

Role-playing games are substantially different from competitive games such as ball games and card games. Within the rules, the participants may improvise freely their choices shape the direction and outcome of the games.

Traditionally all the participants but one take on characters and determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization and the actions succeed or fail according to a system of rules and guidelines, and one of the participants takes on the role of game master (or GM for short) who narrates the story, plays all the non-player characters and determine the challenge rating and the outcome of various actions.

A role-playing game (RPG) is a type of game in which the participants assume the roles of characters and collaboratively create stories. The history of role-playing games begins with an earlier tradition of role-playing, which combined with the rulesets of fantasy wargames in the 1970s to give rise to the modern role-playing game.
