A guide to Roleplaying - What, Who, Why & Where?

What is Roleplaying?

When you were young one of the games you played may have been let's pretend where you pretended to be a doctor or a character from a film or television program etc. Roleplaying (or RPG) is the natural extension of that childhood game. Each Roleplay system has a set of guidelines of what should happen in certain events. These systems explain how magic works (if applicable) and how to simulate combat, illness and other skills.

Who Roleplays?

Thousands of people around the world Roleplay, from teenage upwards. Many people get their first contact with Roleplaying at University or College where there are often groups or clubs of Roleplayers.

Why Roleplay?

Roleplay allows you to become (for a short while anyway) a fighter in a mystical land, a private investigator in search of horrible creatures or a Magic user fighting to save the world. Have you ever watched a film and said "I could do better than that.."? Chances are there is a Roleplay system that will allow you to test your skills in these situations.

Roleplaying is fun, I have included a page of pictures from one of our Wednesday night Roleplay sessions NOTE: There are a number of images on this page so it may take a while to down-load.

Where do people Roleplay?

Normally either at social clubs or at the house of one of the players. Some Roleplayers take Roleplaying to the extreme and meet on private land and for long weekends live the parts of their characters (they also attack each other with rubber swords but we will not talk about that too much) this is called LRP (Live Roleplaying) or LARP (Live Action Roleplay).

OK, Give me more info! What's this DM thing?

Just as characters alone don't make a story. Roleplay adventures wouldn't work without the Controller. The controller is often referred to as Dungeon Master (dm), Games Master (gm), Keeper or any number of others. It is the controllers job to keep the adventure flowing by presenting story sections, being all the characters not controlled by the players and to react and mould the adventure based on the decisions of the players.

Roleplay Links

I have decided as this list was getting rather long (which is a good thing!) I will move the links to the own page. So click here for the links...

How to Roleplay on-line

I know of two ways to Roleplay on-line these are:

Play by E-Mail (PBEM) works in a similar way to conventional games, with a DM controlling the game. The DM will send messages to all players. And the players will respond back to the DM and other players. If the player needs to do something the other players shouldn't know about they can email the DM direct. PBEM gives you time to think about what your character would do in each situation. If you want to give PBEM a go then lurk around the rec.games.frp.* news groups and look for DM's requesting players. You should respond as soon as possible as places are quickly filled.
Multi-User-Dungeons (MUD's) work in real time. You usually connect to a MUD using a telnet application. The characters you meet are other "humans" connecting in the same way. Visit the Mud Connector for more information.

Adventures for you to try

I have moved the links to "The Laughing Magician" and "The Bite" to the new adventures pages.

Back to Jason Anthony's - Home Page