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This section is devoted to inexperienced role players. If you have already played some role play game before, be not surprised if what you will read will look familiar.
Games are divided into a big adsortment: board games, card games, word games, image games, miniature games. Even in these categories there are sub-categories.
Board games, for example, can be divided into path games, real estate games, military simulation games, abstract strategy games, mistery games, and a flood of others.
However, in all this mass of games, role play games are unique. Alone they create a category which does not overlap any other.
For this reason, role play games are difficult to describe. Comparison does not work since there is nothing similar to compare.
At least, not without forcing your imagination far beyond its normal, everyday extent. Besides, forcing your imagination is really what role play game deals with.
Let's then try with an analogy.
Imagine you are playing a simple board game, called Snakes & Ladders. Your goal is passing from bottom to top of the game board before the other players.
Along the path there are traps which can make you slip backward to start position. There are also ladders which can make you bounce onward, nearer to arrival.
As for now, it is very simple and very normal.
Now let's change a couple of things. Instead of a flat board, without relieves with a path going from one side to the other, we have a maze.
You are at the entrance and you know there is an exit somewhere, but you do not know where. You must find it.
Instead of ladders and snakes, we will insert hidden doors and secret passages. You do not throw a die to see how far you can go, you can move as far as you want.
Follow the corridor up to the first junction. You can turn right, or left, or go on, or come back where you come from.
Otherwise, while you are here, you can search for a hidden door. If you find one, it will lead you to another corridor.
That corridor could lead you right to the exit or lead you to a dead end. The only way to discover it is to enter it and start walking.
Certainly, with enough time, you will eventually find the exit. To make interesting the game, let's put something else in the maze with you.
Dangerous things. Like assassins and thieves and spies and terrorists.
Obviously, we will give you a gun and a bullet-proof jacket, so that if you meet one of these things you can defend yourself. You know how to use a gun, don't you?
And there are also other players in the maze. They too have guns and jackets.
How do you suppose would another player react if she would randomly meet you? She could attack you, but she could also offer you to ally.
After all, even a terrorist could think twice before attacking two people armed with loaded guns and bullet-proof jackets.
Finally, let's put the board somewhere where you cannot see it. Let's give it to one of the players and let's name that player referee.
Instead of looking at the board, listen to the referee while he describes you what you see from your position on the board. Tell the referee what you want to do and he moves your piece consequently.
While the referee describes what surrounds you, try to figure it mentally. Close your eyes and build the maze walls around you.
Imagine the thieves as the referee describes them, while drawing their knives and coming forth along the corridor. Now imagine how you would react in that situation and tell the referee what you would do.
We have just built a simple role play game. It isn't an elaborate game, but it has the fundamental elements to make it a role play game:
the player is put in the middle of an unknown and dangerous situation created by a referee and she must find out the way to escape. This is the fulcrum of a role play game.
The player plays a character's role and she leads that character in an adventure. The player takes decisions, interacts with the other characters and players and, essentially, pretends to be her character during the game.
This doesn't mean that the player has to go onward and backward, turn around, and act as her character. It means that anytime the character is asked to do something or to take a decision, the player pretend to be in that situation and she chooses a proper line of action.
Physically, players and referee (Doom) should stay sitted confortably around a table with the referee at one side. The players need a lot of space for paper, pencils, dice, rule manuals, drinks and snacks.
The referee needs other space for her maps, dice, rule manuals and assorted notes.