WHAT IS ROLE-PLAYING?
Role-Playing is getting together with some friends to write a story.
It's joining around a campfire or a dining room to spin some tall tales.
Role-playing is being creative and having fun with friends.
In most role-playing games, one person plays the 'referee,' who can be
thought of as the 'Editor' of the story. The Editor will, with input
from you if you desire to give any, describe a world, or setting. You
and your friends, as Players, will take a character and protagonist in
this world, and guide your character through the story that you and your
friends are creating.
Each player takes a different character, and each character interacts
with each other character. Role-Playing, in this sense, is very much
play-acting in the mind. You imagine what the Editor describes. Then,
you imagine your character's response to this situation, and describe
that to the Editor and the other Players. They, in turn, each do the
same with their characters.
In most games -- board games, card games, and dice games -- there is a
clearly defined way to win, and a clearly defined way to lose, and
winning is the goal of the game. In Role-Playing games, the concepts of
'winning' and 'losing' do not exist. Your goal as a Player is to help
create a story and to have fun. You may give your character other goals,
but the success of your character does not determine any sense of
'winning' or 'losing.' Like life, it's not so much whether you win or
lose, but how you play the game.
That's all well and good, you say, but what actually goes on? What do
these 'characters' do?
Most of the time, characters are involved in adventures, adventures of
the type that are immortalized in adventure movies and serial novels. In
one game, the characters might be a group of secret agents trying to
save the world from nuclear destruction. In another, you might play a
rebel force, trying to overthrow an evil star-spanning empire. You might
play a group of warriors in elleventh century Europe, or King Arthur's
knights, or Superman, or Batman, or an original character you create,
in any world you choose to create.
HOW CAN I BECOME INVOLVED WITH ROLE-PLAYING?
The same way you'd get involved with any other game. You either find some
people who are already playing, or you start a game yourself. The former
is recommended, but either way is fun. The first thing is to figure out
what you want to play. What kind of movies or books do you want to copy?
That's what you want to play. There are games that deal with H.P.
Lovecraft's novels, Michael Moorcock's novels, the middle-earth of J.R.R.
Tolkien, among many others. There are also generic games that cover whole
genres -- espionage, detective, super-hero, swords and sorcery, space
opera, and the old west, for example.
Next, find a store that sells role-playing games. You can find them in the
yellow pages under 'games.' Visit the store and tell them you don't know
much about role-playing games, but you'd like a game that can play (insert
your choice here -- detective, Tolkien, whatever). Ask if they know of any
groups that are already playing that type of game. Many stores keep a list
or bulletin board of gamers looking for new gamers. Chances are the store
people will be able to help you find just what you're looking for.
WHAT SHOULD I LOOK OUT FOR WHEN I'M PLAYING?
Cecil Adams (author of the newspaper column, 'The Straight Dope')
said with regards to role-playing games: "a lifetime of Parcheesi
does not adequately prepare you for this." He's right. Your
biggest problem will be breaking out of the straightjacket that
games like Parcheesi, Chess, and Poker have put you in. There are
no 'moves' in role-playing games, nor are you confined to any
specific actions. You make choices for your character as
creatively as if you were writing a book. You don't need to be
worried about whether or not you are 'allowed' to do something.
The only thing restricting what your character can do is the
situation your character is in.
It is also sometimes easy to get into an adversarial relationship
with your Editor. Why? Because you are playing the 'hero' and the
Editor will be portraying all of the 'villains' that the hero
meets. It helps sometimes to stop and remember that this is not a
competition between the Players and the Editor. The goal is to
have fun, creatively, together. If you want an adversarial
competition, you can always play hockey.
Once you realize that role-playing games have rules you might fall
into one of two 'rules-lawyer' traps. Games have rules that
explain what happens when, for example, your character is attacked
by a dragon, or what happens when two space vessels race to the
same destination. But these rules are almost always there as
guidelines. They describe what normally should happen, not what
always must happen. The first rules-lawyer trap is to always
insist on following the rules, even when there's an obvious
discrepancy between how all of the Players (including the Editor)
want the game to proceed, and how a certain game rule says an
event should turn out. The overall game should be more important
than any specific rule.
Many times, games will not have a specific rule to cover a rare
or odd situation. The second rules-lawyer trap is to believe that
there should always be a rule to cover every situation. In this
case, you waste time and interrupt the flow of the story by
searching through the rule-book for rules that aren't there.
A related trap is to consider the Editor to be some sort of
omnipotent being in relation to the game, and to consider the game
world to be the Editor's world alone. The game is for all the
Players, not just the Editor. The Editor is, however, the final
arbiter of game disputes and game questions. There's no need to
waste time arguing when you could be playing!
A ROLE-PLAYING GLOSSARY
If you decide to find a role-playing group to create with, you'll
probably run into some strange terminology. Every group has its own
terminology, and 'gamers' are no exception. Here is a quick guide to the
most common jargon in role-playing.
- DICE
- I'll bet you thought you knew what dice were, didn't you? Well,
you'll never see so many different kinds of dice than when you meet up
with role-playing gamers. The kind of dice that most people use (for
Yahtzee or gambling) are 'six-sided' dice. They've got six sides. There
are also four-sided dice, eight-sided dice, ten-sided dice, twelve-sided
dice, and twenty-sided dice. Some companies are even making thirty-sided
dice and hundred-sided dice. Don't worry at first, though. Most games
use either six-sided dice (the normal, cube things) or ten-sided dice.
You can borrow the latter from someone else while you're still new. Some
veteran gamers do the same thing.
How do you use the dice? You'll hear lots of strange terminology, like
'roll a three-dee-six,' 'roll a percentile die,' or 'roll dee-one-hundred.'
The best way to deal with this, if you don't understand, is to look
confused and say 'huh? Show me.' Gamers (like any other group) sometimes
forget that newcomers aren't privy to the jargon they use. However, if
you want some idea of what's going on, here's the dope:
'three-dee-six:' This is written 3d6. This means take three 6-siders
and roll them. Add them all up. If you roll 3 on one die, 4 on another,
and 1 on the last, that's 3 plus 4 plus 1, or 8. In general, when someone
says 'roll anumber dee anothernumber, they want you to take 'anumber'
dice with 'anothernumber' sides, roll them, and add them together.
'Two-dee-ten' (or 2d10) means roll two ten-sided dice and add them, for
example.
'dee-one-hundred:' This is a special kind of roll, designed just to
confuse people who think they understand the previous paragraph. When you
are asked to roll dee-one-hundred (written d100), you'll need a ten-sided
die. Roll it, and remember the number. This is the 'tens.' Then, roll it
again. This is the 'ones.' If you rolled a 1 and a 5, the result is 15.
If you rolled a 6 and a 3, the result is 63. If you rolled a 0 and a 2,
the result is 2 (02), etc. If you rolled a 0 and a 0, the result is 100.
Don't ask, it's tradition. You want a number from 1 to 100, not 0 to 99.
- DUNGEON MASTER
- In the first role-playing game, the characters
usually had their adventures in deserted castles and the dungeons
below them. The Editor in these games was called by the incredibly
kinky name 'Dungeon Master.' From this came the equally
pretentious 'Game Master,' used by other games to denote the
Editor. I prefer the family of names that includes Referee,
Supervisor, and, of course, Editor.
- HACK AND SLASH
- Hack and Slash is a form of role-playing where the
character's goal is to fight. Often, 'hack and slash' characters will
get in a fight with every non-player character (q.v.) that they meet.
Hack and Slash involves very little character interaction.
- HIT POINTS
- Your character can interact with all sorts of things in a
role-playing game. Sometimes, your character will interact with fists,
broken bottles, guns, or swords. When *you* interact with a gun, you're
likely to either die or be seriously injured. Not so with your
character. In the serial adventures which role-playing games most
commonly emulate, the heroes rarely have to hobble along with punctured
lungs or gangrenous wounds. So, in most role-playing games, your
character will have a certain number of 'hit points.' When your
character is attacked with a weapon, the weapon will cause your
character to lose some of these hit points. This is much easier to deal
with than wounds, broken bones, cranial injuries, and infections.
Hit points are called different things by different games (Body Pips,
Wound Level, Energy Level, Damage Points, etc.), but they're still
hit points. You lose them (or gain them) when you get hit.
- MINIATURES
- Some games use cute little miniature figurines, about an inch
high, to show where the characters are in relation to each other.
- NON-PLAYER CHARACTER
- All of the characters played by you and your
friends (except the Editor) are Player Characters. That's because a
Player is playing them. Characters created by the Editor for your
character to meet are Non-Player Characters. Player Characters are the
stars of the story, and Non-Player Characters are the supporting
cast and the extras.
- SAVING THROWS
- 'Saving Throw' is an archaic term that basically refers
to 'saving' your character with the 'throw' of the dice. In the
beginning of role-playing games, 'saving throw' often meant just that.
If your character was bitten by a snake, and you failed your 'saving
throw,' your character died, and you started playing a new character.
Nowadays, this sort of instant death is frowned on in games, but saving
throws still exist to help your character avoid other dangers in the game.
You might roll a saving throw to avoid your character falling off a cliff
when pushed, or to realize that someone has picked your character's pocket.
How do you 'make' or 'fail' a saving throw? You roll dice (q.v.). If the
dice are above (or below, in some games) a certain number, you have
succeeded, and whatever dire fate could have happened has been avoided.
Otherwise, you have 'failed' the saving throw, and your character is
subject to whatever was about to happen.
EPILOGUE
Well, that's the end of this introduction to role-playing. I hope it helped.
If you'd like to talk to me, you can write me at the electronic mail
address below. There are also electronic forums for gamers. On Usenet,
there is rec.games.frp.misc.
On bitnet, there is the GAMES-L listserv. Talk to
your system administrator if you wish to participate in these forums. The
forums are not for playing games, but for discussing games.
Jerry Stratton
jerry@teetot.acusd.edu