Game Studies - What Are Role-Playing Games And Where Do They Come From?

As a team we have decided to work on role-playing games for our second presentation. To start this off I will attempt to answer the question, "what is a role-playing game?". Delving into multiple sources for different opinions on the subject before coming to my own conclusion. Once this is out of the way I will move on to a brief history on role-playing games and their heritage, where did they come from?

'A game in which players take on the roles of imaginary characters who engage in adventures, typically in a particular fantasy setting overseen by a referee.' (Role-playing game, no date)








In almost every computer game you take on the role of a character, moving through the narrative of the game with said character. In the game The last of us you take on the role of Joel with his tragic backstory of his daughters death, seeing resemblance of his daughter in Ellie as he guides her through an apocalyptic world. With this being known, what gives a game the right to belong in the RPG category?



Perhaps it is stats and loot that really makes an RPG? But if you think about it, almost every game has some variation of this. This surely means that it has to be a certain type of stats and loot, one which allows you to improve your character by making changes in the game world. If you complete a series of quests that alter the game world, you will be rewarded with points or items which improve your character or avatar. In Battlefield 4 you complete missions and gain items which improve your characters ability to defeat its enemies and make changes to the game world. So this definition cannot be used to completely describe a role-playing game either.

With all of this information I have come to the conclusion that it is the element of choice that makes a role-playing game. You can choose what type of character you would like to play; do you want to be a wizard or a warrior. There is choice when it comes to upgrading your character; Where would you like to put these points, strength or hit points?  The decisions that you make during objectives in the game make an impact on the narrative; Kill the two headed beast or make friends with it and have it help you complete your objectives? Those kind of choices help to mold the narrative of your character using your own imagination, a sense that this is your character and no one else has the same character as you.

Where Do Role-Playing Games Originate?

Tabletop war-games have been around for hundreds of years, this in my opinion gave us the tools to build the modern RPG. In these games the players move model armies across a board, rolling dice to decide how much damage said army does to the opposing force. Usually the game comes with a codex which gives you the range of each unit and other useful information like hit-points. Along with the useful game information the codex also gives you a backstory for the faction of your choice, a reason for conflict with the other faction or factions. The most notable example of this would be Chainmail created by Gary Gygax and Jeff Parren published in 1971.

From these mechanics and some innovative thinking Dungeons & Dragons was borne. The game was invented by the creators of the wargame Chainmail, a gamer called Dave Wesley was implementing elements of role-play when playing the game with his friends. Catching wind of this Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax started to implement his own role-playing rules into the game. In 1974 the mechanics and new rules were implemented into the game we now know as Dungeons & Dragons. It was the first commercially available RPG game. D&D gave us all of the mechanics for every RPG game that spawned after it such as character skill points, stories and the element of chance from the dice.

World wide success stories such as the Warcraft franchise owe a lot to table top games like Dungeons and Dragons. we should never forget our roots and if we do forget, then we have lost our way. That is all for this afternoon folks and have a good one.