You mean, besides have fun?
Okay, for those of you who don't quite get it ...
What's a Role Playing Game?
Role Playing Games (RPGs), such as the classic Dungeons
& Dragons (D&D), are sort of like playing Cowboys
and Indians for those who don't want to run around the house with
cap guns, and who are tired of arguing about whether that shot
hit or not. Or, for the more literary-minded, they represent a
collaborative novel, with each player contributing the actions
and reactions of one character in the novel, under the overall
editorial guidance of a Game Master (GM).
Players generally (and all of this is a generalization, since
there are exceptions to each of these statements in the RPG world)
take on the role of a character moving within a general storyline
put together by the GM. For various reasons, this is usually in
an epic high fantasy sort of setting (a la J.R.R. Tolkien), but
RPGs can and are played in science fiction, Old West, feudal
Japan, modern-day spy, or super-hero type settings, just to name
a few.
A character, as put together by the player (usually) has
certain attributes of both body and mind that give him or her
various strengths or weaknesses. They may have set vocations as (in
the standard D&D-style fantasy game) fighters, priests,
wizards, thieves and the like, or they may simply have a set of
various skills and talents to use in the course of the game.
The nature of various games varies greatly, depending on the
GM and the players. They can range from hack-and-slash arcade-style cut-em-ups to intricate Machiavellian soap operas. Usually there's
at least some level of character interaction, often puzzles or
problem-solving to avoid traps or figure out what the Bad Guys (as
run by the GM) are up to. As an impartial and randomizing
mechanism, dice are often used to determine the outcome of
certain events (e.g., a person with a given skill and weapon has
to roll a certain range of numbers in order to injure a
particular opponent with a given skill and weapon — though
this is also used for other skills, such as the chance of picking
a lock, spotting a trap, etc.).
Just like in a book or movie, the players are usually set up
with one or more problems to solve. These may constitute a self-contained
adventure, or may be just a chapter in a longer saga. Players
"win" by fulfilling their characters' goals —
usually (though not always) surviving to live another day, saving
the world, rescuing the village, getting rich, finding a lost
love, discovering who their parents really are, etc. Usually
success is coupled with some sort of mechanism in the game to
improve the character — becoming more skilled or powerful in
the attributes the character used in the game.
The classic question that non-gamers ask, politely, is, "Did you
win?" The question is usually, unfortunately,
meaningless. Success (not winning) usually comes from defeating
one's opponents (for the moment), achieving some goal (until another goal
is set up), or simply surviving. Think of it, again, as a
book. Did the characters "win" at the end? No
(especially if each chapter ends in a cliffhanger). But you can
certainly say that they "succeeded" (or "failed").
But, ultimately (at least for me and most of my friends), the point of
gaming is like most other group pastimes -- the socializing, the fun, the
getting together and having an adventure, having a couple of beers, being
intellectually stimulated, telling jokes -- trivial stuff like
that.
