RPG

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RPGs are traditional games, usually played with pens, paper and dice. RPGs have also migrated to the electronic form, creating CRPG games, but they are by and large relegated to /v/, unless they are based on an actual pen and paper game.

RPG History

Roleplaying games began their journey somewhere in the mists of history as simple storytelling and play pretend, evolving later through reenactments and "theatre games" but truly sprang into life in 1974 when Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson produced the Dungeons & Dragons game. At first D&D was just a way to play individual characters from the Chainmail fantasy wargame, but spawned an entire hobby that grew into different directions, producing a vast number of different games.

What are RPGs

Roleplaying could be best described as collective storytelling, and cowboys and indians with rules, preventing the "Pew pew! I shot you!" "No, I'm immortal!" syndrome (although most adults are supposedly mature enough not to pull shit like that). In other words, players gather round a table (or campfire or whatever floats your boat) and engage in producing a story, by taking on the role of protagonists or Characters within the game's world. One of the player takes the role of the Game Master who is not a protagonist but instead serves as the overall narrator, describing the world, events and non-player characters (antagonists, monsters, redshirts...) and their actions.

Roleplaying games take place in many different settings and use many different genres, with fantasy, science-fiction and horror being the prime examples. Some games provide only a system which can be used to play anything, others are designed and produced in a manner that heavily favours just one specific genre or setting.

Rollplayan vs Roleplayan

There has always been some controversy whether RPG means a rollplayan game or a roleplayan game. Both categorisations are muddy, so what follows is a general overview of the two and should never be taken as final or completly accurate.

The advocates of rollplayan insist that RPGs are, all in all, games and thusly throwing dice and numbers around is their central point of existence. Because nobody really finds moving numbers around and doing calculus fun in and of itself, the crunching usualy serves a purpose. Rollplayers are thus usually equated with hackanslashan, munchinism and optimisation. All of these views focus on the game's mechanic and creation of characters that use them to their best advantages or even exploit them. Why this is very unpopular with some people is because it operates under the assumption that the game must be somehow "won", while the contrary is precisely what largely separates RPGs from most other tabletop games. Rollplayers tend to regard the GM as a source of challenges or even an enemy they must defeat by creating the most efficient characters possible. A less extreme view just insists that rolling dice and crunching numbers is simply fun.

Roleplayers tend to put more emphasis on the narrative, and insist that the dice stay in the backstage, operating from behind the veil with minimal or no intrusion in the actual "story" being played. This is why they are often called dramafags. A popular distinction puts rollplayers in the D&D campus while roleplayers are supposed to be WoD players, goths, wannabe "deep" etc. Roleplayers are also often ridiculed for writing extensive backgrounds for their characters "no one ever reads" and for falling too deep into the whole 'play pretend' aspect of RPGs. This also puts them closer to LARPfags whom nobody likes (except scandinavian ones, that shit puts hair on your chest). As with the previous example, this view consists mostly of stereotypes and generalisations.

The truth is, as always, somewhere in the middle and there are always exceptions to the rules. Hardcore examplars of both sides can often ruin the fun for the rest of the people at the table either by propagation of their Mary Sue fantasies nobody is interested in or by creating characters that beat everything up before anyone else gets the chance to act. Neither side is able to see eye-to-eye with the other because they operate under different mindsets and arguments will not strike the right chords as they're hearing different frequencies.

GNS

A simmilar distribution has been proposed by the GNS (Gamist, Narrativist, Simulationist) theory which is not applied to gamers but the games themselves. GNS as a whole has been recently dismissed as bullshit by pretty much everyone; its individual categories can still be usefull for explaining some concepts however.

  • Gamist RPGS focus on the "game" aspect, they are closer to wargaming and boardgaming in the sense that the rules or mechanics itself take the spotlight. Like you don't play Monopoly to pretend that you're a capitalist shit, gamist RPGs don't care about "getting in character" or playing in a "believable world" and so on. There is no real "reason" why a knight in chess moves in an L-pattern, except that it makes for a tactical strenght or viability, horses don't really move that way. Gamism in RPGs is best suited for beer and pretzels games and simple hack and slash slaughterfests.
Example: The way Powers work in D&D 4E.
  • Narrativist games try to be quite the opposite. The storytelling and narration is the focus of the game and the mechanics are mostly or completely subdued to it. In Narrativism, you don't use a mechanical effect to perform an action, your action and its success tries to grow directly from your narration, while the rules just support this. Narrativist games usually don't ask themselves what would be the most realistic outcome or the most tactically viable, but what would be the most dramatic, story-propelling effect. If chess were narrativist, the kinght's piece would move depending on your descriptions of his actions and implication for the story, and not in a pre-set L motion.
Example: The conflict resolution in Dogs in the Vineyard.
  • Simulationist games try to "simulate" the workings and mechanics of a believable world, depending on the setting and genre conventions. Simulationism usually takes an emphasis on realism, but since most RPGs take place in fantasy or sci-fi worlds, "believable" is the more correct expression - a simulation of a superhero world is something different than a simulation of a real WW2 battlefield. Simulationism takes pain in attempting to resolve actions and events in a way that would be expected "in real life"; this is usually accomplished by numerous tables and random rolls. If chess were simulationist, the knight piece would move in a manner and direction decided by the player, but the end result (speed, direction, etc) would be determined by various factors such as abstract averages, circumstances (weight, size, terrain, exhaustion), randomizers (dice) and so on, seeking to evoke a "what would really happen" result.
Example: The GURPS system, combat in the Riddle of Steel RPG.

In reality most games feature a inseparable mixture of all these elements.

Take Note

Notable RPGs

Infamous RPGs

Notable Authors

Free RPGs

See Also

/tg/'s Homebrews

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