What Are Role-Playing Games (RPGs)?
Before we begin, we should briefly specify what role-playing games (RPGs) are not. They are not video games. There are a few grey areas at the edges–as in all social activities, the internet has presented unexpected challenges to description and classification–but for the vast majority of cases, console and computer games billing themselves as “RPGs” are not such insofar as the term is used here. The video game genre is called that because early examples had rules systems derived from the RPGs of their day. However, the concept of the RPG as a basic medium or form of game (as opposed to a genre within the video game medium) is not tied to any particular set of rules. With that thought in mind, let us proceed to what an RPG is: There are two main definitions of RPG in use today. Since they both try to condense to the smallest practical number of words, some commentary is required. The first is from CAR-PGa: “improvised, open-ended stories in which the referee sets the stage and the pl
