Embedded Files
What Is a Roleplaying Game?
Believe it or not, you probably have played a roleplaying game before, most likely when you very young, and you didn't even know it. If you've ever done anything where you pretended to be Cops and Robbers, campers surviving in the wilderness, Princes and Princesses, or anyone else when you "played pretend", you were effectively playing a roleplaying game. That's because at its core, a role playing game is just that: one where you play a role. That role might be a dragon-slaying hero, a brave firefighter, or an attendee at a fancy tea party. Either way, you were pretending to be something and playing by a special set of rules that helped make that make-believe become a reality for just a little bit.
Tabletop roleplaying games (RPG's or TRPG's) are essentially just that, only with a lot more guidelines and development (and hopefully more maturity, although not always) than the games you may have played when in your childhood. They are games in which the players assume roles, building a character and pretending to be that character in every way. If you are the infamous smuggler Jahn Solitaire, then you act mischievous, sling about witty one-liners, and become a general scoundrel just like your character Jahn Solitaire. When you play the game, your actions aren't that of the economics student, the physics post-grad, or the film critic you may be in real life. They are that of your character. The real you might be kind, nice, and thoughtful, but Jahn Solitaire plays hard and plays dirty, so that's how you play your character.
Okay, so we've established that RPG's are like make-believe. So what? What makes them so different from the little games you played as a kid? Well first off, they generally have a lot more systems and rules to outline how the game is played, adding at least a bit of logic and continuity that may have been absent in your kindergarten escapades. They also are all played out in your mind and imagination, with maybe some pen, paper, boards, tokens, and figurines acting as props, but in the end it's all in your head. The game is a lot more organized, thought out, and hopefully more interesting and developed than what you've played in the past.
So How Do These Games Actually Play?
Tabletop roleplaying games are a little bit like a mix of theater, board/video games, and books. The players are all characters within a story, only instead of having the story all pre-written out as a script, the characters are free to do what they wish. They can choose how the story goes, directing the characters actions to shape the world around them.
Have you ever had a moment while reading a book or watching a movie where you felt like screaming at a protagonist because you would have done something differently? When you play a roleplaying game, you finally get to control that character and make them behave just as you wanted them to.
The Game Master
That behavior is within certain limits however. Most roleplaying games have what they call a Game Master (or "GM" for short). The GM acts as the narrator of the story, playing the same role that a script would in a movie, a computer would in a video game, and a rulebook would in a board game. You can think of the GM as narrating a story to the players, and as the story is being told, the players interrupt by telling the GM what their characters do, and the GM adjusts the story accordingly.
For instance, the GM might describe a bar brawl breaking out in a galaxy far far away. The players might decide to intervene, breaking up the fight and mediating the conflict because they just want to be nice people. Or they don't give a darn about being nice, and leap straight in with their fisticuffs at ready to bloody a few noses. Maybe they choose to keep their heads down, because they know the commotion might draw Imperial Guards, and they don't want to mess with Guardsmen when they themselves are on the run from the Empire.
The almighty Game Master
Your Game Master might look more like this...
The Game Master is generally responsible for coming up with the outline of a story, creating plot lines and plot hooks, setting up chances for the players to engage in daring rescues, pitched battles, silver-tongued bargaining, outrageous bluffs, and diplomatic tussles. It is with the Game Master's storytelling that the players are slowly drawn into and immersed in a world different from the table at which they sit, sucked into all their character's dreams, follies, ambitions, and flaws.
...But this is what's going in everyone's head
No Really, How Are These Games Actually Played?
Okay, we still haven't described exactly how these games are played beyond the fact that everyone plays a character and a Game Master tells the story in which these characters play. There's only so much that can be said about how these games are actually played, because it depends on what game system you are playing with (Dungeons & Dragons, FATE, Shadowrun, Call of Cthulu, d20 Modern, etc). However, we can give a few examples using the most popular and well-known RPG, Dungeons & Dragons.
The Character Sheet
In Dungeons & Dragons, a character is defined by more than just the player's words. They have a character sheet (this is also the case for most game systems) that define many of the characters abilities and attributes. They'll have different numbers that represent a character's strength, intelligence, ability to jump, lie, or to find out what berries taste good, which ones give bad diarrhea, which ones kill you, or which ones taste good, give bad diarrhea, and then kills you.
What these numbers do is limit a character's ability to act within a game, along with defining their skills. It would be a boring story if everyone was awesome at everything and there was never a challenge. It becomes a lot more interesting when you can only be good at a few things, while you need to rely on friends for other things. For instance, you might not be good at fighting, but one of your friends in the game is great at it. On the other hand, you're really good at making sure she doesn't accidentally eat those diarrhea berries.
In other words, what your character sheet does is help define your role. Within the group of people you play with, you might have someone really good at bashing in skulls, someone great at patching up bashed-in skulls, someone good at stealing things while people are distracted by skull-bashing, and someone good at convincing people to not get to the skull-bashing phase in the first place.
The Dice!
In addition to a character sheet, a character's actions are decided by a bit of luck as well. It would be boring to have everything be known and decided by static numbers, so dice are rolled to add a little excitement. This way, someone can mistakenly screw up something really simple like climbing a ladder, and someone can against all odds pull off an amazing feat like catching the wallet of the person falling off the ladder despite being the clumsiest person in the universe.
In D&D, dice are generally only rolled for things that the character might not be able to accomplish. You don't need to roll dice every time you breathe, take a step, or indeed, climb a ladder. However, you might need to roll to hold your breath while trapped underwater, to take a step on a precarious bridge that looms over a gaping chasm, or to climb a ladder while an angry person is chasing you to get the wallet you just stole from them.
Roll high enough a number (combined with bonuses and penalties from your character sheet), and you succeed in your action. Roll too low...well, I hope your character has good insurance coverage (at least in the scenarios above).
Altogether then, that's the general framework of how the game works. The GM tells an ongoing story in which the players tell their characters to do whatever it they wish, occasionally rolling dice to see whether what they want to happen actually happens or not. The players might go save villages, kill dragons, ride dragons, burn villages, steal from the rich and give to the poor, or just steal from everyone and give to themselves. In the end, the great thing about roleplaying games is that it's all up to you on how you want to play and what you want to do!
Examples of some different roleplaying game systems
A D&D 3.5 Edition character sheet
Dice. Pretty dice.
They really can be such fickle pieces of plastic
So What Now?
So you've learned about RPG's, and hopefully gotten a general gist of what they are and how they play. Even more hopefully, this has gotten you interested in them and looking to play them! Luckily for you, you are in one of the best places to be in case you're wondering what to do next.
If you want to try out an RPG without committing to a full on campaign, drop by one of our clubs one-shot nights and hop on in a one-shot! (That is, a play session that is just played once, as compared to a campaign that takes place over multiple play sessions). Or if you want to get more comfortable with the whole role-playing idea first, you could even look into attending one of our character building workshops where we will teach you how to make characters, along with having people teach some quick tips on acting and improvisation.
Maybe you'd like to look into hopping into a group right away. Drop by our forums, our Facebook group, or any of our meetings and start meeting people to start up or join a gaming group! If there are openings, you can also check out the GM roster.
Finally, if you just want to at least see how this whole role-playing thing actually plays in action all from the safety of your computer, we have some videos for you as well!
HarmonQuest is an American adult animation/live improvisation television show created by Dan Harmon. The show is part animated, part live action. Dan Harmon and comedians Erin McGathy, Jeff B. Davis, along with game master Spencer Crittenden, perform a fantasy roleplaying campaign in front of a live audience. Each episode of the show also features a special guest player. (Description from Wikipedia).
This one's a little bit silly and awkward, just like it's trying to be since it's all live improvisation. Hopefully it can give a quick and descriptive look into how RPG's play with some animations helping you visualize what people are seeing!
Critical Role is a YouTube series in which Matthew Mercer game masters a crew of fellow voice actors on a series of epic adventures. As everyone on the show is a professional voice actor, it's a good example of how roleplaying games can really look with everyone acting in character and all. This video is a bit long so no one's expecting you to sit through all three hours of it, but skim through if you're curious about how the pros do it.
Page updated
Report abuse