Roll-playing

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Roll-Playing is a pun on the phrase 'role-playing' (as in role-playing game) for when character statistics and rolling dice (especially for combat) become more important than role-playing or telling a story. It generally is used to refer to hack-and-slash games. The use of the phrase "roll-playing" is generally considered to be derogatory, and can be interpeted as snobbish by those upon whom the criticism is levelled. It implies that a campaign, setting or play style has moved away from character interaction, diplomacy, and creative approaches to problems and has devolved into purely random checks.

Some argue that particular systems are especially vulnerable to roll-playing. Dungeons and Dragons, for example, receives this criticism due to the high array of skills and their applications, which textually can allow some players or GMs to simply roll through everything from dialogue to battle without actions being described. However, most systems that use dice and set rules have the criticism levelled at them, from Rifts to World of Darkness. Advocates of freeform and story-telling approaches of RPGs often argue that one key problem with more dice-based or rule-based systems is that they devolve to "roll-playing". Those who propose dice-based and/or rule-based systems typically reply that hack-and-slash can in fact be curtailed by systems with clearly restrained parameters.

It is also sometimes called 'Rule-Playing,' when the mechanical rules of the game become the most important part of the game.