What are roleplaying games anyway?

“The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules.”

Gary Gygax

Thus spoke one of the fathers of roleplaying games.

 What are roleplaying games by the way? You will find on the net thousands of definitions, from the simplest to the most convoluted, even to the most pedantic. Whole discussion forums are regularly arguing to find a single definition which could be true for everybody, generally in vain, because there will always be some who will think they reinvented the wheel with some “ah yes but we don’t do it like that and we still roleplay so that definition is crap”. Most of the time, it ends up in straightforward name-calling (the virtual equivalent of the good old-fashioned bar brawls of yesteryear).

So let’s leave alone the “great theorists”, because in fact, we all know what roleplaying is, because we all practiced it during our childhood. Roleplaying is just three words, not more: “do as if…”.

When a child plays to “do as if”, he embodies a part (robber, police officer, princess, Jedi, superhero…) and involves his comrades in his universe for them to also take part in the game. A small hill will become the headquarter, the hill opposite will be the place where the enemies are, a trench will be the means of reaching the villain’s lair… We were used with my comrades to play in a small forest, that our fertile imagination had christened “the Forest of the Devil”. This day we were in full “Star Wars” mode. I had borrowed an adjustable open-end wrench in the workshop of my father and I played the part of a technician. Others were smugglers. Our spaceship had crashed in the forest and we were surrounded by imperial enemies. One of the places low in the forest was “Yoda’s cave”… Everything was possible, from the moment all the group had accepted the “rules”. This place was an border, this place reeled with magic … It was the privilege of childhood’s innocence. If somebody really didn’t want to comply with the rules of the group, we didn’t play with him next time, that was all…

The adult spirit seems to need more framing to find back equivalent feelings, but in the principle, the game can remain more or less the same: besides certain practitioners practice “live” roleplaying, or do “murder parties”. But all that is very codified. When you’re a grown-up you’re not that ready to accept a “bang you’re dead” just because the guy before you shouts it louder than you… hence the existence of rules to regulate and soften the arbitrary decisions.

In “live-action roleplaying games” thus exist directives, like the exclusive use of approved weapons made of foam, a definite number of “touches” before falling and prohibition to aim at the head. In the “murder party”, some clues about the other participants can only be obtained by trading “action points” with the evening’s organizer, the only one to know the secrets to be revealed. In tabletop roleplaying sessions, each character has quantified values and the results of the actions are very often determined by a more or less random mean.

But at the bottom line, nothing in all that is essential. If everyone agree, “do as if” for grown-ups can take place without any special rule, like a conversation, as long as everybody trust the judgment of all speakers.

For this reason it is at the same time simple and complicated to define what are roleplaying games. It is simple because at a basic level, we all know it since childhood. It’s complicated because it regroups many possible rules, not all of them compatible with each other, to get to the same result, namely an immersion in a story which offers a feeling of total freedom, without equivalent in any other hobby.