What is an RPG?
“Traditional games are restricted and restrictive. RPGs are expansive.” — Alan Kellogg
An RPG is a game where the players play an individual role, and the game master plays the role of everything else.
This role is most often two-fold:
The first role played, and usually the easier to understand, is the character's class and it's role as a member of an adventuring party.
The second role played, and the more difficult, is the role of the character as himself, as someone who has a mind different from the player who plays him.
A character can have more than the two roles stated above. Depending on how advanced the game style is of a given group, a character can have several more roles, including: father, knight of the empire, healer of short people, or even semi-famous artist.
See Also
Links
RPG Theory
- Role-playing game theory
- RPG Theory Primer
- On RPG Theory
- Theory 101: System and the Shared Imagined Space
- Elements: Layers of Design
- Whitehall Series