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To understand tabletop roleplaying, you've got to look beyond the dice and hitpoints and spells per day, beyond the dragons and elves and kobolds, and examine roleplaying itself, as an activity. This isn't as easy or obvious as it might sound. Many people, when they set out to define it, end up describing the trees rather than the forest, mistaking the parts for the whole and the surface for substance.

So what is roleplaying? Roleplaying is fundamentally three things:

1) Roleplaying is a spontaneous creative act. When you sit down to roleplay, you're not passively appreciating someone else's prepared work. You're creating your own, in real time. You're describing scenes, invoking characters and objects, and delivering dialogue that didn't exist before you said it. You're likely using numerous props to do so, such as character sheets, dice, and rules. But those are a scaffolding on which you build a piece of art that is entirely new, and never to be seen again. it can be beautiful or ugly, funny or sad, irreverent or deep. But you made it. Be proud of it. Celebration of preexisting material is often part of the process, be it favorite movies and books to evoke or imitate, prepared setting or adventures, or whatever sources you personally draw inspiration from. Just remember these all serve the purpose of creating something new in real time at the gaming table. They serve you, the player.

2) Roleplaying is an activity of shared imagination. The things you create don't exist in a vacuum, like a short story or poem. When you engage in creation through roleplay, you are speaking your works into a "shared imagined space so that other participants can experience them with you. This is more than the simple fact of an audience imagining a book's contents as they read it, for example. This is active participation by all players in building, upholding and enhancing a set of imagined fictional characters and events. That's not a trivial distinction. It means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and that no one has a passive role! It means an immense freedom to create combined with a responsibility to add constructively to the existing creation and not harm or disregard previous work.

3) Roleplaying is a conversation. Because we're all working together shared imagination when we roleplay, it's critical to remember that roleplaying is essentially the act of communicating with each other. Something "exists" or "happens" within the shared space only because someone says it does, and everyone accepts it. It's a process of listening generously and speaking with clarity. That way we all uphold the shared imagined space, understanding and respecting each other's contributions. Whether the conversation is about elves or wizards or cyborgs or gunslingers, and whether it's focused on resonant human issues, exploration and wonderment, or the thrill of competition and achievement, it's human beings and not fictional constructs that are engaged in the dialog. Everyone's voice should have weight and value, and everyone should be afforded basic respect. The aim of roleplaying is a fun and rewarding experience for real people at the table.

These are the basic principles underlying the roleplaying act. Everything else is just techniques and trappings. The fundamentals are worth considering for the enriching of your games. If you're blessed with an enjoyable roleplaying experience, it's still valuable to reflect on what works and why, to improve even more and help you in repeating the process in the future. Fun that's not repeatable is an ephemeral thing. And if you're not having fun, if your roleplaying life is frustrating or confusing, then going back to the root of the activity and addressing the other human players, as humans, is absolutely essential.

Happy gaming.

Learn more about this author, Joel P. Shempert.
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