Currently Online 
| windbane said: Technically most games can be considered "playing a role" so what I'm always curious about is how that term came about. |
RPG's started without computers as Pen&Paper-RPG's. Some guys sitting around a desk (often eating pizza), and everyone has a paper with some numbers on it. One guy (the gamemaster) tells a story and everyone says, what his character is doing in the situation. Sometimes there will be rolled a dice and if the character or the monster dies depends on the number of the dice and the numbers on the paper. The name means, that everyone in this round plays actually a role. So it was called RPG. Early computer-rpg's (rogue and nethack) take mostly the number-part. So on computer RPG is mostly associated with levelling, attributes and skills.
