Hey all, I'm trying to compile a list of resources for my psychology professor on what is roleplaying. I'd like to approach it from the aspect of what the goals are, what do you do, and the like, from a fairly descriptive point of view that a non-gamer would understand. If possible, something LARPish would also be awesome. Thanks.
Resources: "What is roleplaying"
- Thread starter Dinkeldog
- Start date
EricNoah
Adventurer
I wrote this when I was doing a reference/research assignment in library school (note my references to TSR -- you can tell how long ago this was!)
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What is Fantasy* Role-Playing?
By Eric Noah
Since not everyone knows what role-playing games are about, here's a brief explanation, complete with some of the role-playing "lingo" that might be encountered.
At least two people are needed to play a role-playing game. A role-playing game can be thought of as an intricate "let's pretend" session with rules. One person is the referee or game master. This person is in charge of the game, the one who enforces the rules and decides what happens next. The other people are players. The players are the ones pretending to be the characters in the game. Each player plays the role of one character; the referee is in charge of the rest of the world: the weather, the land, and every person, animal or monster that the characters encounter. The rules help the referee determine what happens next, what the weather might be like, what encounters take place, etc.
Here's an example: Barry is the referee, and the players are Sandy and Dave. Sandy is playing the role of Shantha the Wizard, and Dave is portraying Dohm the Warrior. Using the rules, Barry has helped Dave and Sandy determine some basic information about their characters. Dave's character, Dohm the Warrior, is strong, skilled with the crossbow, and a good singer. Sandy's character, Shantha the Wizard, is also strong, especially intelligent, and knows a magic spell that causes others to instantly fall asleep.
Like the author of a fantasy story, the referee must decide basic facts of the setting of the fantasy game. Barry has decided that the characters will start out in Waterdeep, a city on the coast of a sub-arctic ocean. He also decides that an evil tribe of goblins has recently attacked a caravan and has taken prisoners. Barry uses published gaming materials to help him with the details of what goblins look and act like, how strong they are, and so forth. He also uses published materials about Waterdeep, because designing a whole city from scratch can be time-consuming. After making some notes about the goblins (where their hideout is, what prisoners they have, how they will react when someone comes looking for the prisoners, etc.), Barry is ready to start the game.
Role-playing games are, at their most basic, exercises in communication and problem-solving. Barry starts off by telling Sandy and Dave that their characters are in a tavern in the City of Waterdeep, when they overhear someone talking about the goblin raid. At this point, the players can have their players do literally anything. Shantha and Dohm could (at the whim of their players, Sandy and Dave) ignore the gossip, leave the tavern and get on the first ship out of town. (Barry, as the referee, gets to decide where the ships are going.) They could ask the bartender for more information. (Barry decides what the bartender knows.) Shantha could use her spell on Dohm and make him fall asleep. (Barry, using the rules about magic, determines if Dohm does, in fact, fall asleep.) The referee hopes the players will take the bait (the gossip about the goblins), but he has no control over what they decide to do. On the other hand, the players don't have control over anything but their own characters' actions, and sometimes the referee or the rules will determine if the characters are successful at whatever they try.
So what do Dohm and Shantha do? Maybe they track down the goblin lair and rescue the prisoners. Maybe they convince a rival goblin tribe to do the job for them. Maybe they ignore the whole thing. The combination of the rules, the referee's desires, some randomness generated by rolling dice, and the choices of the players will determine the final outcome.
An adventure is a story played out by the referee and the players. The story of how Dohm and Shantha defeat the goblins and rescue the prisoners is an adventure. A gaming session is the two or three hours spent playing. It might take several gaming sessions to play out one adventure. Over the course of several adventures, the character get to be better fighters, wizards, or whatever (the rules delineate how this takes place). But the game goes on and on until the character dies or the player is tired of the current character. And even then, a player could start up another character and begin anew. A series of adventures played with the same characters is known as a campaign.
The job of referee is an enormous task, and this is where the published gaming materials come in. Published materials are generally either core rules (the basics of the game) or supplementary materials. These supplements are what keeps the game evolving and growing. TSR, for example, puts out five to ten new supplementary products for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game every month. Supplements are "optional rules" that include things like pre-generated cities (so the referee doesn't have to decide what's around every corner or in every building), pre-generated adventures (complete with allies and enemies, story-lines, maps and so on), and more detailed rules on character options (Shantha might be a wizard, but what kind of a wizard is she? What neat new spells could she learn to cast?). There is a lot of this supplementary material out there, and only a real collector would try to purchase them all, even for one brand of role-playing game.
A popular alternative to buying lots of supplementary materials is to create home-made materials (and in fact some game masters will insist that this is the only way to go). The core rules are extensive enough to provide the necessary basis for new rules as created by the referee.
New players can be easily overwhelmed by so many new terms and a totally foreign way of "playing a game," but it doesn't take long to become conversant in the lingo and comfortable with playing this complex version of "let's pretend." And even people who don't play at all are capable of understanding what this "mysterious" game is all about, if someone takes the time to explain.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Fantasy refers to the swords-and-sorcery genre of literature, which has sprung from the tradition of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books. There are role-playing games not about fantasy -- there are science fiction role-playing games, Old West role-playing games, spy role-playing games (think "James Bond"), and so forth.
-------
What is Fantasy* Role-Playing?
By Eric Noah
Since not everyone knows what role-playing games are about, here's a brief explanation, complete with some of the role-playing "lingo" that might be encountered.
At least two people are needed to play a role-playing game. A role-playing game can be thought of as an intricate "let's pretend" session with rules. One person is the referee or game master. This person is in charge of the game, the one who enforces the rules and decides what happens next. The other people are players. The players are the ones pretending to be the characters in the game. Each player plays the role of one character; the referee is in charge of the rest of the world: the weather, the land, and every person, animal or monster that the characters encounter. The rules help the referee determine what happens next, what the weather might be like, what encounters take place, etc.
Here's an example: Barry is the referee, and the players are Sandy and Dave. Sandy is playing the role of Shantha the Wizard, and Dave is portraying Dohm the Warrior. Using the rules, Barry has helped Dave and Sandy determine some basic information about their characters. Dave's character, Dohm the Warrior, is strong, skilled with the crossbow, and a good singer. Sandy's character, Shantha the Wizard, is also strong, especially intelligent, and knows a magic spell that causes others to instantly fall asleep.
Like the author of a fantasy story, the referee must decide basic facts of the setting of the fantasy game. Barry has decided that the characters will start out in Waterdeep, a city on the coast of a sub-arctic ocean. He also decides that an evil tribe of goblins has recently attacked a caravan and has taken prisoners. Barry uses published gaming materials to help him with the details of what goblins look and act like, how strong they are, and so forth. He also uses published materials about Waterdeep, because designing a whole city from scratch can be time-consuming. After making some notes about the goblins (where their hideout is, what prisoners they have, how they will react when someone comes looking for the prisoners, etc.), Barry is ready to start the game.
Role-playing games are, at their most basic, exercises in communication and problem-solving. Barry starts off by telling Sandy and Dave that their characters are in a tavern in the City of Waterdeep, when they overhear someone talking about the goblin raid. At this point, the players can have their players do literally anything. Shantha and Dohm could (at the whim of their players, Sandy and Dave) ignore the gossip, leave the tavern and get on the first ship out of town. (Barry, as the referee, gets to decide where the ships are going.) They could ask the bartender for more information. (Barry decides what the bartender knows.) Shantha could use her spell on Dohm and make him fall asleep. (Barry, using the rules about magic, determines if Dohm does, in fact, fall asleep.) The referee hopes the players will take the bait (the gossip about the goblins), but he has no control over what they decide to do. On the other hand, the players don't have control over anything but their own characters' actions, and sometimes the referee or the rules will determine if the characters are successful at whatever they try.
So what do Dohm and Shantha do? Maybe they track down the goblin lair and rescue the prisoners. Maybe they convince a rival goblin tribe to do the job for them. Maybe they ignore the whole thing. The combination of the rules, the referee's desires, some randomness generated by rolling dice, and the choices of the players will determine the final outcome.
An adventure is a story played out by the referee and the players. The story of how Dohm and Shantha defeat the goblins and rescue the prisoners is an adventure. A gaming session is the two or three hours spent playing. It might take several gaming sessions to play out one adventure. Over the course of several adventures, the character get to be better fighters, wizards, or whatever (the rules delineate how this takes place). But the game goes on and on until the character dies or the player is tired of the current character. And even then, a player could start up another character and begin anew. A series of adventures played with the same characters is known as a campaign.
The job of referee is an enormous task, and this is where the published gaming materials come in. Published materials are generally either core rules (the basics of the game) or supplementary materials. These supplements are what keeps the game evolving and growing. TSR, for example, puts out five to ten new supplementary products for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game every month. Supplements are "optional rules" that include things like pre-generated cities (so the referee doesn't have to decide what's around every corner or in every building), pre-generated adventures (complete with allies and enemies, story-lines, maps and so on), and more detailed rules on character options (Shantha might be a wizard, but what kind of a wizard is she? What neat new spells could she learn to cast?). There is a lot of this supplementary material out there, and only a real collector would try to purchase them all, even for one brand of role-playing game.
A popular alternative to buying lots of supplementary materials is to create home-made materials (and in fact some game masters will insist that this is the only way to go). The core rules are extensive enough to provide the necessary basis for new rules as created by the referee.
New players can be easily overwhelmed by so many new terms and a totally foreign way of "playing a game," but it doesn't take long to become conversant in the lingo and comfortable with playing this complex version of "let's pretend." And even people who don't play at all are capable of understanding what this "mysterious" game is all about, if someone takes the time to explain.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Fantasy refers to the swords-and-sorcery genre of literature, which has sprung from the tradition of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books. There are role-playing games not about fantasy -- there are science fiction role-playing games, Old West role-playing games, spy role-playing games (think "James Bond"), and so forth.
johnsemlak
First Post
Whole heartedly agree. That's what I tell people roleplaying is .
But I think there are different ways of looking at that. We could also say that roleplaying is, at its most basic level, a variation of a wargame in which you play a group of heroes who kill monsters.
I don't think there needs to me so much attention to RPG supplements in a basic definition of roleplaying. RPGs could in theroy be played with no RPG products at all.
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johnsemlak said:
Just so. A lot of things are exerecises in problem-solving and communication, but aren't role-playing games. For example, an undergraduate maths exam is an exercise in problem-solving and communication, and so is a career as an engineer or a physician. So even though an RPG is an exercise in problem-solving and communication, that statement isn't narrow enough to serve as a definition.
EricNoah
Adventurer
johnsemlak said:
Ah, but in this context I had to justify why there is a published body of work about this topic (because the focus of the main project was to explore non-standard reference tools & techniques such as talking to experts, accessing printed materials published by small companies or individuals, things like that).
The "kernel of truth" in that essay I quoted, in my opinion, is:
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DaveStebbins
First Post
To me, roleplaying closely mimics the social atmosphere of what used to called 'poker night' but is more commonly called 'game night' by people these days. It is a group of people, usually friends, getting together to socialize and have fun playing a game.
What it is that specifically sets RPGs apart from poker or board games falls into several categories. RPGs combine the immersive story element of books and movies with the first person active involvement of games and the cooperative nature of team sports (instead of the competitive, cut-throat nature of most games, where one person wins and everyone else loses). Throw in the progressive nature of the game (characters and challenges grow more powerful, so every game night isn't the same old thing), and the chance for recurring NPCs and/or villians (which I guess is just a part of the story element, but it makes comic books and soap operas addictive for many people), and you have compiled a very satisfying and addictive past-time.
I could expand endlessly on any of the points above, but my aim in this post was for brevity.
-Dave
What it is that specifically sets RPGs apart from poker or board games falls into several categories. RPGs combine the immersive story element of books and movies with the first person active involvement of games and the cooperative nature of team sports (instead of the competitive, cut-throat nature of most games, where one person wins and everyone else loses). Throw in the progressive nature of the game (characters and challenges grow more powerful, so every game night isn't the same old thing), and the chance for recurring NPCs and/or villians (which I guess is just a part of the story element, but it makes comic books and soap operas addictive for many people), and you have compiled a very satisfying and addictive past-time.
I could expand endlessly on any of the points above, but my aim in this post was for brevity.
-Dave
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