What is an RPG?

Role-playing is simply the act of pretending to be someone other than yourself in an imaginary scenario (or possibly of playing yourself within an imaginary scenario). When one person dictates an imaginary scenario and other people control the will of individual characters within this scenario, we call this a role-playing game, or simply "RPG" for short. The person dictating the scenarios of the game is commonly called the gamemaster, and the other participants are simply referred to as players. The gamemaster typically controls all of the characters not being played by the individual players. In such a game, conflicts of will inevitably arise between participants as to how a given scene should play-out, so the gamemaster implements and adjudicates a system of rules for conflict resolution. Facts describing and relating to a given character are listed on a character sheet, and some of these traits also have a numerical value listed as a means of comparatively quantifying those traits' cinematic impact within the game. Devices of randomization such as dice or card decks are also commonly implemented into the mechanics of conflict resolution as a means of modeling the unpredictable factors that every individual faces. The mechanics of conflict resolution in any given RPG then implement one or more of the following three mechanisms: traits, narrative direction [from the gamemaster], and randomization.