In fact the most common useage of the term 'roleplaying' in modern Britain is as a form of social instruction for both children and adults. A child with behavioural problems might be asked to roleplay through a potentially violent situation as a method of anger management; an adult suffering from stress might be led through a roleplay session by a therapist to find a way of avoiding stressful situations. This type of activity, however, has little in common with the roleplaying games that form the focus of this discussion. The roleplaying games described here are a form of entertainment that have been going strong since the mid-1970s and might be more usefully described (to differentiate them from more established uses of the word 'roleplay') as table-top roleplaying games. This acknowledges that a typical roleplaying game involves a small number of players seated around a table.
This book explains what roleplaying games are, where to buy them and how to play them. It describes what their educational benefits are, and highlights a number of potential problems and pitfalls. A number of resources can also be found within the book, including a full set of easy-to-learn roleplaying rules, a host of web-links, an assessment of some of the most popular roleplaying games on the market today, and a glossary of terminology.
What Are Roleplaying Games?
So what are roleplaying games? Everyone, at some time or other, has had the desire to get away from it all, to vicariously experience new and exotic places, meet colourful characters and become embroiled in fabulous and romantic adventures. Until recently, the only way to do this was to pick up a novel, spend a night at the movies, or in front of the T.V. But the experiences aren’t yours, and the hero’s actions are determined by the writer and it can be frustrating to watch him or her blunder through the story. How much more enjoyable it would be if we could create our own hero and be responsible for his or her actions.
An entire genre of computer games has emerged to fuel this desire and these games have proved remarkably popular. They feature established characters (with names and sometimes personalities) that can be guided through a carefully written interactive story. As liberating as this form of entertainment can be, the player is still inside an established setting following a pre-written story (albeit one with a number of variations, lines of investigation and possible endings), and in the end he or she is still just manipulating the actions of a two dimensional computer character (that's two-dimensional in both sense of the word...)
Table-top roleplaying comes much closer to meeting this need for freedom and imagination. It also has the added bonus that it is a purely social form of entertainment and must be played with a group of friends. Unlike computer roleplaying games, one cannot play a table-top roleplaying game alone. Participants don't sit passively absorbing pre-written stories about pre-established characters. They roleplay, creating their own hero, deciding his or her fate and living a life of high adventure.
Roleplaying games were initially born out of a desire for a more personal level of wargaming. Wargaming has been around for centuries as both a hobby and a tool with which to teach soldiers the tactics of warfare. In a wargame each player controls an army and using a well defined set of rules and a few dice to add random variability, pits it against the army of the opposing player. There is a winner, a loser and rarely any need for a referee.
In 1973, two American wargamers, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson developed a revolutionary type of wargame that no established wargaming company would consider publishing. It not only introduced fantasy elements such as wizards, dragons and dwarves into gaming, but also allowed players to control the actions of single individuals rather than large units of soldiers. The newly established company, Tactical Studies Rules (TSR), brought out the game the following year as Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) a game of warriors and wizards fighting evil monsters in a world unashamedly influenced by the fantasy novels of Jack Vance, Fritz Leiber and J.R.R. Tolkein. The game was an immediate success at wargaming conventions and on university campuses, and within a couple of years other companies were offering their own 'roleplaying games' (as these one-on-one games had become known) for sale. The first rivals to D&D were Runequest which allowed players to explore the wonderful fantasy world of Glorantha, and Traveller which became the first science fiction RPG. Both were big hits with the growing numbers of roleplayers in the U.S. and Britain.
Dungeons and Dragons had paved the way for many more roleplaying games to reach the public, but none have yet earned the extraordinary popularity of the original. Indeed, most people outside of the hobby have heard of no other game. Many assume D&D is the hobby. Today, nothing could be more misleading; over one-hundred mainstream roleplaying games (RPGs) are published by over twenty established games companies. Every university campus has a roleplaying club, and plenty of people have at least heard about them (or their progenitor, D&D).
How Do They Work?
Roleplaying games are unlike most other games that you can buy in the shops. Players create fictional characters using rules provided in the game. These characters continue from one game to another in a series of linked stories (called 'adventures', or 'scenarios') with the players responsible for controlling the actions of their characters. These fictional personae are the heroes of the stories.
The game is controlled by one player (called the referee or game-master) who does not have a character of his own. Instead he creates a plot guide that he leaves unfinished. It is the job of the game-master (GM) to keep the adventure moving and to make decisions about the rules and how they affect the player characters (PCs). The game essentially involves finishing the plot. The players describe to the referee what the heroes do, and he responds by describing the results of their actions. No board is used. The story takes place in the imaginations of the people playing, and the game is conducted as a conversation between those involved.
Because the adventure is “narrated” by the game-master and the players, things can be done that are far too expensive or dangerous to contemplate in the real world. Gun fights, car crashes and bank robberies hold no danger for the players, for example, only their characters! In many games, in fact, the background allows you to leave the real world altogether and journey through a fantasy or science fiction universe. Perhaps the greatest appeal of RPGs is that players don’t compete. The game-master administers the adventure in the most entertaining manner, just as a scriptwriter puts the heroes in exciting situations, and, again like the scriptwriter, puts plenty of clues and opportunities in the game so that the players may work their way to the end of the game.
The aim of every player is to have fun by trying to get your character to achieve the aims of the adventure with the other players. They work as a team, sharing information and allowing their characters to help one another. The only way to “lose” is to fail the objectives of the plot (rescue the princess, capture the gangsters, discover the identity of the murderer, etc.) or get your character killed! When the latter occurs, the player must create a new character and this new hero joins the surviving characters for the next adventure...
Most people that have had no contact with the roleplaying hobby have tremendous difficulty in visualising a game without a board, counters, a winner or a loser; but when faced with a game in-play they will invariably find it the easiest game in the world to play. This is because only the game-master is required to know the rules.
A typical start to a roleplaying game is described below, and illustrates the radical differences between these and traditional boardgames. One of the players (who will be the game-master) has a copy of the rulebook and wants to run a game. He has read through the rules and written a short scenario for the setting. He invites some friends over and helps them to create fictional heroes suitable for the scenario he has in mind. The details of each character are written down on paper in front of the player responsible for it.
Talking to the players as if they were their new characters, the referee tells them how they are approached by a young friend of theirs who is in distress. Her father, who was herding goats up by the (reputedly haunted) caves on the hill, has gone missing, and the family have been unable to locate him. Will the characters go and take a look around the caves and see if the supposed hauntings have anything to do with the father’s disappearance? The players (speaking for their characters) agree and work out a plan of action. One of the PCs will go to the village headman to ask for more information about the rumours, another will buy equipment that might be needed, and the rest carry out a search of the hill-side for tracks or other clues. Checking with his scenario notes, the game-master gives them some of the information they are looking for, but always keeps some in reserve until the end. When the players are ready, they decide to go deep into the caves and search them thoroughly and when their characters see the creatures within, he will describe them to the players who can try to defeat the monsters responsible...
Most people that have had no contact with the roleplaying hobby have tremendous difficulty in visualising a game without a board, counters, a winner or a loser; but when faced with a game in-play they will invariably find it the easiest game in the world to play. This is because only the referee is required to know the rules.