Role Playing Games

      What is a role playing game?   I always find it necessary to explain to others what a role playing game is.   In some ways, role playing games are nothing more than an extension of make believe.   When we play make believe, we pretend that someone or something is happening.   This could be something as simple as a conversation.  Now imagine that another person is playing that imaginary person.   How would you interact with that person?   What would you say?  What would you do?   This is one of the basis of role playing, but role playing would not have caught on if we were playing ourselves in ordinary situations.   When playing role playing games, we usually play within the context of of a setting.   Is it a fantasy setting or a science fiction setting?  Are we playing ourselves, or are we playing a fictitious person.   These are important aspects of really role playing.

      So basically role playing is playing a hero (referred to as a character) in a setting.   But how do you the characters interact?  How much can a character lift?   How skilled is the character?   How intelligent is the character?  The factors need to be taken into account within a context.   The context is usually the rules or the system that defines the character and provides a method for the characters to interact.  First we start with the physical statistics.   Take something like strength.   How strong is a person?   How do we define this in game terms.   First we assign a number or setting to strength.   To do this we need to define a set of standards for the game.   For example a 1 might be the lowest, while a 10 is the highest.   The 1 would represent someone who is extremely weak while the 10 would represent someone who is really strong.   We could do the same thing for all of the other things which represents a character.   Skills could be given a value (say 1-10) which represents the degree of skill, etc.

      Once this is done, we need a way to make these statistics mean something in the game.   Usually this is done through a medium of chance.   Usually this means that a die is rolled and is modified by the character's skills or statistics in the game.   The rational for this is that it is possible for someone to get lucky, but those people who are more skilled have a better chance of success.   Each role playing game has it's own system for interactions within the game.

      Each game will have to do more than provide a method of interaction though.   It will have to provide the setting, the theme, a story, the abilities a person may have, the technology (or lack therof) that the characters will have.   Bringing together all of these elements is the job of both the game master (one who runs the game) and the players alike.

      I hope this provides a clearer understanding of what role playing games are and what is involved in the process.   It can be a richly rewarding process to see both a story and a character grow and change over an extended period of time.   It is a way to get involved the story that is more exciting that just living the story vicariously through a television.   I hope you enjoy your role playing experience.  Remember that role playing games are only limited by your imagination!

Copyright 1999 by Matthew Webster