Roleplaying
Gameplay where players take on the goals and behaviors of fictional agents.
This pattern is a still a stub.
For a detailed analysis of early roleplaying habits, see the book Shared Fantasy[1].
See the category of Roleplaying Games on this wiki for additional examples.
Examples
Dungeons & Dragons GURPS Basic Roleplaying Storytelling System Mutant Europa Universalis series Fallen Reich Call of Cthulhu
Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game
Unwinnable Games (← links) Drop-In/Drop-Out (← links) Dedicated Game Facilitators (← links) Agents (← links) Avatars (← links) Gameplay Statistics (← links) Non-Player Characters (← links) Characters (← links) Freedom of Choice (← links) Dungeons & Dragons (← links) GURPS (← links) Multiplayer Games (← links) Character Defining Actions (← links) Enforced Agent Behavior (← links) Extra-Game Consequences (← links) Internal Conflicts (← links) Internal Rivalry (← links) Single-Player Games (← links) Call of Cthulhu (← links) Shadow Run (video game) (← links) Category:Roleplaying Games (← links) Self-Facilitated Games (← links) Evolving Rule Sets (← links) Sleep is Death (← links) Game Masters (← links) Paranoia (← links) Category:Tabletop Roleplaying Games (← links) Category:Computer-based Roleplaying Games (← links) Live Action Roleplaying (← links) Category:Live Action Roleplaying Games (← links) Persistent Game Worlds (← links) Massively Multiplayer Online Games (← links) Ars Magica
Example: Dungeons & Dragons, perhaps the best known tabletop fantasy roleplaying game, is actually a game system that can be used in different Game Worlds. These Game Worlds can be totally player-created, but there are also commercial game worlds available. The gameplay is based on the group of players that roleplay members of a party going adventuring in sometimes exquisitely detailed fantasy settings with elaborate plot structures. In Dungeons & Dragons, most often only one of the players is the Game Master (actually Dungeon Master but Game Master is the more generic term) who acts as the game facilitator presenting and resolving the imaginary situations to the players. The gameplay is usually almost wholly based on verbal communication between the players and the Game Master. Rules, resolution tables, and dice are used to resolve the conflict situations, which usually involve combat between players and monsters.
Example: In Live Action Roleplaying Games (LARPs) the players act out their characters in real life and not only sit around the table talking to each other. The real world is used as the basis for the setting of the game, and sometimes the players put in countless hours of work to make the settings and their characters fit the theme of the game as well as possible. LARPs, of course depending on the play style, are usually more oriented on acting out the roles of the characters than tabletop roleplaying games, and some play styles are closer to improvisational theater than playing games.
While in disguise, spies in Team Fortress Classic need to move as part of the other team in order to avoid detection. This forces the players to enact a type of roleplaying using only movement and facing (since they cannot shoot or talk to members in the enemy team).
Using the pattern
Roleplaying is based on Identification between players and game components that could be Agents in their own right (at least on a diegetic level), so a primary need for the pattern is to create such suitable game components. This is typically Avatars or Characters (making them Player Characters) since they can have goals and intentions associated with them which players can adopt, but arguably Abstract Player Constructs such as countries in the Europa Universalis series or civilizations in the Civilization series can work.
Imaginary situations and the nature of the players' characters in Roleplaying can be almost anything from Conan-style hack'n'slash fantasy to animals wishing to escape from the zoo to bored housewives in the suburbs. Even though the genre of roleplaying games is more or less centered on fantasy, science fiction, and horror themes, roleplaying in general can take form in any kind of setting.
Two main elements of Roleplaying games are the players' Characters and the imaginary Game World, which is often a Player Constructed World and Persistent Game World. In immediate Social Interaction situations, such as in tabletop Roleplaying games, the Game World itself is in the players' imagination. These Game Worlds, however, may have extensive amounts of background information available to the players that may include detailed histories, geographies, novels, short stories, campaign settings, and even movies.
Computerized online roleplaying games, such as MUDs and MMORPGs, have and maintain their Game Worlds in digital format. Text-based MUDs also use the players' imagination as an important "game engine" for making the Game Worlds come alive while the current MMORPGs shift the focus from the players' imagination to offering Immersion in detailed audio-visual representations of the Game World.
The players must obviously somehow have access to the Characters in the Game World. Many games, especially computer roleplaying games, offer ready-made Characters with different kinds of Skills and abilities for the players, but it seems that the Emotional Immersion is more vivid and likely if the players have at least some Creative Control over their Characters and especially Character Development during gameplay. Even seemingly small things, such as changing the color of the hair of an Avatar, allow possibilities for further Identification with the players' Characters.
Roleplaying games are often played by groups of players promoting Team Play in general. Games with more stable teams also offer possibilities for not only Character Development for single players but for Team Development for members of the team.
An alternative way of achieving Roleplaying in games with Teams is through the use of Betrayal. This since a player is Roleplaying when pretending to have other intentions than he or she in fact has. The same effect can be achieved through having Infiltrate goals (and can be said to work for Single-Player Games), as for example through the spy class in Team Fortress Classic.
Secret Goals in any Multiplayer Game can serve a similar purpose but does not have to be as easily noticeable by other since players are not force to pretend to have any specific goals.
In Roleplaying games, Internal Conflicts exist on many levels: within a player, within the player group, and between Game Masters and the players.
A special case of the Internal Conflicts that a player can have is that between him or her and the Character being played.
A special case of Roleplaying exists when players pretend to be other players than they themselves are. This may not be to impersonate other, but rather to be able to have a Possibility of Anonymity in games with Social Interaction.
Many games focusing on Roleplaying often wish to provide a large amount of Freedom of Choice for players on how to portray the Agents they are Roleplaying. Sandbox Gameplay can provide players with this freedom while Game Masters can not only roleplay Non-Player Characters but can also improvise ways of allows players to do what they want.
Diegetic Aspects
Roleplaying often requires players to be able to not only interact with other players but also diegetic entities such as Non-Player Characters. For the Roleplaying to become a interactive exchange and have flexibility, Game Masters may need to roleplay the Non-Player Characters rather than having them be their own Agents.
Interface Aspects
While Unmediated Social Interaction makes Live Action Roleplaying as well as vocal Enactment possible, enforced Communication Channels can compartmentalize In and Out of Character Conversations to help support Narrative Engrossment.
Narrative Aspects
Roleplaying games naturally tend to have strong Narration Structures to motivate the goals and desires of Characters, as well as increasing the possibilities for Identification and Emotional Engrossment.
All Roleplaying games happen in imaginary Game Worlds, with the possible exception of some of the therapeutic uses of Roleplaying, and these Game Worlds are shared fantasies created during the gameplay by the players themselves. Even in cases where players use commercial Game Worlds as the setting for their campaigns, players have to make these settings alive while playing the game, making them Player Constructed Worlds.
Consequences
Roleplaying typically leads to Enactment in various forms but not always - while Roleplaying in Tabletop Roleplaying Games can consist of moving Miniatures on maps and speaking as one's Character would, it can also just consist of stating what actions one is doing without any Enactment whatsoever. Regardless, adopting the goals of diegetic Agents can lead to Narrative Engrossment.
While Roleplaying is most common in Multiplayer Games, and there creates a particular form of Social Interaction, it is not necessary and can therefore Multiplayer Games can be seen as a way to modulate Roleplaying. Examples of situations where Roleplaying can occur even when no other player are present include when making a country behave as it did historically while playing one of the games in the Europa Universalis series or when playing a Character in Fallout: New Vegas as one decided it should behave during its creation.
When done in Multiplayer Games, Roleplaying requires Cooperation between the players to uphold an Alternative Reality and the possibility of Narrative Engrossment. One common issue regarding this Cooperation, and which can require Negotiation, is that Roleplaying may give rise to both In Character Conversations and Out of Character Conversations and that different players may have different opinions on their appropriateness and how much it disturbs Narrative Engrossment. Roleplaying games with human Game Masters typically contain large amounts of Storytelling, being not only what Game Masters can use to drive the game forward but also being how players can describe their actions and how Game Masters provide Effect Descriptions of those actions.
Relations
Can Instantiate
Enactment, In Character Conversations, Narrative Engrossment, Out of Character Conversations, Storytelling
with Characters
with Multiplayer Games
with Unmediated Social Interaction
Can Modulate
-
with Multiplayer Games
Cooperation, Social Interaction
Can Be Instantiated By
Abstract Player Constructs, Agents, Avatars, Betrayal, Characters, Game Masters, Identification, Non-Player Characters, Player Characters, Sandbox Gameplay
Possibility of Anonymity together with Social Interaction
Can Be Modulated By
Communication Channels, Multiplayer Games, Unmediated Social Interaction
Possible Closure Effects
Potentially Conflicting With
History
A rewrite of the pattern Roleplaying that was part of the original collection in the book Patterns in Game Design[2].
