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About

Roleplaying refers to the practice of altering one's personality and behaviour in order to fit a particular role or character. When multiple such individuals act out a interaction, scene, or series of scenes, it is frequently known by the noun roleplay. Online, there are communities and parts of fandoms dedicated to roleplaying as a variety of characters.

History

The first well-known online roleplaying community was based around the fantasy roleplaying game MUD1,^[5] which was responsible for spawning the MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) game genre. The game, created and launched in 1978, was inspired by the 1976 single player game Colossal Cave Adventure.^[4]

Spread and Impact

Online Roleplaying has spread to various parts of the internet, and there are many communities existing for this purpose.

Types of Online Roleplaying

An example of online roleplaying is the "play-by-post" game. This is an online text-based game where players interact with each other and a predefined environment via posting in a thread or chat. They are commonly found around internet forums, and their popularity peaked in early 2000s^[5].

Another method of roleplay organization is "virtual tabletop role-play", which mimics popular "tabletop" system. One of the players, dubbed "Game Master" (GM) or "Dungeon Master" (DM) creates or uses a pre-defined setting in which the other players act as their characters, with Game Master describing the world and its inhabitants. A variety of sites^[6][7][8] exist that allow to provide a platform for "virtual tabletop" players, with integrated rolling, handout and voice chat systems.

Related Media

Search Interest

External References