Tabletop role-playing game
[3][4][5] Some common examples of tabletop role-playing games include Dungeons & Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, and Pathfinder.
Specific tabletop RPGs may have a unique name for the GM role, for examples: Dungeon Master, Referee and Storyteller.
Determining the outcome usually involves rolling dice and adjusting the result for the character's statistics and environmental factors to see whether the action was successful.
[9] Tabletop RPG settings includes challenges for the player characters to overcome through play, such as traps to be avoided, rulers to be courted, or adversaries to be fought.
Frequently, this involves interacting with non-player characters, other denizens of the game world, which are played by the GM.
Instead, players act out their role by deciding and describing what actions their characters will take within the rules of the game.
Over a century later, David Wesely developed Braunstein, the first tabletop roleplaying game, from Strategos, and then the miniature wargame Chainmail, was released in 1971, both of which became the basis for Dungeons & Dragons.
In the 1960s, historical reenactment groups such as The Sealed Knot and the Society for Creative Anachronism began to perform "creative history" reenactments introducing fantasy elements, and in the 1970s fantasy wargames were developed, inspired by sword and sorcery fiction, in which each player controlled only a single unit, or "character".
By the time of its first major reprinting in 1977, Dungeons & Dragons was refocused as a role-playing game to segregate it from the typical wargame.
[17][19] One of the first original role-playing games was M. A. R. Barker's Empire of the Petal Throne, first published in 1974, the same year as Dungeons & Dragons.
"[22] The game influenced Arneson and Gygax, who was so impressed with it that his company TSR published Empire of the Petal Throne in 1975.
This was originally intended to be a system for playing generic space-opera-themed science-fiction adventures (in the same sense that Dungeons & Dragons was a system for generic fantasy adventures), but an optional setting called "the Third Imperium" that was detailed in subsequent supplements became strongly identified with the game.
The changes in this setting over time, especially those involving "the Fifth Frontier War" as depicted in the Journal of the Travellers Aid Society, arguably constitute the first use of metaplot in a role-playing game.
[25] Dungeons & Dragons was a subject of controversy in the 1980s when opponents such as Patricia Pulling claimed it caused negative spiritual and psychological effects.
In 2000, Wizards of the Coast's Dungeons & Dragons brand manager Ryan Dancey introduced a policy whereby other companies could publish D&D-compatible materials under the Open Gaming License (OGL).
Rules innovations combined with literary techniques to develop games such as Apocalypse World, The Quiet Year, and Dogs in the Vineyard that rely on the contributions of players to enhance moral agency in a process of emergent storytelling.
[42] In forty years the genre grew from a few hobbyists and boutique publishers to an economically significant part of the games industry.
Grass-roots and small business involvement remains substantial while larger projects have attracted several million players worldwide.
[43] Tabletop role-playing games increased in popularity in the early 2020s, facilitated by an increase in online play through video conferencing during the COVID-19 pandemic,[3][4][5] viewership of actual play programming on streaming media such as Twitch,[44] and the development of user-friendly marketplaces to buy and sell indie role-playing games as PDFs, such as Itch.io.
When the community protested, they walked the decision back, and placed 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons into the Creative Commons as a show of trust.
[50][51] Examples include Dungeons & Dragons (fantasy), Starfinder Roleplaying Game (science fiction), Outgunned (heroic action), and Ten Candles (horror).
The Riddle of Steel's Spiritual Attributes, Burning Wheel's Beliefs and The Shadow of Yesterday's Keys are such features.
Meanwhile, Feng Shui combined Chinese historical fantasy with Kung Fu action tropes and dystopian science fiction.
Most role-playing game publishers are privately held companies and do not release sales figures, making precise estimates difficult.
There has been no publicly available, systematic examination of point of sale data, limiting further estimates to a rough consensus between industry analysts.
The smallest viable businesses are one person companies that produce games using print on demand and e-book technologies.
Larger companies may have a small office staff that manages publishing, brand development and freelance work.
Finally, a few companies (such as Wizards of the Coast and Mongoose Publishing) maintain an in-house writing and design staff.
The core design group of a publisher is often kept as a team within the new company for the purposes of continuity and productivity, though layoffs are common after such mergers and acquisitions.
For example, Wizards of the Coast experienced multiple layoffs in the wake of acquiring Last Unicorn Games and after its own acquisition by Hasbro.
