In traditional role-playing games, participants usually sit around a table and conduct the game as a small social gathering. One participant, the “gamemaster” (GM), describes the setting and the actions of the inhabitants, while the others describe their characters’ actions and responses. Players usually keep track of the details of their characters on paper character-sheets. The game system typically requires players to roll dice or employ some sort of randomizer to determine the outcome of some of their actions, most typically in combat or other stressful situations. These are also known as tabletop or paper and pencil role-playing games, to distinguish them from LARPs or computer role-playing games. Games that emphasize plot and character interaction over game mechanics and combat sometimes prefer to be called as ‘storytelling games’
Computer role-playing games (CRPGs or simply RPGs) draw their game play from traditional role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. Most of these games have the player acting in the role of a specific type of “adventurer” or “adventurers” who specialize in a certain set of skills (such as combat, or casting magic spells) while moving through a linear predetermined storyline.
Since the emergence of affordable home computers coincided with the popularity of pencil and paper role-playing games, this genre was one of the first in video games and continues to be popular today. Game play elements strongly associated with RPGs, such as statistical character development through the acquisition of experience points (or EXP), have been widely adapted to other video game genres such as action-adventure games.
RPGs have now evolved to MMOGs… Be sure to catch our next sections on MMOGs next week!
