In roleplaying, participants adopt and act out the role of characters, or parts, that may have personalities, motivations, and backgrounds different from their own. Roleplaying is like being in an improvisational drama or free-form theatre, in which the participants are both the actors who are playing parts, and the audience.

For learning and therapy

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Simulations and roleplaying exercises are one of the oldest of educational methods, having been used in ancient times and from young age. (Young children role play "doctor" and "nurse", "customers" and "shop owners" etc.) They have been used extensively in vocational training situations and in vocation-oriented higher-education courses (e.g. Law, Medicine, Economics) since the 1960s.

Roleplay simulations fall into the category of multi-agenda social-process simulations. In such simulations, "participants assume individual roles in a hypothesised social group and experience the complexity of establishing and implementing particular goals within the fabric established by the system". (see Gredler, M. (1992), Designing and Evaluating Games and Simulations: A Process Approach, Kogan Page, London)

Since the 1950s, role play simulation has been used in politics and international relations contexts, including model United Nations simulations. For example, Project ICONS and Fablusi role play simulations allow role play simulation designers to model human relationships using different rights structures in communication environments, differential information and amount of wealth.

Roleplaying games

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A roleplaying game (RPG) is a type of game where players roleplay by assuming the role of a character in a fictional story. Its origin is in miniature fantasy wargames, with rules for individual combat and the use of magic spells in fighting, hence the focus of many early roleplaying games on combat and on the medieval-period fantasy genre. Many modern RPGs emphasize social game play, storytelling and characterization and/or use a modern setting.

Gameplay progresses as free improvisation within a predetermined system of rules and guidelines. Player choices shape the direction and outcome of roleplaying games. Roleplaying games are typically more collaborative and social than competitive. A typical roleplaying game unites its participants into a single team that adventures as a group. A roleplaying game rarely has winners or losers. This makes roleplaying games fundamentally different from board games, card games, sports and most other types of games. Like novels or films, roleplaying games appeal because they engage the imagination.

Most roleplaying games are conducted like radio drama: only the spoken component is acted, and players step out of character to describe action and discuss game mechanics. The genre of roleplaying games in which players do perform their characters' physical actions is known as live-action roleplaying games (LARP). While most games are played face-to-face, some online text-based role-playing games use the internet as their medium. Computer role-playing games do not include role-playing as described in this article, though the chat facilities of massively multi-player online role-playing games can be used to play a role-playing game alongside the hack and slash wargame.

According to Tracy Hickman and Monte Cook, roleplaying games deal with conflicts between good and evil, such that morality becomes the protagonist of the adventures: during a game players face ethical dilemmas whose outcomes determine and are determined by their characters' personalties.

Sexual roleplaying

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A form of roleplay in which partners take parts in a drama that provides sexual gratification; these might include a teacher and pupil, employer and maid, or parent and child. Sexual roleplay is common in BDSM, and is integral to most pseudonymous or anonymous forms of cybersex.

Sexual roleplaying in online games

Sexual roleplaying also occurs, albeit rarely, on various forms of online games. This is a generally less accepted type of roleplaying in an online community, though opinions about it vary. Social acceptance and attitudes to sexual roleplaying differ within various communities, often dependent on the community's genre or purpose (e.g., adult BDSM and fetish communities not only accept this behaviour but promulgate it as the main activity around which the online community functions). It is also not uncommon for players to form personal attachments or friendships with the player that they roleplay with.

The above mentioned example is generally better accepted in an online environment than roleplaying a character that involves sexual-related content in public or in abovementioned adult-themed roleplaying games.

External links

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• Roleplay Simulation for Teaching and Learning

Human behavior | Role-playing

Rollenspiel (Pädagogik) | Jeu de rôle (psychologie) | משחק תפקידים | Rollenspel

References

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