Role-playing game

Both authors and major publishers of tabletop role-playing games consider them to be a form of interactive and collaborative storytelling. Events, roles, and narrative structure give a sense of a narrative experience, and the game need not have a strongly defined storyline. Interactivity is the crucial difference between role-playing games and traditional fiction/ entertainment. Whereas a viewer of a television show is a passive observer, a player in a role-playing game makes choices that affect the story. Such role-playing games extend an older tradition of storytelling games where a small party of friends collaborate to create a story. While simple forms of role-playing exist in traditional children's games of make believe, role-playing games add a level of sophistication and persistence to this basic idea with additions such as game facilitators and rules of interaction. Participants in a role-playing game will generate specific characters and an ongoing plot. A consistent system of rules and a campaign setting in games aids suspension of disbelief. The level of realism in games ranges from just enough internal consistency to set up a believable story or credible challenge up to full-blown simulations of real-world processes. Tabletop role-playing games may also be used in therapy settings to help individuals develop behavioral, social, and even language skills. Beneficiaries commonly include young people with neurodevelopmental conditions, such as Autism spectrum disorders, attention-deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), and dyslexia. ==Varieties==

Role-playing games are played in a wide variety of formats, ranging from discussing character interaction in tabletop form, physically acting out roles in LARP to playing characters virtually in digital media. There is also a great variety of systems of rules and game settings. Games that emphasize plot creation and player interaction over game mechanics and combat sometimes prefer the name storytelling game. These types of games tend to reduce or eliminate the use of dice and other randomizing elements. Some games are played with characters created before the game by the GM, rather than those created by the players. This type of game is typically played at gaming conventions, or in standalone games that do not form part of a campaign. Tabletop to hide dice rolls from the players. Tabletop (TTRPG) and pen-and-paper (PnP) RPGs are conducted through discussion in a small social gathering. In traditional TTRPGs, a GM describes the game world and its inhabitants. The other players describe the intended actions of their characters, and the GM describes the outcomes. Some outcomes are determined by the game system, and some are chosen by the GM. This is the format in which role-playing games were first popularized. In contrast, many indie role-playing games experiment with different structures of play, such as sharing the responsibility for creating setting details and NPCs among all players. The first commercially available RPG, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), was inspired by fantasy literature and the wargaming hobby and was published in 1974. The popularity of D&D led to the birth of the tabletop role-playing game industry, which publishes games with many different themes, rules, and styles of play. The popularity of tabletop games decreased in the late 1990s due to competition from online MMO RPGs, role-playing video games, and collectible card games. However, TTRPGs experienced a resurgence in popularity between the mid-2010s and early 2020s due to actual play web series and online play through videoconferencing during the COVID-19 lockdowns. The tabletop format is often referred to simply as a role-playing game. To distinguish this form of RPG from other formats, the retronyms tabletop role-playing game or pen and paper role-playing game are sometimes used, though neither a table nor pen and paper are strictly necessary. Participants act out their characters' actions instead of describing them, and the real environment is used to represent the imaginary setting of the game world. Some live-action role-playing games use rock paper scissors or comparison of attributes to resolve conflicts symbolically, while other LARPs use physical combat with simulated arms such as airsoft guns or foam weapons. LARPs vary in size from a handful of players to several thousand, and in duration from a couple of hours to several days. Because the number of players in a LARP is usually larger than in a tabletop role-playing game, and the players may be interacting in separate physical spaces, there is typically less of an emphasis on tightly maintaining a narrative or directly entertaining the players, and game sessions are often managed in a more distributed manner. Electronic media ''. Tabletop role-playing games have been translated into a variety of electronic formats. As early as 1974, the same year as the release of Dungeons & Dragons, unlicensed versions of it were developed on mainframe university systems under titles such as dnd and Dungeon. These early computer RPGs influenced all of electronic gaming, as well as spawning the role-playing video game genre. Single-player Single-player role-playing video games form a loosely defined genre of computer and console games with origins in role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, on which they base much of their terminology, settings, and game mechanics. The majority of players in MMORPGs do not engage in role-playing in this sense. Computer-assisted gaming can be used to add elements of computer gaming to in-person tabletop role-playing, where computers are used for record-keeping and sometimes to resolve combat, while the participants generally make decisions concerning character interaction. ==People==

Gamemaster One common feature of many RPGs is the role of a gamemaster (GM), a participant who has special duties to present the fictional setting, arbitrate the results of character actions, and maintain the narrative flow. In tabletop and live-action RPGs the GM performs these duties in person. In video RPGs, many of the functions of a GM are fulfilled by the game engine. However, some multi-player video RPGs also allow for a participant to take on a GM role through a visual interface called a GM toolkit, albeit with abilities limited by the available technology. Player character Another standard concept in RPGs is the player character, a character in the fictional world of the game whose actions the player controls. Typically each player controls a separate player character, sometimes more, each of whom acts as a protagonist in the story. Non-player character In contrast to player characters, non-player characters (NPCs) are controlled by the gamemaster or game engine, or by people assisting the gamemaster. Non-player characters fill out the population of the fictional setting and can act as antagonists, bystanders, or allies of the player characters. ==See also==