Part 1 - Introduction

Retrato de LadyEntropy

Part I - Introduction

‘To be or not to be…’

Shakespeare - “Hamlet”

WHAT ARE “ROLEPLAYING GAMES”?


 In Roleplaying Games (or RPGs, for short), one takes the role of a character and ‘plays’ it, as if it was a character in a drama, except that the script is created as the action unfolds. The players take their characters through adventures, called (appropriately enough) stories. These stories are told by a combination of both the wishes of the players and the directives of the Gamemaster.

Thus, the players are free to take whatever characters they prefer - since there is a great deal of different RPGs: from science-fiction, to horror, including sword and sorcery, heroic fantasy, and so on. So, if they want, they can be anything from elves to dwarves, changelings, cyborgs, warriors, etc. RPGs ‘per se’ are a recent phenomenon - but its origins are quite older - and not the ones someone would expect…

‹ "Monsters, monsters..." - a small gothic introduction on the nature of gamerssubirPart 2 - Origins and history of the RPGs. ›