Although it’s a little over fifty years old now, the roleplaying game is an incredibly new medium in the grand scale of things. Even compared to film, it’s just a little baby that’s only just barely coming into its maturity. This is particularly true because roleplaying games are radically different from all previous mediums.

This is true of all mediums, of course, but the notable thing about every pre-RPG medium is that the audience was fundamentally a passive recipient: The creator(s) created a story, painting, or film and then the audience in some way observed what had been created. Exceptions to this division between creator and audience were not unknown, but were extremely limited.

In an RPG, of course, the players are both creators AND audience at the same time. It’s just a fundamentally different activity to anything that had come before. So if you met someone who had never seen a comic book or a film before before you might say, “Well, it’s like reading a book with pictures” or “It’s like watching a play, but the actors’ performances are recorded.” But if someone asks, “A roleplaying game? What’s that?” people often find themselves struggling to really explain what it is we’re actually doing on a Friday night. There’s no easy analog to something people are already familiar with. If you’ve never played an RPG, then you’ve never done anything like it.

So we could begin with a technical definition:

A roleplaying game is a game in which the mechanical decisions made by the player are directly associated to the decisions of the character they’re playing, such that playing the game is inherently making decisions as if you were your character (i.e., roleplaying).

But while this definition might be useful in clearly distinguishing an RPG from a board game or storytelling game or graphic novel, it’s probably not very illuminating to someone just trying to figure out the basic concept.

A ROLEPLAYING GAME IS…

So let’s instead look at some practical answers to, “A roleplaying game? What’s what?”

The shortest effective description I’ve found is:

“It’s like an improvised audio book drama, with each player pretending to be a character and one player, the Game Master, describing the world. You can say that your character is going to try to do anything you can imagine, and then you and the Game Master will use the rules of the game to figure out what happens.”

I used to say “radio drama,” which I believe I got from John Tynes and Greg Stolze. But recently I’ve found most people have no idea what a “radio drama” is, so it’s pretty easy to get detoured into a completely separate explanation of what those are (and the end result still doesn’t give them a clear picture of what an RPG is).

Even with  the swap to “audio book drama,” though, this explanation may not land with everyone. So another approach might be:

“Video game RPGs like Elder Scrolls or Final Fantasy were actually based on tabletop roleplaying games. The two big differences are that you play entirely in your imagination and there’s a Game Master who describes the world and uses the rules to figure out what happens next. The cool thing is that this means you can have your character go almost anywhere and try to do anything you can imagine: You’re not limited to what the game programmers predetermined you could or should do.”

There’s an almost limitless number of metaphors you can extrapolate from, and the one that works best will really depend on who you’re talking to, what they’re already familiar with, and what they’re most passionate about.

Of course, we could also attempt a more direct approach with a more literal description of what actually happens at the gaming table:

When a group is playing a roleplaying game, they are imagining a fictional scene: That might be the bridge of a starcruiser, the dungeons of a vampire lord, or the neon-soaked alleys of Hong Kong in the 1980’s. One of the players is the Game Master. They describe the fictional scene: The red alert alarm klaxons on the bridge; the flickering torchlight illuminating the dungeon; or the Triad gang members who’ve just blocked the alley exit.

Each of the other players has a character that they’re playing in this scene. They might be a space smuggler trying to bluff her way past Imperial cruisers; a heroic knight trying to rescue the princess; or an honest cop stuck in a corrupt department.

Once the Game Master describes what their characters see, the players announce what they want their characters to do. The Game Master can then use the rules of the game to figure out what happens: If the cop wants to punch one of the Triads in the face, can he land the blow? And, if so, what happens to the Triad? How do the other Triads react?

The only way to find out is by playing the game!

Of course, there are a bunch of RPGs that won’t fit this “traditional” mold. Solo RPGs without GMs, for example. If it’s relevant to the conversation, use a description that matches the game you’re trying to explain. But, generally speaking, if you’re trying to explain to someone what a motion picture is, you don’t need to immediately try to make them understand the differences between feature films, syndicated sitcoms, mini-series, and made for TV movies.

Speaking of film, one of the great things about joining the hobby today is that you don’t need to actually play an RPG to see what it looks like. So you’re final option for explaining to someone what an RPG to say:

Here’s a link to the middle of an episode of a Critical Role/ Dimension 20 / whatever actual play seems best. Watch five to fifteen minutes and you’ll have a pretty good idea what we’re going to be doing Friday night.

(I recommend not just linking to the beginning of an episode because there’s often a bunch of introductory folderol that isn’t actually playing the game. Try to give them a timestamp to some meaty examples of play, ideally featuring a healthy dose of the rules actually being used / dice being rolled.)

The point, of course, is that there’s no One True way of explaining what an RPG is, any more than there’s One True Way of playing them.

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