You maybe don’t know it, but you already know how to play a role playing game. Chances are that, unless you were raised in a barrel and fed through a bunghole, that you’ve played one before. It could have been anything from "Playing army" to "Cowboys and Indians". These games are called "Let’s Pretend"games , and they are a primitive form of role playing games, where you choose a adventurous situation, a kind of person from that situation and then plays it out to see what happens. You’re never yourself in these games, you’re always someone who lives a more adventurous life and has more fun than you do.
"Real" role playing games "Real" role playing games are different. Here you use dices to see what your role becomes, you don’t choose a living hero, you create one. Although you become inspired from the other heroes, like Robin Hood, Hercules or Lancelot some games does not allow you to do so. It’s never certain that the dices roll the way you want them to. The role can become bad, even useless if you have bad luck with the dices. But sometimes a useless character can be fun to play with to. Then the "gamemaster" puts these roles in an adventure that he has created and prepared. The gamemaster is the one who controls the role playing game. He controls the entire game and the other players should respect him(If they want their roles to stay alive). If, or when the roles get in the way for a monster, a pack of thieves or whatever the gamemaster wishes to throw at them, they have to use their dear beloved dices on the skills of their roleform to see if they make it out of their trouble. A roleform is a paper where you have all the values ,attributes and skills of your role. A few classic examples of an attribute is DEX (Dexterity) and an example of a skill is Sword(A weapon skill). The values define how good you are at these things. If it is a poor value, you’re bad at it and if it is a high value you’re good at it. So the higher value on the skills and attributes, the better chance you have to deal with that monster or pack of thieves. It sounds a bit complex ,but it is not really that hard once you get the hang of it. A role playing game like this can take quite some time, depending on the size of the adventure. There are very many kinds of role-playing games, like dark-ages, future, wild west, present time and even cartoon games for the little ones. Prejudices A lot of people think role players are some sick weirdoes that go and smack each other with plastic swords or something. They are wrong, because role players are not that at all, well most of them at least. There are some disturbed fellows that do some weird stuff, but they are rare. The Rules What about the rules? Well, here comes the expensive part. The rules of role playing games are written in books, and there are often a lot of modules to the first rulebook. Know that these books are expensive and it will be a lot of reading before you understand all the rules. But the better you and the other players know the rules, the more fun you may have. Having fun Role playing is all about having fun, being creative and socializing with your friends. You should be around 3-6 people to play, but you can try being more, or less. If you wish to bend the rules just a bit for having more fun you can do so. In fact, you can do anything you want with your books, you bought them. Sources: www.hoboes.com/pub/Role-playing/RPG.html, www.microtactix.com/whatrpg.htm and 6 years experience of role playing By Erik Höglund and Jonas Lövdahl Questions If you have any questions to us, feel free to send an email to our emailadresses: sp04-18@park.se or sp04-12@park.se. We would be happy to answer.  © 2002 Freeway Writers: Erik Höglund (sp04-18@park.se), Jonas Lövdahl (sp04-12@park.se). HTML by:Fredrik Bohlet (te04-58@park.se). |
