As a follow-up to the post on tabletop games, and with the launch of our actual play Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition podcast, one of the topics that I’ve heard many people say they’re confused about is Role-Playing Games. These games often seem quite intimidating, as they don’t fall under the normal rule sets of many games and seem like they would be difficult to get into. To answer the very first question:

What is a Role-Playing Game?

A role-playing game, at its base, is a cooperative storytelling game. There is one person, usually referred to as the game master or dungeon master (also, GM or DM), who leads the story, but the players develop the characters, as well as the actions that flesh out the story and direct which way it goes. There are certain times where dice are then used to help determine decisions, what the characters know, or how combat is going. But the thing that I find the most fun about role-playing games is the storytelling, and the fact that, with some role-playing games, you don’t even need the dice to tell the story.

Aren’t there a lot of rules? Aren’t they hard to learn?

I’m going to go with the answer to this being no. For the players, there are a relatively small number of rules to learn. And most of the time, they simply involve what numbers to add to a die roll. If players have questions about anything else, they can ask the game master, who will explain what happens or doesn’t happen.

The game master, on the other hand, has more rules to learn, as they are controlling what can and can’t work in the world or in the story itself, but even for them, books like the Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide and the Monster Manual lay out very clearly how things work, and the game master can even roll die to determine what the story is going to be. And since some rules are used very rarely, in such cases it’s okay for the game master to stop the game for a few minutes to give the players a break while the game master looks up a rule in a guidebook.

Isn’t it hard to come up with a story?

Yes and no. Since role-playing games are cooperative, they make it easier to ad-lib a story, as the players are helping to fill in the details that the game master hasn’t come up with. And often, the players will do something that is completely different than the game master expected. So the trickier part for the game master is often adjusting the story on the fly and moving around within their mental map than actually coming up with the story itself.

There are also many pre-made modules for the many different systems that you can play. With these, you just add in more details to the world already presented to you, since the heart of the story is already laid out. This does bring up something called “railroading,” which happens when a decision is taken out of the characters hands and they are forced to go a single way dictated by the pre-made story. More of this with new players isn’t a bad thing, as long as people are having fun and learning. But eventually, you will want more of an open world where there are stories and hooks for the players to latch on to, but within which they can choose to do different things.

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These are some of the main questions that I’ve heard when it comes to role-playing games. I’m sure there are many that I’m leaving out, and I really want to answer questions as they come up (and if I don’t know an answer, I’ll know who to ask), so please let me know if there’s something you’d like to know more about. The main thing to remember, which I’ll borrow from The RPG Academy, is that “If you’re having fun, you’re doing it right.”

Now, I’d recommend sticking as close to the rules as you can at first to learn the game, but find a group of people that you can have fun with and play with them, and take yourself as seriously or as goofily as the group wants to within the game, and just run with it that way. And if the first group you play with isn’t the right one for you, go ahead and find another one if you find that role-playing games are something that you really like, and try again, because there are many people who play out there.

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