Focus On: Roleplaying Games

Its only taken me four months, but here is the second of my Focus On series of blog posts, this time on roleplaying games.

Four Commedia dell’Arte Figures: Three Gentlemen and

Pierrot by Claude Gillot

The basic concept of roleplaying games, that of taking the role of a character and acting out or describing their activities is as old as human civilisation. From the games of Cowboys and Indians played by children all over the world to the improvisation theatre of Commedia dell'arte, roleplaying has ubiquitous to society for centuries (possibly even millenia).

The first publication of what we would now term a roleplaying game was Dungeons and Dragons by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in the mid 70's. D&D had developed from earlier fantasy wargames Chainmail and Blackmoor with the focus moving from battles between armies to playing individual characters carrying out heroic quests. Soon after the publication of D&D a whole range of other games were published including Runqeuest and the Sci-Fi game Traveller, both of which are still have an avid following.

Since then the number of roleplaying games has expanded considerably, the website rpggeek.com lists a total of 4649 different RPGs written by 26,681 games designers. Conventions are held all across the UK including three run just a stones throw from Bournemouth, these being Conception, Consequences and Indiecon - all run at Naish Farm holiday park. RPGs cover pretty much every genre you can imagine from the high fantasy of Lord of the Rings to gritty low fantasy Saxon history, the space westerns of Firefly to the dystopian future of SLA Industries. There are also plenty of games firmly set in the real world ranging across all era's of history. There are horror games, investigative games, heroic games, political games, comedy games... you name it there probably is a roleplay game for it.

Players in roleplaying games typically take on the role of one character and act out or describe their actions in response to the situaton that is described or acted by the games master. The games master, or GM, plays all of the non player characters, writes the story that the players will be interacting with and often acts as an arbiter or referee in the game. GMs are called by a variety of names that often make reference to the specific part they will play in the game, from Dungeon Masters in D&D, Storytellers in Vampire to Marshalls in Deadlands. In most games whether a characters actions are successful or not are decided by comparing some form or random element (commonly dice or cards) against a set of characteristics or test difficulties. Some games dispense with these mechanisms entirely but these are in the minority.

Roleplaying is just one of a variety of narrative games and storytelling activities. I have already discussed some of the similarities and differences between roleplaying and other storytelling activities in this post. As described in that post, these narrative games tie in particularly well with the traditional focus of libraries.

In the next Focus On post I'll talk about live roleplay.