What is RPG?

Do you know whats is RPG?

Introduction

   RPG means Role Playing Game and a translation to portuguese coulde be “Jogo de interpretação de personagem”, in this activity people get together to create a narrative and during the game, they must face many situations and problems and solve them. 

The people can be classified into one narrator/master(in some games there could be more than one master[1]) and the other ones are players, each one with your own function in te story and these will be mensioned later[2].

   Nowadays there are many kinds of RPG[2], but  this work will be about the traditional tabletop RPG.

What is necessary to play?

   If you want to play, firstly, you will need arule system, a scenary or environment where the campaign will take place, besides one or more kinds of cards or dices( the most ordinary dices are d4,d6,d8,d10,d12,d20 and the number after “d” means how many faces the dice has)[1] and the character sheet. However the most important thing to a good game is the imagination of each player.

Player and Narrator

    Because the RPG game is a narrative, there is a world where fictional characters live, the function of the narrator is to create this world, he needs to develop the scenary, the landscape, the politic&social situation, introduce the character in the world, etc. For this he can use ideas that come from books, movies, others games or Rule book(that will be explained soon)

   The player develop the sheets of the people who live in the world, each one creates and control a character(even in some variations of the games more than one character can be controlled by the same player[1]) and try to overcome the challenges created and introduced by the narrator. These characters have their characteristics written in a character sheet, important informations about the character, like strength, intelligence, skills, physics and psychological characteristics and changes during the game are written in this sheet[3].

Adventure and campaign

  Adventures(or sessions) are the stories created by the master to be overcome by the players, the union of one or more adventures that introduce all the situations in a world are called campaign[2].

  Some campaigns can last one day(One-shot) or many days, weeks or years[1].

NPC’s

   The famous NPC’s(Non-Player-Character) are basically Characters who are controlled by Narrator, not for players[1].

Systems

   The systems are the rules wich help the players and the narrator to create the game. A system is chosen based on what the people want to do, introduce or the scenary who want to play (Ex: apocalyptic, medieval fantasy, and others). Between the information in the system, we can have the NPC’s, the skills that the character can obtain, the races they can be, the wepons, the dices wich will be used, etc.

Evolving

  In many systems exist manner to the players evolve, normally, this evolution is done with experience points or levels, this improvement happens based in the number of adventures or amazing things done by the characters(these two are the most ordinary), as well many others things, if the master and players prefer.

How are the adventures?

    In a adventure the players the players are put into choices situations, between them there are fights, negotiations, conversations and every kind of real or imaginary thing. These are created by the master and changed according the player’s decisions, in other words, the master create a story, but he can’t control everything what will happen after the beginning of the game, he has to adapt the the plot based on what the players do.

   In many cases, the choices has a probability of happens of one manner or other one-commonly good or bad to the him- this probability is chosen by the narrator and after that, the player plays one or more dices to discover how the action will happen based in the numbers which appears in the dice, the situation and the character’s skills.

    This means that the adventures create the game.

Conclusion

   These are the mainly characteristics of RPG, however, remember that the mainly is the fun you have, because RPG is a game, so, he intends to create social relationships and good experiences.   

The creativity is a very important thing to be worked and the existence of Rule Books don’t prevents the players or the narrator to produce ideas, rules, skills and why not their own systems to have fun.

Enjoy and GOOD GAME FOR ALL!!!

Referências

[1] PAREJO, Leandro.

http://saiadamasmorra.blogspot.com.br/p/o-que-e-rpg-role-play-game.html. Visto em 30 de Novembro de 2017

[2] https://www.significados.com.br/rpg/



Autores: Matheus da Silva Fonseca
               Renato Jorge Araujo
2º Ano de Mecatrônica