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Can someone explain all the Roleplay Groups for me?
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I'm not in any of the Roleplaying Games (RPG) on Goodreads, but I do participate in an RPG with my honeyman and our married friends once a week, so I can explain it a little bit.Ever heard of Dungeons & Dragons? It's essentially that. Each person makes a character (or two), all in his or her imagination. They have a name, looks, abilities, personalities, quirks, etc. And depending on the type of RPG, a group of players meet and act as their characters to complete certain missions. One person in the group is the Game Master, or GM, which means they shape the way the missions turn out. Usually the only things used in RPG are your voice / acting skills, dice, pencils, and some character sheets with your characters info and stats.
Sooo...for example: The RPG that we do is based on a (cancelled) show called Firely, so the world that our characters are in is based off of this show (think space-cowboy kind of setting. Sounds dorky, I know).
My boyfriend is the GM, so he's not a particular character. He just tells us what our charcters see where, and he acts as any secondary characters that he creates for the purposes of our mission.
My character is Jaidyn, a smuggler. My friend's character is Chiyo, a pilot and a mind-reader. And her husband is Cal, the captian of our ship and an ex-soldier.
The GM sets up a scene where the three of our characters meet, and we essentially "talk" as each of our characters. You can make up accents and weird personalities to make the character more interesting. From there, we usually all have a common goal, and each week when we get together with our friends to game, we pick up where we left our characters and go from there. Sometimes our characters get into fights or battles, and we roll dice to see the outcomes.
This is kind of hard to explain...I only started gaming about 2 years ago, and it was really hard to get used to the idea of just using pens, paper, dice, and a RPG reference book to play a game...
And RPG has to do with books because each different kind of RPG has gaming guides and books to go along with it, to help you set up the world, characters, and dice-rolling. Next time you're in a book store, ask where they keep the D&D game guides, and you'll see that there's all sorts of types.
PHEWWW! Long explanation. I hope this helps.
Oh, and also you should check out that show Firefly on DVD if you get the chance. It was on Fox for 1 season before it was cancelled, but it was a good show, and it led to the making of the movie Serenity to tie up some loose ends. It's good.
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I have heard of Dungeons and Dragons, but truthfully never understood what that was about either. :o)
Now it makes sense why there are so many Roleplay groups with books titles (like Harry Potter roleplay, or Percy Jackson roleplay, or Warrier roleplay, or Twilight roleplay, etc etc). They are basing their game into the world of the book in the roleplay description. Interesting! Now I see how it relates to books.
So am I correct to assume that these are not games where there is a "winner" but more games of fun and sharing with people who have similar interests? So the roleplay groups here on Goodreads are probably for people who are big fans of the book or genre named in the roleplay, a way for them to connect with people with similar interests?
Roleplay is like a story stick game.On Goodreads, I'm not sure of the quality of roleplay. Most seems to be similar to AOL chats but teens pretending to be characters :P
I play an online text based game (MUSH - multi-user shared hallucination) based an original theme. It's fun :)
Mod
I think its a lot like fan fiction sites only with a lot of contributing authors and no clear storyline with these younger aged groups.
Sheila wrote: "Okay, what is it with all the Roleplay Groups here on Goodreads?? What in the heck is roleplay all about anyway? Does anyone here participate in those groups? If so, please explain what they are a..."Sheila, I'm glad you asked this question, because I've looked at those Roleplay groups too, and wondered what the heck was going on! Thanks Sarah Tanja and Tera for your answers!
Thank goodness someone finally asked this question!! From loking at some of the thousands of RP groups here on GR, I had already surmised that it is essentially make-believe play for teens and pre-teens. I played like this when I was a very young girl, only in real time, since the Internet had not been invented by Dan Quayle yet. :) I would feel silly doing it now.
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I think you must be RPing ;) Al Gore takes credit for inventing the internet.
Ah! Thanks for the correction. Dan Quayle is famous for not being able to spell "tomato".
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Good luck, Tera, such an exciting time!
Hi, Sarah, glad to meet a fellow Firefly fan on GR. Have you watched Nathan Fillion on "Castle"? I enjoy the show and his performance quite a lot.
Marsha wrote: "Hi, Sarah, glad to meet a fellow Firefly fan on GR. Have you watched Nathan Fillion on "Castle"? I enjoy the show and his performance quite a lot."No, I haven't seen it yet! I heard it's really good though - I was thinking about just going out and renting or buying the first season. I like Nathan Fillion a lot, he has a really funny dry humor.
He is a real charmer as Castle, for sure.
Yay, maybe it'll be just as interesting as seeing him in Firefly then! So sad that Firefly isn't around anymore, he was such a likeable character.
Nathan Fillion typically plays the charmer. Firefly, Dr. Horrible's Sing-along and now Castle. Squee!I will say that MMORPG RP doesn't hold a candle to some RP I've done on MU*s (MUSH, MUX, MOOs). Wikipedia on those terms to learn more. HEE! Not all are fan-based though. The current one I play is an original theme based upon a mix of the Ancient Roman-Greek eras.
Tanja, I wikied MU* and got so many definitions that I couldn't be more confused!
Some one else knows Dr. Horrible. /gleeI wanted to hate Dr. Horrible when my husband brought it home on DVD (I'd resisted the urge when it was only online - I have this aversion to watching streaming video on the pc.. don't ask me why). But Nathan Fillion and Neil Patrick Harris? What can I say? Part of me still thinks of Harris as Doogie though.
I don't like Castle as much as I did Firefly. Mostly because the chemistry between Castle and the female lead, whose name escapes me, just seemed kinda bleh to me. I did think Waitress was funny. Andy Griffith and Nathan. I'm showing my 80s colors now.
Tanja - I'll agree .. I've never seen really good RP in an MMO vs those I've seen in MUDs and MUCKs. And although I haven't done pen and paper RP for over 15 years (sigh, I'm old), My husband wants to us to join a game that a co-worker of his GMs. It's some zombie storyline too which doesn't really pique my interest. I have to say I don't think RPGs and coworkers really mix. It's same as friending your boss on Facebook. Some things should stay at work and some thing should stay at home. :)
Jackie wrote: "Some one else knows Dr. Horrible. /gleeI wanted to hate Dr. Horrible when my husband brought it home on DVD (I'd resisted the urge when it was only online - I have this aversion to watching strea..."
I agree with not gaming with co-workers...usually it's best to keep work and personal lives separate. However, a RPG with zombies sounds really, really cool.
If you click on the groups section, on the recently active groups, most of the time all the recently active groups are Roleplay. Fantasy roleplay, twilight roleplay, mature roleplay, wizard roleplay, blah blah blah roleplay. And people just post strange bits and pieces of conversations and stuff there.
Someone please explain this to me. :o)
And what do all these groups have to do with books?