Role-playing game

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A Role-Playing Game (short RPG) is a game in which one plays the role of one or several characters (people), either verbally (traditional RPGs), in a computer or video game, or alone (LARP). Often the characters gain experience during the game, which makes them stronger.

[edit] Traditional RPGs

Role-Playing Game originally referred to pre-computer games (the most well-known of which is Dungeons and Dragons). In such games players assume the role of a fantasy character, and interact with an imaginary world that is created and represented by a Dungeon Master (short DM) or the equivalent. The DM describes the environment to the players, and plays the part of all the Non-Player Characters (NPCs) and monsters that the characters encounter, determining and communicating the NPCs'/monsters' reactions to the actions and words that the player chooses for his or her character.

The DM will also provide quests or tasks for the characters to complete. Characters usually have abilities and characterstics that limit their actions, such as strength or speed, and as the character completes the quests, he or she is awarded experience with which he or she can progress to higher levels, increasing their abilities.

Most RPGs utilize multi-sided dice to represent the relative success or failure of a character's attempted actions, introducing an element of chance.

A brief example:

DM: "You enter a 10x20 room.  It is damp and moldy.  You hear water dripping from somewhere.  You see a small, quivering pile   
    of gray jelly in the middle of the room."
Player: "I stick the tip of my sword in the pile."
DM: "Roll a 20-sided die."
(Player rolls a 1.)
DM: "Critical miss.  The jelly swarms up your sword and engulfs you.  You are dead."

Good DMs balance challenges and rewards, giving the players opportunities to recover from mistakes, but at the same time providing consequences for the character's actions.

One attraction of RPGs is the opportunity to safely behave (verbally, anyway) in a way that a person might never normally act. As with anything, impressionable minds can take things to extremes, and occasionally people have immersed themselves so deeply into their roles that they have carried them over into their real lives. RPGs have also been lambasted by conservative religious groups as evil, and as devil-worship.

[edit] Computer and video game RPGs

Presently RPGs also include a genre of computer game that simulate the originals, where the player controls one or more characters, typically where the characters increase in levels through accomplishing quests or tasks, thereby increasing the characters' abilities. They also usually contain a main quest which cannot be completed without completing the smaller side quests. The computer RPGs add a visual component lacking in the original, and are easier to play because they only require one person, but they also lack the freedom of action and the experience of immersing oneself into the character that the original provides. MMORPGs ('Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game), where the player interacts with other players, can add some of the immersion that the single-player games do not provide. Some examples of these games are the popular World of Warcraft, Everquest, or Runescape. The complexity of the world may often come at the expense of nice graphics.

[edit] Live action role-playing game (LARP)

In LARP, the people play their characters themselves, much like a play. They act out the things their character does, dress like their character, etc.