its inception. White Wolf has gone this route with their World of Darkness games. Chaosium is planning to do the same thing with the release of Deluxe BRP (yes, "Deluxe Basic RolePlay").

This is just a broad overview of roleplaying and roleplaying games, and a fairly stereotypical one at that. I haven't discussed things like diceless roleplaying, troupe style games, or live action roleplaying. I'm sure if you're still interested you could discover these things through Google.