I have written a few blog articles previously exploring issues we all know within our gaming community, and a lot of them have focused on RPG’s (Role Playing Games), or how best to gamemaster them. Then the thought occurred: what if you’re someone new who has stumbled across this page and are wondering what the heck the whole ‘roleplaying’ blogs are about, or even what are all these RPG’s we stock on the website?

    Well in short a ‘Tabletop RPG’ (Tabletop Role Playing Game) is an analogue game played out through a combination of storytelling, player actions, and probability-based deciders. It has rules (available in a wide variety of books and other sources) and dice (or cards or another form of chance-based metrics) and you play it with friends, (most of the time, some Solo RPGs are starting to arrive on the market). Breaking it down, it’s like a complex board game that involves a little bit of theater.

    RPGs are a story-told experience where you take the part of a character; what character is up to your imagination, and the predefined rules and setting of the game. The Storyteller, or Dungeonmaster, Gamemaster or whatever the referee is referred to by the rules, then tells a setting and a story that you participate in. You choose an action to undertake within the scenario and the Gamemaster will ask you to test your success as per the conditions of the game rules. This usually resolves via a dice roll and some numbers from your personal ‘character sheet’, which is a log, if you will, of your character in this story.

    The idea can seem complicated but at its heart it’s fun, and simple once you start to figure out what you’re doing. Let’s look at it another way, think of it as a book, a play or a movie. Unlike most of these mediums the destiny of a character is not preordained: you are writing it as the story gets told. So as you get to the part where you’re being chased by the guards through the city streets after stealing the necklace of the duchess, YOU choose if you duck into the nearby alley, or slide down the drain into the sewers, or climb the balconies and run over  the roof. Those actions are determined by you and the dice.

Probably the most well known RPG of all time is Dungeons and Dragons, a fantasy setting where you make your character and delve into mysterious dungeons, both literal and figurative, like a fantasy version of Indiana Jones or Lara Croft hoping to strike it rich. The stories told are as varied as your Dungeonmaster can narrate, and your options are vast. That can be said of roleplaying in general, for not only can you make almost any character you can think of, but you also have a myriad of available pre-made settings to choose from. Aficionados of both RPGs and historical reenactments have published an incredible range of settings and games over the past 50 + years.

    For instance, want to try something more historically based?  Try the Roman based fantasy setting of Lex Arcana. Or perhaps you prefer a contemporary 80’s setting, or want to play a retro “Stranger Things” style campaign, then you could try Tales from the Loop or Kids on Bikes. Do you love Harry Potter? You can play the alternate version of Kids on Bikes called Kids on Brooms, or perhaps you love a Mass Effect styled sci-fi like the RPG setting of Coriolis.

    The point is that in Tabletop Roleplaying the options are mostly limited by what book or game system you can find, and who can tell the story. The best part is, in the end, it’s YOUR stories, tales of you and your friends, ones for you to recount for many years to come… It is your own private Star Wars saga, Vampire Chronicle or Hobbit Journey.

    An RPG night is a few hours of throwing dice, theater, laughing, eating snacks and good conversations with friends, and who doesn’t want a nice night like that?