by Jonathan Albin

Created on: December 03, 2008

To outline what makes up a role playing game is mechanical. To describe the environment one is subject do during a game is physical. Explaining Role Playing Games, however, must be done at a nearly metaphysical level, or else the reader only takes away what he brought with him, So, to explain the RPG phenomena, one must feel what it is that makes them exciting.

How many of us played "cops and robbers", "spacemen and aliens", even the now-politically-incorrect "cowboys and Indians"? The unbridled imagination of that youthful play format, for the most part, is left behind in the modern 'grown-up' world. We have forgotten, mostly, how to see a bunny rabbit in a cloud, or to think "what if?"

Role playing games are, in a nutshell, a rule-bounded playground of our youth, the kind where you never skin your knee, you never have to be alone, where you get picked first in sports. Role-play lets the banker, for a little while, be the stagecoach bandit in the Wild West, or the auto mechanic be the first person to set foot on an alien planet.

For the person who guides this community foray into imagination, it is the easy way to authorship. Getting published in a book or magazine, is for many merely a fantasy. When game-mastering (or story telling, or a myriad of other title roles), the story becomes alive. Players experience the joys - and the terrors, the agony and ecstasy- as if the the game were, for those precious moments - real

The dynamic that creates the interest and excitement, that gives the RPG its allure, is that of joint experience. When one person tells a story, it is iimpersonal, outside of you the hearer. When the story includes your input, when you becoma a part of the process, it moves to a realm of communal behavior, wherein believing does, for the time period, make real that which is imagined. It is this sharing, communing, and being a part of something that draws literally millions of players to the game tables.

Other modes of play capture more physical aspects (such as live-action or dinner theatre). Others draw on more precise data maintenance (like war games and high end strategy games). Still others feast on the spirit of group hysteria and excitement (like party games and gambling games). But for the pure joy, the unmitigated childlike wonder, the open and unadulterated (pun intended) communication and experience, nothing comes close to the Role Playing Game.

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