Role-playing
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Contents |
Introduction
Role-playing, roleplaying, or RP in a fandom context involves a person adopting and acting out the role of a character from their fandom. Sometimes these characters are original characters based on the fandom, but often they are characters that already exist in the source media. Roleplaying can be performed privately between players, in a group context, or with an audience.
Kurt Lancaster has described how roleplaying takes place: "Through rules and oral storytelling, participants become immersed in an imaginary environment where they perform roles, becoming lead characters in an ongoing adventure. Players enact their characters through the verbal utterance of dialogue and action in fulfillment of a story that they essentially improvise" (Lancaster, Preface xxxi).
Types
Live action role-playing
Live action role-playing, or LARP, is "a form of role-playing game where the participants perform some or all of the physical actions of the characters they are playing within a pre-determined space for a pre-determined span of time. LARP may be considered a form of improvisational theatre."[1]
This section needs more information on this mode of RP.
Online role-playing
Unlike LARP, online role-playing takes place over the internet. All associated dialogue and actions are typed and transmitted online rather than performed face-to-face.
This section needs more information on this mode of RP.
Chatroom-based
This section needs more information on this mode of RP.
IRC
This section needs more information on this mode of RP.
Livejournal
This section needs more information on this mode of RP.
Message board
This section needs more information on this mode of RP.
Play by e-mail
Also known as PBEM, play by e-mail games rely on e-mail messages, including mailing list systems such as Yahoo Groups, to carry out gameplay. They do not require players to be online at the same time, but they can proceed slowly because of this.
This section needs more information on this mode of RP.
Collectible card games
Somes collectible card games (or CCGs) are called trading card games (TCGs) or customizable card games (also CCGs). Lancaster distinguishes collectible card games from other forms of role-playing:
- "The collectible card game combines the desire for collection with the opportunity for putting into play what one has collected. Pictures on the cards evoke a fantasy world. The cards are the interface through which players perform within a rules structure. [...] Since the script of the story is embedded within the cards, the players have less freedom to choose their own plot, character, and destiny than they find in role-playing games. The random placement of cards may suggest a story, but it is not told through a traditional verbal narrative. Instead, the goals the players attempt to achieve by playing certain cards at particular times engage bits of [the source's] narrative behavior, and, through association [...] a tale is told through the game structure. This evocation of an associational narrative arises from the pictures on the cards. They represent actual characters, places, and situations [from the source]. This representation creates the feeling of performing fictive moments from [it.]" (Lancaster, Preface xxxii)
In Lancaster's depiction, then, CCGs have the feeling of role-playing but aren't quite the same because of their particular structure.
Some CCGs are stand-alone games that later spawn related media, while others are based on previous media sources. Examples of well-known CCGs include the Buffy the Vampire Slayer CCG, Pokemon, and Magic: The Gathering. For a more complete list, see the list of CCGs onWikipedia.
References
- Lancaster, Kurt. Interacting with Babylon 5. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001.
