I usually do, so I wrote a blog about it. The full blog is over here grimtreegames.com/grimblog/?p=151, but I will put it in the post as well. Let me know what you think, any comments welcome.
"What is a roleplaying game?
It’s a hard thing to describe. Well, it’s hard to describe in such a way that does it justice, that will get across how good it is without actually sitting someone down and letting them play. This may be drastic, and not everyone may agree, but I believe that roleplaying games are one of the best forms of entertainment you could partake in, ever. It’s a bold statement so I will try to back it up.
Most people don’t know what the term ‘roleplaying game’ means, but chances are they have heard of Dungeons and Dragons. Then they will think of nerds in basements wearing wizards hats and move on.
Dungeons and Dragons is the best known mainly as it was the first, has been very successful, and has had other branches out in media, but there are many others. So just for now, put wizards hats and dragons out of your head. I will try and start with the concept.
Imagine you are in a room, you have no memory of how you got there. It’s dark, dank, with stone walls and a stone floor. It’s bare apart from a hole in the ceiling with a rope dangling from it down into the middle of the room. You think you can hear whispered voices coming from the hole above you. What do you do?
As soon as you think about that situation and how you would react, you are playing a roleplaying game, putting yourself in a role. What did you think? Did you pull on the rope? Did you listen harder at the voices? Did you wonder what equipment was on or around you that you could use?
Someone needs to answer these questions, that’s where a games master or dungeon master comes in, they have the details about the situation you are in and the info to fill in the blanks. Maybe you said you pull on the rope, the games master will know that the rope is fixed to a beam and is sturdy. He knows this as he is working from a story, or a script, with a start, middle and end. It’s his job to let the players know what is happening, what they can see and hear, and what happens based on their actions, and it’s his job to drive the story along. He will have either come up with this story himself or bought a published adventure that games companies produce.
Let’s say that we are in a fantasy setting and you are in the room as you were caught stealing from a noble man, he has taken matters into his own hands, knocked you out, and put you in his personal cells. You as the player won’t know this yet and the game master won’t tell you, but the games master will know as he knows the story. You will find out later as the plot unfolds and the games master reveals the story, like all good films and books, if it’s a good one there may be a twist or further intrigue.
Back to your current predicament, your stuck in the room. Let’s say you decide to pull the rope, the games master says the rope seems fixed to something sturdy. You want to climb it, but like all things in life there is a chance of failure and consequences of failure. This is where the rules come in. Different games have different rules and ways of resolving things, but the principle is the same. Your character will have statistics to say how strong you are, how intelligent you are, how dexterous you are, etc. You usually have to roll under or over your stat to succeed. Let’s say it’s based on strength as you have to pull yourself up the rope, the games master says you need to roll a 20 sided dice, you have good strength so you need to roll 5 or higher to do it. Good chance of rolling that and succeeding, if you have bad strength it might have been 15 or more. These kind of rules govern everything that the characters do that involves success and failure, that includes fighting and combat, of which there is generally a lot of. You are playing brave adventurous heroes after all!
In a nutshell that’s a roleplaying game. What is hard to put into words is the feeling of being in your favourite book or movie, and being able to do whatever you want and having a story unfold with you in it, shaping it. Part of the job of a games master is to improvise if the story doesn’t follow the planned path, that’s when the magic happens and the players and GM are bouncing off each other creating the story as they go.
As people get more into the game they become attached to the characters they are playing. They dream up back-storys, develop catch phrases, give the characters traits and flaws. Then when playing they role-play this character, the other players role-play there’s and suddenly made up personalities are having in-depth conversations about potentially life and death situations. Do we trust the noble to pardon us if we complete this dangerous task he has asked us to do in exchange for a pardon? The player that has decided his character is a rash and bad mouthed dwarf and will have probably chimed in straight away, telling him to stick his pardons where the sun doesn’t shine. A good games master wouldn’t punish this, he would go with it as it’s fun and good roleplaying, especially when the other characters would probably do their best to shut the dwarf up. The games master at this point knows where he want the story to go, but right now anything could happen. The games master has decided the Noble in this case is needs their help so will give the dwarf a chance to apologise, maybe making then a roll on a diplomacy type of skill. At that point a more diplomatic character might step forward and try to smooth it over.
That’s a primer. I play Dungeons and Dragons as I love the fantasy setting and it’s the daddy of all roleplaying games. However, any setting you can think of, horror, sci-fi, thriller, espionage, has a roleplayig system to it. Any film you have seen and thought, ‘I wouldn’t have done that! I would have done this!’ or ‘I would love to be in that setting making those choices’, there is more than likely a roleplaying system for it.
If that description sounded good and you wanted to get started, we have the starter game set for DnD over here www.grimtreegames.com/dungeons-dragons-f.... It will get you started on the path. Take the first step, you won’t regret it.
If you want any more info on getting started come and say hello on our forums, I will be happy to point you in the right direction or run a demo for you at a club night.
Thanks for reading, and good luck!"
Cheers guys, let me know what you think
One player is the narrator, who discribes the situation. All other players control the choices and actions of specific characters of the story, who, working together, interact with the narrative to guide it toward an acceptable resolution.
Usually by slaughtering monsters.
On a more serious note, it's a combination of cooperative story telling and improvisational theater that evolved from historical miniatures wargames and has rules and a referee with dice rolling to add an element of chance to it. If you watch people play you'll see it's nothing mysterious - just a bunch of people sitting around a table rolling dice, talking smack, drinking beers; it's like a video game except you do it on paper with a gameboard and playing pieces and it's more fun because you can do anything you want, unlimited by the computer.
Most people I know who don't play at least know what it is, even if they don't know exactly how it works. Usually the only time I discuss it with non players is when it just happens to come up in conversation and they are curious to know more about it. Generally, if they're the kind of folks who aren't interested in RPGs, it never comes up, or if I happen to mention I'll be playing next week at a certain time, they just don't even pursue the topic. And in that case neither do I. After all, I'd have the same reaction if someone started talking about their favorite thing to do that I have no interest in whatsoever.
So I tend to find that if people are interested in it they will make it easy for you to explain. If they're not interested you could have the oratory skills of Winston Churchill and their eyes will still glaze over.
yesterday, my game was cancelled due to some people working late or being out of province. the cinnabuns i bought earlier would have gone to waste so when my flatmate came home, i extended the offer for them: "my D&D game was cancelled, so the cinnabuns on the counter are free to take" "cool, i'll grab one later" "'aight."
i then continued to watch TV and he proceeded to start the fermenting process for about 20 liters of apple juice.
they aren't gamers... like at all. so they don't have any interest in D&D. they know i hang out with my buddies on Mondays and Wednesdays and we play games, but other then that, they really don't care. if they have some sort of interest, they probably already know a bit about what an RPG is, since most people i know relate to videogames better, so i simply say "it's kinda like a videogame, only you have more control over the story & how your character interacts with it and the NPCs"
at this point i'll go into more details usually by giving basic examples if their interest hasn't waned:
"you know how in dragon warrior or fallout, those mountains serve as a barrier you simply can't go over?" "yeah?" "well in an RPG you can go over the mountain"
"you know how in most games where you're given an option it's usually [save orphans, kiss kittens] or [light orphanarium on fire via kitten molotovs, cackle maniacally]?" "yeah?" "well, in an RPG you decide how you're going to go about doing it... it allows for far more options on how to handle any give situation and the end results isn't usually set in stone"
"you know how in a game if you're fighting on a bridge fighting against waves of enemy soldiers, you have to kill them all?" "yeah?" "in an RPG, you can cut the rope. or burn it. fire seems to solve a lot of problems."
"basically, in a videogame you can only do what the programmers limited you to do, in an RPG you're pretty much free to do whatever you want as long as you can get the ref to allow you. the genres and topics are really up to each individual group to decide and the Ref/GameMaster sets up the scenarios"
essentially i try to use a frame of reference the person is familiar with and go from there. videogames is the easiest and most likely medium for most people, so i tend to use it most often otherwise i keep it simple and basic.
However, I'd also agree with those who mention they seldom have to explain what an RPG is to someone. Usually, the people whom I've explained tabletop RPGs to already have some experience in the form of videogame RPGs, or I'm explaining D&D concepts to someone who has experience with other PnP RPGs. Most often, other people don't really care enough to know beyond the fact that you go have a game day with your buddies, or that you have a "D&D night", or whatever. It doesn't really fall into their realm of interest, so they'll trypically just file it under "game" in terms of what they understand, and not question further.
As an example of this, I cite my mother and grandmother during the time I lived with them: when I'd come home from a "game day" with my friends, their typical inquiry would be "Who won the game?", to which I would have to say "It's not that sort of game," while knowing further explanation was actually falling on deaf ears. To them--even though I tried explaining that it wasn't so much a "game" as they conceived it, but rather a sort of controlled collaborative story-telling group event--it was simply filed as "game," which therefore assumed a winner and loser. It wasn't worth the effort to explain beyond "There aren't actual winners or losers in this game," and even that didn't always go through.
Also, on a removed note, just because I'm now curious...Oxybe, am I to presume, based on the mention of his beginning the fermentation of a large quantity of apple juice, that your flatmate makes some kind of homemade hard cider?
That is beyond awesome.i honestly wish i had a picture of that ludicrous steak he made. 4-5 cm thick, plate-sized steak, basted in about a quarter pound of butter with an entire clove of garlic and mushrooms upon mushrooms...
i don't think i ever ate such a delicious piece of meat that just melted off the bone.
it's been what... 2-3 months and i can still taste it and the spinach "salad" that was about as much bacon as it was spinach.
It's what I get out of table top that thousands of peopel get out of WOW. a social setting that lets us crack jokes, and get silly. My most memorable moments in gaming (both as runnign and as playing) are about moments at the table where we can't play anymore because we're all laughing too hard. Sometimes it's a flaw in the game, some ludicrous game element that just can't be hand waved away because it makes no sense. Some times it's the way that the bald, odd guy at the gaming convention sitting across the table keeps portratying his gnome which as comming on to the other two gnomes in the group (me and a friend) and his facial ...not t mention voice) are priceless. Some times it's realizing that the tree dwelling wookies make the best space navigation computers in the galaxy (seriously, wth?!?!).
Whenever some one asks me what RP is, I say it's a social activity. We get together, some tiems get inebriated, make pop culture references and generally have a great time.
Absolutely cooperative storrytelling is a big part, but it's just a framework with which for us to BS into. we'd do the same thing playing 13, Dominion, Miniature games, or even watching the Drak Knight. the big difference is that RP encourages interaction, in a non-competitive way. We are here together, to poke fun at the world that isn't real and sometimes just to laugh ourselves stupid for a while.
Not that anyone elses definitions are wrong. it is what it is to you. And don't let anyone tell you different. But for me, it's at it's best when the group can barely breath, choking on tears from the beat-boxing bard gnome. Killing a Kobold. With a hackysack. To the tune of it's a wonderful world. Sigh. Good times.