What are Roleplaying games?

They are games that involve taking the identity or role of a character in a fictional world, often in a typical medieval fantasy type setting.

I more or less am involved with two kinds of RPGs Single player (video game) RPGs and Multiplayer RPGs.

Single player RPGs

Single player RPGs are, as the name suggest, played by one person. Personally, I play Final Fantasy 3, sometimes 2, Lufia I, II, and Illusion of Gaia however, there many, many fun rpgs.

Rpgamer.com is a rich information source on the topic of video game RPGs in particular, that's been around for over 5 years (and existed in some form before that as the Unofficial Squaresoft Home Page [UOSSHP]): they are a well-established resource for not only basic information on console RPGs, but for supplementary materials (such as music, artwork, reviews, etc).

Multi player RPGs

I don't actually play any multi player RPGs anymore (on a regular basis), although I used to. Now, I help administer a couple so that others may play them.

The RPGs (both MUDs) I am involved with are Leber and Chronicles: Sunrise over Sallares (formerly QuarantineMUD). My primary physical contribution to them is in the form of programming : extending upon and updating fairly complex software required to run the mud environments.

I found that roleplaying on MUDs so enjoyable in fact (when I had the time for that), that I am resolved to eventually write my own MUD system from the ground up.

See the rec.games.mud Frequently Asked Questions for more information on the topics of MUDs and mudding.

If you're interested in actually trying out a mud, a good place to find one is The Mudconnector which hosts an index of hundreds of them searchable by theme, keywords, type, features, and their policies (For example, whether killing other players is allowed in the particular game).

I have no particular interest in the other forms of online RPGs (I rarely play games of any sort, let-alone pay on a monthly basis to retain the option of playing them), but they do exist, for example, there are graphical RPGs such as Ultima Online, EverQuest, Asheron's Call, and countless others.

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