WHAT IS A ROLEPLAYING GAME?
A roleplaying game is like a board game. Only there is no board, or pieces, and you’re not competing with each other. In fact it’s not much like a board game at all come to think of it. Especially not Monopoly™, Risk™, or Scrabble™ now we come to mention them. OK, board games were a bad analogy. Let’s try again.
Roleplaying is sort of like writing a book. No. Hang on, it isn’t. You don’t write down everything that happens, there’s more than one writer, and the characters really do have a life of their own. Also, you don’t get paid for it, or do book signings. All right, writing a book isn’t the best example either. (Unless you’re talking about some of the dime-a-dozen cheap cloned fantasy books out there, which may as well be a transcript of someone’s gaming session. Only they are usually worse.)
Gaming is like theater. No, it’s not. (Unless you’re doing live-action, which is another kettle of fish.) You don’t wear make-up, or costumes, you don’t have any lines to remember, you don’t move around a lot, and you most definitely do not call each other “luvvy,” or indeed “darling.”
Damn, this isn’t getting us anywhere.
Roleplaying is like . . . roleplaying. A group of people get together with some junk food, some booze, a few cigarettes, some dice, some paper and an expensive, poorly-put-together book that is probably shedding pages like they’re going out of fashion. They create a bunch of social misfit alter-egos and then pretend in their heads that they are running around massacring bad guys and saving the world. Hey, it beats the cud out of Nintendo and is a lot more fun than hanging around outside a 7-11 in the rain all hours of the night.