What is an RPG?
If you play table top role playing games this is a question that maybe asked of you. This is a question that has been posed to me on several occasions and depending on my audience has been difficult to answer. So I ask again what is an RPG? My answer is probably the best game you will ever play. Its funny on many occasion family members or friends have asked what is that I am reading while I was off in my own world reading about monster fluff or game rules. It always takes me a minute to come back to reality and explain that it is a game book. People who have never played RPGs are usually intimidated by RPG rulebooks in general and who can blame them. Its kind of hard to rationalize the need for a three hundred page rule book to play a game that works powered by your imagination.
I personally have two bookshelves full of RPG rule books from Dungeons and Dragons, Rifts, Pathfinder, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Shadowrun and many more obscure games. I love em all in there own way. I wouldnt have bought them if there wasnt some interest when I thumbed through them or did some research online.The idea of spending a night as a monster hunter, cyber decker, robot pilot, orc barbarian, or mutant superhero is too good to pass up for me. I cant imagine anyone not wanting to be something magically fantastic for at least one night.
Now if your still unclear as to what an RPG is I guess I will really break it down for you. It is a story telling game where you and some friends each make up new persona's and adventure in a world you all help create. One lucky person(or poor bastard depending how you look at it) is appointed to be the Gamemaster.(or dungeon master if your doing it right!) His job is to create the adventure for the world you and your friends have decided to play in.
What do I need to play? Where's the board you play on? I still dont get it!
Ah yes now we are getting somewhere. Well for one there is no board it all takes place in your imagination!
What the hell are you talking about? It is 2011 I dont have to use that anymore. How could this be fun?
No one said roleplaying was easy but it should always be fun. It can take a bit of work to play some games but in general you usually just need a rulebook(game of your choice), some pencils and paper, dice(depending on the system) and a imagination. Now if you dont have an imagination I recommend you buy a ton of miniatures and play DnD 4e! I kid I kid....
In a perfect world everyone in your group will have a grasp of the rules and there own core rulebook.We dont live in that world so it makes sense for whoever is Dungeon Master to basically know how to play. At the end of the day he/she is the referee for all of your antics as a player. The DM should have the final say on the way the game is played as long as everyone agrees that it is a reasonable way to do things and fun.
Now what do you do after you have made a character and your DungeonMaster/GameMaster has made an adventure/world for you to play in?
Thats the hook right there. You do whatever you want! Do you want to go treasure hunting? Give it a go! Do you want to save some village in need?(for a nominal fee of course) Start saving em! Do you want to go into some zombie infested crypt that no one in there right mind would enter? Get stupid buy a shovel and do just that! If your a hacker rob a bank, if your a poor begger work on becoming a local legend by happenstance, if your a murderous psychopath go and be the baddest villain you can be! The world is your oyster do what you want.
I still dont know what I should be doing.
Well sometimes the DM needs to point you in the way of adventure and sometimes adventure just finds you! No matter what system you play most rpgs have the same basic reward system in that. If you use the skills your character has in game and do cleaver things you will be rewarded with some type of experience that will make your character a better person in some way. Fight monsters and get better at it. Read up on local legends and learn more about the game world. Pick a lock into someones house and become that expert thief you cant be in the real world.(or maybe you can hell I dont know you that well)
What about all the cool little toys and maps that you have? Do I need all of that as well?
Now here is a sticky question. Do you need miniatures in your roleplaying game? This is a subject all to itself that I probably will cover a bit closer in the future but the cut and dry answer is no! Its is an rpg after all and I recommend that everyone roleplay at least once without the aid of miniatures to see what kind of imagination muscle you have. After that it is totally up to you. Do you want miniature toy avatars of your character and the monsters you are slaying? I can go either way and roleplaying with all of the player aids of miniatures, dry erase maps, and model terrain can both help and hurt your experience. I for one love buying just the right monsters for my campaigns and surprising my friends with a tough boss fight that has a painted mini to go with it.
When I was growing up on the other hand my friends and family never used minis(mainly because we were poor) but I was always immersed in the action. Miniatures can also turn your rpg into a rules heavy boardgame if you let it. Now if thats what your looking for than go right ahead because its always about finding that right balance for your friends fun level. I say add minis if they enhance your game but not if they get in the way of your imagination running wild.
This all sounds great but where do I start? Which game should I play? I dont know anyone that would be interested in being a nerd! I dont have any friends!!!
Ok, ok I get it! Sometimes its not as easy to play tabletop roleplaying games just because you want too. I was stuck in a similar quandary not too long ago. Sometimes you just might not know anyone that will give rpgs a shot. It can be overwhelming just explaining it to people. Alot of people are just trained to think they should hate rpgs because DnD is not cool. Well last time I checked geek is in these days and its not the 70s anymore. If you dont know anyone look online to see if there is a friendly local game store that hosts gaming in general. This is the hard part sometimes you might have to talk to strangers and see what they are interested in. Play games they are playing or inquire about gaming groups. Get your hands dirty and hit the message boards of games you interested in and see if you can get in on some local action that way.
I for one thought that after I moved away from my regular gaming group that I would have a hard time finding people to play with. My new game group just kind of formed out of boredom so dont give up. I was happy enough to just buy rpg books and read them because that is what I like to do. Well after sitting around at my girlfriends house a couple of years ago some of her family was a bit bored of the same party video games they had been playing and was looking to do something else. Now you think this is where I would have struck while the iron was hot but I didnt.
I just never considered that they would be interested in playing a rpg so I suggested we play a board game. At the time I had just acquired the Last Night on Earth(a zombie board game!) and had been reading the rules at her house (something not unusual for me) Like most games I owned I would wait for an off chance to see some of my old game group and maybe get a game in but never thought to play with other people. Well maybe it was their boredom or just plain old serendipity but we played alot of games of Last Night on Earth and like feverish drug addicts they wanted more. Week in and week out we played one boardgame after another until we got to Descent. It was a smash hit and boardgames took over for almost two years. Then the question came from one of the members. Why dont we just play DnD? I avoided it for a while but after awhile I gave in and havent looked back since.
Now when it comes to what should I play first I like to believe that if you are a beginner you should play some Dungeons and Dragons because thats the granddaddy of them all right. I started my girls family with Pathfinder which is basically 3rd ed DnD with a slight adjustments. Also at the time I didnt have the 4th Ed DnD rulebook so I tried what was new and fun for me and well everything was new to them. Guess what another smash hit. We have been playing for almost a year now and everyone still likes it.
Sometimes you should just ask the people you know if they would be interested in playing an rpg. If they ask whats an rpg is you have got more than a shot of actually playing if you roll your dice right! Hope that answers what an RPG is to some people. Feel free to ask me anymore RPG related questions.
Dungeonslinger
No comments:
Post a Comment