In roleplaying, participants adopt and act out the role of characters, or parts, that may have personalities, motivations, and backgrounds different from their own. Roleplaying, also known as RP to some, is like being in an improvisational drama or free-form theater, in which the participants are the actors who are playing parts, and the audience.
People use the phrase "role-playing" in at least three distinct ways:
Contents |
The term role playing was originally coined in the 1920s by Jacob L. Moreno, a Viennese psychiatrist who surmised patients gained more from exploring their problems by acting them out than by talking about them.[2] When the practice became popular in business and educational institutions twenty years later the problem solving aspect shifted towards the learning of a role for later real life assumption.
"What astronauts do in their practice for missions; what pilots do in learning to navigate in flight simulators; what thousands of soldiers do in the course of military exercises--it's all role playing. Teaching salespersons to deal with customers, teaching doctors to interview patients, teaching teachers to deal with difficult situations, all these require some measure of actual practice and feedback."[3]
After its inception into the realm of business, role playing has steadily flourished for over fifty years expanding into multiple areas of public and private life.[4]. Formal examples include: teaching (especially in the development of social skills, communication skills, and interpersonal skills), self-help groups, organizational management, leadership training, professional training, scientific research in the social sciences, and even sports. Less formal examples have also arisen including: role playing games for entertainment, and sexual roleplaying practices. Now in the 21st century, role playing as a form of personal entertainment may be overtaking in numbers the more formal practice of educational roleplay.
Role-playing in the form of historical re-enactment has been practiced by adults for millennia as well. The ancient Romans, Han Chinese, and medieval Europeans all enjoyed occasionally organizing events in which everyone pretended to be from an earlier age, and entertainment appears to have been the primary purpose of these activities. Within the 20th century historical reenactment has often been pursued as a hobby.
Another role-playing tradition is the improvisational theatre tradition. This goes back in some sense to the Commedia dell'Arte tradition of 16th century. Modern improvisational theatre began in the classroom with the "theatre games" of Viola Spolin and Keith Johnstone in the 1950's. Viola Spolin, who was one of the founder the famous comedy troupe Second City, insisted that her exercises were games, and that they involved role-playing as early as 1946, but thought of them as training actors and comics rather than as being primarily aimed at being fun in their own right.
A role-playing game is a game in which the participants assume the roles of characters and collaboratively create stories. Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization, and the actions succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines. Within the rules, they may improvise freely; their choices shape the direction and outcome of the games.
There are many different types of role-playing games (RPGs). Many, and particularly those that came first, are centered around characters being created in fantasy universes. Of particular note is the advent of such games as Dungeons and Dragons in the 1970's, invented and propagated originally by Gary Gygax and David Arneson. Many different versions of this game were developed, and other types of games were spun-off from this original template, causing what was first developed as a hobby to become a multi-million dollar business venture.
A form of roleplaying in which partners take parts in a drama that provides sexual gratification; these might include a teacher and pupil, or employer and maid. Sexual roleplaying is common in BDSM, and is integral to most pseudonymous or anonymous forms of cybersex.
Sexual roleplaying also occurs, on various forms of online games. This is a generally less accepted type of roleplaying in an online community, though opinions about it vary. Social acceptance and attitudes to sexual roleplaying differ within various communities, often dependent on the community's genre or purpose (e.g., adult BDSM and fetish communities not only accept this behaviour but promulgate it as the main activity around which the online community functions). It is also not uncommon for players to form personal attachments or friendships with the player that they roleplay with.
The above mentioned example is generally better accepted in an online environment than roleplaying a character that involves sexual-related content in public or in abovementioned adult-themed roleplaying games.