Video – What are Role-Playing Games?

Hi everyone, and welcome! My name is Josefin Westborg, and I am from the Department of Game design at Upsala University, and I’m also part of the ROCKET project. Today we are going to talk about role-playing games, and we are also going to talk about closely related activities to role-playing games to help you get an idea about what role-playing games are, so let’s get started! Usually we talk about that there are three types of role-playing games: there are virtual or digital role-playing. These are text based or graphical computer games that I think a lot of you have played. You often play them on a computer or a console, and they can be singleplayer or multiplayer; We also have tabletop role-playing games. These are usually played sitting at a table, sometimes with dice, character sheets, and also miniatures. They are not so physical, they are more verbal. Think of it as co-creating a story together, just improvising and together making up what happens and what is going on; Then we have live action role-playing games, or larps. And this is very close to tabletop role-playing games but it is more a physical, embodied role-playing. Sometimes you also wear costumes or props, or go to special locations. So tabletop and larps are more maybe on a spectrum, it’s a slider in between which is depending on how many components you have from each. Here we will focus on the last two, which might sound strange considering that we are talking about critical virtual exchange which is online and digital, but we are not having a programmed system that set the boundaries for what we can do in the same way as you would have in a digital game. In a digital game maybe you would like to go to a different part of the map, but you can’t, cuz that’s closed, while here, in larps or tabletop role-playing games, it’s more about what your imagination says you can or can’t do. So you’re not bound in the same way, therefore we consider what we’re doing here more in the second two categories rather than the first one.

So what is a role-playing game? Well, for our purposes here, I would describe this as the enactment of a character in a co-created fictional world. So this world we are creating together kind of becomes a magic circle of play. It’s like a little space in time where you all of a sudden can do things you wouldn’t normally do. The social and physicals rules of reality differ from what you do in daily life. This is something you would also see for example at a hen party or a stag party, or maybe at a carnival, where you all of a sudden do things you wouldn’t normally do, but it’s okay in that setting. But here we also have character, so it’s not just being yourself in that type of environment. And while props and costumes may exist, the fiction exists mostly in the minds of the players. And this is sometimes called subjective diegesis. This means that a role-playing game is not really something that is external to us in the same way like many of the digital games we talked about are: they are there, everyone can see the same thing. Here we are creating it within our minds. All audience members in a role-playing game are also participants, and they are co-creators. So this means that a role-play have a first-person audience. This would be different compared to for example going to the theater, where you would be a third-person audience, so you would sit down and watch from the out outside. While here, in order to see and witness these kind of works, you kind of need to participate. Even if this has actually changed in some ways recently because now it’s actually quite common to also watch others that are playing tabletop role-playing games, for example such as in the web series Critical Role, or to listen to podcasts where people are playing role-playing games. Then you are a third-person audience, but you are also not affecting the story in any way, so you are not actually playing the role-playing game yourself.

While we often see fantasy or science fiction or post-apocalyptic fiction in many role-playing games, they can actually be set in any genre, any setting, or have any theme. And games can also vary a lot in length: they can be just a couple of minutes long but they can also go on even for weeks, and sometimes they have breaks in between. So maybe you play every other Saturday for two hours or something. But they can also be ongoing, as going for a larp for maybe a full week without taking an actual break. You have probably played either a role-playing game or something very close to it, and that’s why I want to help you understand what this is by talking a bit about these types of cousin forms that are very close to role-playing games, even if they are not the same thing. The most common one that most of us probably have had some kind of experience with is childhood pretend play. This is a spontaneous, co-creative expression that is based on emergent playfulness and sometimes it also includes role enactment. So in many ways it is very close to role-playing games, but it differs in that it has quite a loose framework when it comes to rules and characters. It’s more focused on emergent imagination, so having a fiction that is very coherent is not as important. In childhood pretend play it can switch very fast, and something that was maybe a walking stick one second can be a wand in the next and then a sword. It just keeps changing where you are and what you’re doing, and that would not be the case in the same way in a role-playing game. Sometimes childhood pretend play is enacted alone, and you can see this for example being done with imaginary friends, so interacting with beings arising from the imagination. But you can also see it in transitional objects, so imbuing inanimate objects with magical powers, consciousness, personality traits, or other special qualities. For example as in the picture: maybe having a doll that you feel are real and alive, or a teddy bear or something like that. Then, we have paracosms, which is creating imaginary worlds, where the child can dictate and imagine exactly what is happening within this world and where it’s going. And finally, we also have identity play, which is imagining the self as someone else. So maybe being Batman, for example.

Sometimes though, childhood pretend play is also enacted in groups. And then you are often enacting roles in specific social circumstances. So here you would find social games such as: Chase play, for example this could be tag or hide and seek; We also have Domestic play, such as playing house; Or Professional play, where you would play school, for example; a good example here is Cops and Robbers. That is a combination of chase play and professional play but with certain moral connotations on top of it; And finally, we also have Dark play, that can be either consensual or non-consensual. So something that could fit here is bullying, which is very much non-consensual, but that some people would consider a type of play.

Other cousin forms of role-playing games also include board games and card games. They are usually some kind of strategy game played around a table. Here we have put board games and card games together, because for our purposes here, they are very much alike. They can be collaborative, for example the board game Pandemic, or they can be competitive, such as Monopoly. They sometimes use randomizers like dice in order to add an element of chance and not just be a fully full strategy game as, for example, chess would be. And they often have objects to physically represent characters or items and also locations. So this could be cards, miniature figurines, tokens, or terrain, and such. And while real extensive role-playing is not that common, you may have a role that is associated with players actions. So for example Miss Scarlet in the murder mystery Clue, then you play Miss Scarlet, or maybe you’re playing Russia in Diplomacy or, a green plaines walker wizard in Magic the Gathering, or maybe you’re a trainer because you’re playing the Pokémon go card game. So you could still have roles even if they are not enacted in the same way. There are also very specifically skill focused games. They emphasize displaying specific skills. Here you could have, for example, remembering facts like in Trivial Pursuit, or it could be solving puzzles like in Mahjong, improvising communication with a partner or a team as in Pictionary, or maybe it’s about counting cards in a deck as in Bridge where you also have communication with your partner. So you have a combination in Bridge actually. And then you have socially maneuvering such as in the game Werewolf. You also have resources gathering games. They focus upon gathering resources which could be land, or wealth, or treasure, or allies, and so on. So here a classic example would be Settlers of Catan or Game of Life. Okay, now we’re going to talk about simulations, or sometimes people talk about educational role-playing. And these are spontaneous expressions, so they are very very close to role-playing games, but they are based on specific learning goals or parameters as a form of experiential learning. So everyone who steps in does that with the purpose of learning a specific thing: they know that’s what they’re there doing. And very often in simulations you have more of social roles, you don’t have so much of a full-fledged character. These types of games may include more or less creativity depending on the structure, so it depends on what you need to do. They are often used to train specific skills or competencies. They can be technical, such as how to fly a fighter jet, or they can be social, such as how to interact with the locals at a peace building mission, or they can be both. You often see this in connection to some form of professionalization. The examples I just gave were connected to the military where we often see these things, but you can also find it in education, for example practicing a language, so you are playing out little scenes together pretending to order at a café, for example, using the new language. Or in government, where you are dealing with how to handle an epidemic, so you play out scenarios beforehand to practice that. Within health care, also very common, maybe it’s about practicing bedside manners while also practicing taking a blood pressure for example. We also see it in therapy, where you might practice how to give mental first aid. Or in business, where you could practice, for example, how to have a good sales meeting. People train to be in those professions using role-playing games as a practice. They often do this so they don’t have to fail in their actual professional setting, in what might be quite a high-stakes situation. So here they have a chance to practice it in a more tolerant situation where you also can adapt things like stress level for example.

Another example, that people often think about as related, is improvisation, improv. This is a spontaneous co-creative expression that is based on emergent playfulness, so it is very close in many ways to role-playing games. Sometimes it is for the group itself, and then we have the first-person audience that we talked about, that you participate, but it’s more common that you do it as a first-person audience when you practice for the main event, which is often for an audience and in this case then a third-person audience. It is often enacted for comedic purposes. So it’s more made to being watched in a way that you don’t see in the same way in the role-playing games, and usually it involves improvising short scenes and improvising characters. There are also something called long-form impro, where you have repeated enactment of certain characters but in new settings or new situations. Here we also find TheatreSport, which is a game-like improv where improvisers gain points based upon their ability to entertain. We then also have therapeutic role-playing games. These are spontaneous expressions based upon specific scenarios intended to evoke a certain response or practice a skill related specifically to emotional growth. So focus is more on personal development rather than learning a specific content or information. This may also include more or less creativity depending on the structure. Embodied role-playing is used in many therapeutic modalities and these are including: Psychodrama and Sociodrama, that was created by Jacob Moreno which is actually the one person who founded the term of saying role-playing. He’s the one who started with that, so it comes from here in many ways; But it’s also used in Drama therapy; Gestalt therapy; Cognitive Behavioral Therapy; Internal Family Systems, etc. We can also see this as a form of community activism, so it’s less on a one-to-one level, and it’s more about looking at the social realm and how things could be like if they were in different way. And here we would find an example in Theatre of the Oppressed, which is focused primarily on empowering people from marginalized groups.

Now we have talked a bit about closely related forms, and you probably have tried at least one of them. So you have some experience that is very close to role-playing even if you haven’t tried actual role-playing yourself. So in short, role-playing is a human activity that can take many forms, and it may include: character embodiment, community building rituals, interactive storytelling, fiction writing, puzzles and problem solving, and symbolic enactment. And at their core, there are three functions of role-playing games, you have: Community Creation – so for example ritual enactment; you have Skill Training – so that would be scenario building, problem solving, and practicing pro-social behaviors for example; and we have Identity Exploration – so this would be maybe trying to explore an alternative gender expression. Role-playing games actually create a space for participants to experience: agency, empowerment, an internal locus of control, experimentation with social rules, collaboration, perspective taking, empathy, playfulness, and meta-reflection. So what we want you to take away from this is that role-playing games are similar to other forms of playfulness, games, simulations, and sometimes also embodied artistic expressions. It is widely varied in terms of themes and mechanics, and it tends to defy very concrete definitions. It’s very hard to find a definition that covers all but also doesn’t cover a lot of the cousin forms as we talked about, and it’s also always evolving into new experimental forms, which is also what makes it very fun and interesting to work with. Here you can see our references, and I want to say thank you for listening, and I hope to see you soon in any of our other videos.