First of all it's very difficult to explain RPG, it's best to experience or view one to get a good idea. I will try to describe it for those who cannot do so.

In a role playing game players meet and engaging in the game by means of verbal communication. One player is designated as Game Master(GM) or Dungeon Master(DM). The DM is some sort of referee who controls the background and setting of the game. Each of the other players take on the role of a self designed character who plays a part in the story that is created by the game itself. Like an actor, in a movie or theatre, the player tries to portray his character as good as possible. A character is a players own creation. The DM describes each situation or scene as it occurs and each player then describes how his or her character interacts with that scene.

Most often you will encounter RPG's of fantasy genre. Fantasy books like those of Tolkien played a big part in creating settings for these kind of games. Dungeons & Dragons is the most famous Role-Playing game.

Game mechanics describe the way to create a character by calculating some statistics. Those are used to indicate how intelligent, strong, agile and charismatic a character is and what kind of skills the character posesses. These are used to resolve how well a characters perform the actions the players want them to do. If a character engages in a specific action a DM will have the player roll dice to see if his character succeeds. In many RPG's characters will battle enemies and fantastic monsters. The characters plans together with dice rolls will decide the outcome of such battles. Sometimes people refer to it as the Roll-Playing part.

The fact that player's characters earn experience which make their characters grow and develop brings great pleasure. Players can have different characters and share them through many sessions. It is not unusual to play with a character for many years.

Nowadays you often see computer games of the RPG genre but those are only a spin off the real thing. The verbal interaction between player characters (PC's) form a major part of the game. Since a computer can't simulate such they miss a good part of the fun. However computers are good at numbers so the statistic character design works really great there.

Role-playing is also used in many PBM games. PBM's often use similar settings and also game mechanics as RPG's. It is ofcourse heavy on the Roll-Playing part but there is enough room for some good Role-Playing, especially when you involve in diplomacy. You won't be the first to play a sneaky Evil overlord who forges plans to betray his allies.

Our games provide you with RPG elements.. they're not purely RPG's.

Players will mostly use their rpg skills during diplomacy, but be warned, after all many players want to make sure their realm outlives the others. It is not the first time the good High Elf allies a band of orcs in a dirty plan to crush a realm to nothingness. Be warned, many people have hidden agenda's and there is usually so much more going in this game than you might think.