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character that should, of course, be impossible to exist. Play them anyway.

My original intent with this section of my dissertation on role-playing games was to introduce new players to the definitions and ideas of character classes and how to play alternate character races. Fortunately, what I originally planned to write has since become much more succinct and filtered; unfortunately, this means it's also going to be shorter.

A character class, also known as a job, discipline, role, or even career, is how your character, whatever race they may be, fits into the world of the RPG you're playing in. Since fantasy games are the most prevalent as far as the role-playing real-world goes, I'll use common denominators from those. Typically you'll have a fighter class, a magic user class, a rogue class, and a ranger class, and each of these in turn may be split or pared down to sub-classes, or specialization classes, within the primary class itself. Of your magic users you may, indeed, have non-magic using scholars, and under rogues you may have non-thieves, card sharps, and even bards and troubadours who play in crowds and take much more from their patrons than what is thrown in their hat, bag, or case. For warriors, you may have ranged classes, and for rangers you may have those who've learned the ways of the woods in order to perform rituals of light magic, or collect specimens of various flora and fauna for study. The thing to remember in all of this, despite how the description of your chosen class may sound, is that you have been trained to be an adventurer, or you have trained yourself to be an adventurer; so, even if you're a dandelion picker, and that's all your class description gives you, it is true that you are still able to live out in the world created for the game.

Playing an alternate race is much as I pointed out in my previous article, although the study you should perform would be in movies and television shows, such as the aliens of Farscape or Star Trek, and the Goblins from Lord of the Rings, etc. Much of playing an alternate race in any game stems on how YOU, the player, builds that race to be. Certainly there will be some basic descriptions and ideas for playing that race, but when it comes down to it, you will be responsible for building up the image of that race in front of your friends at the gaming table. Obviously, however, if there is a well-established race, such as Elves, and you're playing one, then there are certain tenets you must live

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