Roleplaying Games

A Roleplaying Game, consists of the idea of your dreams. You surely read a book or watched a film where you wanted to jump up, and yell at the character, not to trust the "bad boy" or not to go into the house (which will explode in a few seconds, you know !), or even to finally kiss the maid...

A roleplaying Game will make your dreams come true - well... a bit. You will switch yourself into a total new character, whose aims and way of life is totally different from yours - the main point about roleplaying is playing a role - it is a bit like theatre. Imagine you are a knight in the middle ages, or better in a time, which is similar to the middle ages, but where dragons and orcs and dwarves and treacherous elves exist. Now imagine the princess has been captured out of the castle you should originally protect - with your little Guard. Now what you'll do ? Jump into your Mercedes Benz and drive into the forest on the highway, get out your mobile phone once you've found the robbers and then call the police ?
Or maybe you will call for the guard, then call for your servant who will help you in getting into your full plate silvery glinting armour, then you'd let help you up to your horse, and then ride out on the dirty and dusty roads, fearing all the time the wrath of the princess' father, and fearing the bows & arrows of the robbers who hide in the forest ?

It is quite easy, to ask why someone does something. Finding the answer to it, is most of the time much more harder. I would say ( BEWARE ! This is my personal point of view) that doing roleplaying games is somehow taking your dreams, and bring them into reality. Take the example of the knight before, and compare this person to yourself. In your dreams, you can see this knight, don't you? It is a heroic figure, tall, sun-tanned, strong, and one who would not fear to walk through the Dark Of Night. Well, now take a look at you. Most persons I saw who do roleplaying have a sense for theatre, and a sense for playing roles, are quite intelligent (it is not easy to do good roleplaying), and did not forget how to dream. But most of them are no heroic figures, who would make it into a Fantasy novel like Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings or The Hobbit. People like you and me are not the ones who would appear in a epic fantasy or science-fiction story at all.

So doing roleplay enables you to live out your dreams, be the hero once, or maybe more often, that depends on how often you find the time to play. Don't you dream of being the hero ?

The "Pen & Paper" -Roleplaying Games base on a group of people who come together and play. I will take the introduction of "AD&D" (Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, a popular p&p roleplaying game), and translate it for you (Yeah, in the genuine it is english, but I only have the german version.)

" Imagine, you are playing a simple table game. The aim of the game is reaching one side of the table, but on the way there are traps, bringing you back to the beginning, but also special fields, which bring you many fields forward at once. Now let us change some things. Instead of a plain table with a simple parcours we change it to be a maze, where the players' figures are standing in front of, seeing the entrance, knowing that there is an exit, but do not know where it is. Instead of the special fields we take secret ways, trapdoors, and nice pit traps instead of the traps fields. You don't even roll a die to find out, how far you are allowed to go, but you are allowed to go as far as you want. Just walk along the hallway to the crossing; You can pass straight on, but also turn to the right or to the left, or even go back to where you came from. Now that you're here, you can also search for a hidden door. If you found one, there would be another hallway wait behind it, which could lead you to an exit, but also to a point, from where you cannot go on any further. The only possibility to find it out, is to enter the hallway, and walk along it.
Of course you will find the exit sooner or later. To keep the game interesting, we put together with you some other beings in the maze, evil beings like Vampire-bats, Werewolves, Hobgoblins, zombies and ogres (beings eating humans). You surely get a sword and a shield, to defend yourself, when meeting one of those - you know about fighting with a sword, don't you?
Additionally there are also other people in the maze, people like you, also equipped with sword and shield. How will they react when meeting you ? They could attack you, but you could also form a group, to survive. Now finally, we hide the plan of the maze before you and give it to one special player, and now call him "Dungeon Master". Instead of watching the plan, you listen to what he tells you what your player sees when walking through the hallway. Then you can react, tell him that you go on, attack someone, or search for a hidden door. Try to imagine the surrounding, which the Dungeon Master tries to describe to you, as real as possible. Smell the bad smell which derives from a grate in the ground, feel the fear, as you hear slurping steps behind you. And then react, how your player would.

Now that would have been a very simple example of a roleplaying game. It isn't hard to play, but it shows the main concept of a Roleplaying Game. One describes to the others what they see, what other persons (not played by other players) do,say, and so on. You react, and describe the actions of your character."

Now did you understand, what a pen&paper roleplaying game is like ? I hope you did. There are masses of p&p rpg (rpg=roleplayinggames), some playing in a fantastic medievial time, others in the future, and others in the now. Some may play on fantastic planets and countries, others may play in Germany or England of the 10th century. That is not the point, it's up to you to find out, what kind of rpg you prefer.