In it’s most basic form, roleplaying is simply acting. Regardless of the genre, this acting is within the constraints of a character profile and probably also those of a given scenario. Namely, the roleplayer acts in a way that they beleive their character should act. Often this has little (or nothing) to do with how the out of character person would behave. In some cases, like a roleplay training scenario, the roleplayer will be marked on how closely and correctly they are able to act out the character type (as in the case of a nursing trauma scenario).

The Gamemaster

The gamemaster is the person who is in control of setting up the scenario that roleplayers will participate in. This gamemaster does not usually participate in the game directly due to a conflict of interest and the role has expanded beyond the original D&D gamemaster. For instance, instructors, game developers, bug testers, choose-your-own-adventure authors, and even computer generated scripts can act as gamemasters today. The key point, is that in all roleplaying games it is the gamemaster(s) who are responsible for setting and maintaining the rules & schema through which the actors participate.

The Players

While the central players will of course be the human actors, as games increase in size and scope, non-player characters (NPCs) will also sometimes enter into the picture. These additional characters are used to fill in additional aspects of the scenario creating a more realistic playing environment. These characters can be extremely complex and well developed (as in the case of some of the newer single player RPG video games or RPG books) or very simplistic. In multi-player RPGs, the non-player character often fills in the more mundane roles that add to the game atmosphere but would be too boring to roleplay.

The Atmosphere or Setting

The atmosphere or setting of the game is defined before the game begins by the gamemaster(s). A good definition is quite important as it lets would-be players evaluate whether they would like to participate or not. Once set, players are then free to add to the atmosphere by creating their unique characters within the given constraints. For instance, a fantasy game setting might be the attempted raid of a band of dark elves set deep underground. In this case, the constraints might be to only allow character creation of dark elves of adult age.

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