"You see stairs leading down at the end of the tunnel. What do you do?"
"I put my torch in front of me to light the way and walk down the stairs slowly?"
"At the foot of the stairs, you see a long corridor before you at the end of which is a door. On the either side of the corridor walls are torches mounted, unlit. Suddenly, an orc erupts from the door at the end of the corridor, brandishing an axe. He sees you, lets out a horrific scream, and runs toward you. What do you do?"
"Sit down, hum a tune."
"What!"
"Just kiddin'. Lit one of the torches, drop my torch, take out my bow, put an arrow on it, shoot!"
"Okay, you lit one of the torches. Though you make a total of two moves---dropping your torch is not considered a move according to the rules---you can still shoot the incoming orc. Anyway, your shooting die is a ten-sided. Roll that die. If you get four below, you hit him. If not, you miss."
"Whoa! Here it comes!"
Have you played a role-playing game without a computer?
Yes, you can play role-playing games (RPGs) without computers. Heard of
Dungeons & Dragons? Well,
Dungeons & Dragons Online maybe. These days, the first thing that comes to mind upon hearing "RPG" is a computer RPG (e.g. Dungeons & Dragons Online, Ragnarok Online, World of Warcraft, etc.). But the very first
Dungeons & Dragons tabletop RPG way back in the 1970s, a time when no PC was around, who could remember such a thing?
This ain't an April Fools joke, or any kind of joke for that matter, but RPGs were played without computers back then and even to this very day. It's widespread in the US and Europe, but very rare here in our country. This non-computer type of RPG is called the
tabletop RPG. In fact, when you say "RPG" in the past (and still today in the US and Europe), it's the tabletop RPG type that comes to mind first and not the computer RPG type.
What is a tabletop RPG?
Like in computer RPGs, you still play a character. But instead of pressing a keyboard button or clicking a mouse button, you state what your character attempts to say or do to your fellow players, who also play other characters. Most of the time, what you want your character to attempt has a chance to fail (e.g., swing a sword at an opponent, shoot an arrow at a target, cast a spell on someone).
Since an RPG is still a game after all, there are rules, and the rules determine whether your character succeeds or fails in what you want the character to do. For the sake of fairness, however, the rules require you to provide a random number that will be the basis of the rules to determine the success or failure of your character's attempt. Usually, you roll dice to obtain this random number.
But there was no computer before, so how could they see what their characters were doing or saying? How did they see and hear the world their characters dwell in or the other beings in that world, creatures, places, things, events, and all else?
Because there was no computer before, one player described to all those who played characters what those characters saw, heard, felt, tasted or touched in the fictional world. This player played the role of the world in which those characters dwelled, the creatures, places, things, events, and all else. All that the computer would show to an RPG player now, this player showed by telling. And indeed, when the PC was invented, it replaced this player called the game master (GM).
So what now?
I've been a GM of tabletop RPG for a while now, and I would like to stage a tabletop RPG in these forums. Fantasy is the setting.
To make play fast, I generated three protagonists already; all you have to do is pick one to play: an elf ranger, dwarf fighter, and halfling cleric. Also, I will roll dice for you myself (because rolling dice online and the rules involved are quite difficult to understand) so that I can quickly tell you what happens to what you want your character to attempt.
So who's interested?
Thank you.
P. S. Kung may experience ka na playing tabletop RPGs at gusto mong mag-roll ng dice, sabihin mo lang at tuturoan kita. Tapos, kapag alam mo na, hahayaan na kitang magroll ng dice.
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