Role Playing

A role-playing game (RPG, often roleplaying game) is a type of game in which the participants assume the roles of fictional characters and collaboratively create or follow stories. more...

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Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization, and the actions succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines. Within the rules, players can improvise freely; their choices shape the direction and outcome of the games.

A role-playing game rarely has winners or losers. This makes role-playing games fundamentally different from board games, card games, sports and most other types of games. Role-playing games are typically more collaborative and social than competitive. A typical role-playing game unifies its participants into a single team, known as a "party", that plays as a group. Like serials or novel sequences, these episodic games are often played in weekly sessions over a period of months or even years, although some gamers prefer playing one session games.

Role-playing games are a form of interactive and collaborative storytelling. Like novels or films, role-playing games appeal because they engage the imagination. Interactivity is the crucial difference between role-playing games and traditional fiction. Whereas a viewer of a television show is a passive observer, a player at a roleplaying game makes choices that propel the action. Such role-playing games extend an older tradition of storytelling games where a small party of friends collaborates on a unique adventure.

While simple forms of roleplaying exist in traditional children's games such as "cops and robbers", "cowboys and Indians" and "playing house", role-playing games add a level of sophistication and persistence to this basic idea. Instead, participants in a roleplaying game will generate specific characters and an ongoing plot. A consistent system of rules and realistic campaign setting in games aids suspension of disbelief. The level of realism in games ranges from just enough internal consistency to set up a believable story or credible challenge to full-blown simulations of real-world processes. Or in a freeform role-playing game, players may do anything they wish within self-realized boundaries.

Computer games incorporating settings and game mechanics found in roleplaying games are referred to as computer role-playing games, or CRPGs. Due to the popularity of CRPGs, the terms "role-playing game" and "RPG" have both to some degree been co-opted by the computer gaming industry; as a result, traditional non-digital pastimes of this sort are increasingly being referred to as "pen and paper" or "tabletop" role-playing games, though neither pen and paper nor a table are strictly necessary.

History

The assumption of roles was a central theme in some early 20th century activities such as the game Jury Box, mock trials, model legislatures, and "Theatre Games". In the 1960s, historical reenactment groups such as The Sealed Knot and the Society for Creative Anachronism began to perform "creative history" reenactments introducing fantasy elements, and in the 1970s fantasy wargames were developed, inspired by sword and sorcery fiction, in which each player controlled only a single unit, or "character". The earlier role-playing tradition was combined with the wargames' rule-based character representation to form the first role-playing games.

Read more at Wikipedia.org