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Most games have a sequence of events that get followed, and when whatever the goal is that ends the game is achieved, the game is over. This is not necessarily true with role-playing games. Wait. Let me start over. Think of role-playing games as a novel or movie, and all the players have lead roles. Or supporting lead roles. Whatever. You can play an RPG (short for Role-Playing Game) with as few as two people and as many as you want. The optimal number, in my experience, is one storyteller (depending on the game, storytellers are also called Dungeon Masters or Game Masters. I like storyteller) and 4-6 players. The storyteller is really a player too, but he's (I could use he/she every time, but I'll use he to make the piece somewhat readable. Assume I say 'she' every time if you like) also in charge of the ebb and flow of the story. Sort of like the director and producer. And he also plays the roll of all the bit characters, shopkeepers, random passerby on the street, grumpy robots, whatever. He plays all the characters that aren't played by real people.
Essentially, RPGs come down to creating a story for your character. Sometimes (usually) the storyteller will give plot "hooks" which the players can choose to follow or ignore. Ignoring them tends to make for a boring game, but the players do have that choice. RPGs are very open ended. All is ultimately up to the players. Well, mostly up to the players. A really open storyteller can free the players up even more, creating a somewhat wacky and ...different experience. There was that one fantasy game where my elf had a laser gun....
Assuming the players take the hook, the storyteller leads them through an adventure, which can last a few hours or a few months, depending on the scale of the thing. Even when the adventure is done, the players can keep playing, wandering around the world, the storyteller can drop another hook. And so on. The games only really end when either people lose interest or the characters are so beefed up on treasure and whatnot that the storyteller can't really make a challenging game anymore. Then the old characters can be retired, and the whole thing can start over. With a different hook, of course.
The most well-known RPG is probably Dungeons and Dragons. It evolved out of Tolkien's Middle Earth, and had reached a scale that dwarfs even his world. Without getting into the murky details, D&D is incredibly developed, has about a dozen pre-made 'worlds' with different rules regarding magic and whatnot, and is very adaptable to storytellers that want to create their own world. It's fantasy-based, which means it's mostly set in the pre-gunpowder era, and has wizards and such. You can build a character like, say, Sir Lancelot, or a magician like Merlin, or a thief like Ali Baba or Robin Hood, and so on. You go rooting around in dungeons and fighting dragons. Thus the name of the game. The game is much, much more than that, though.
The White Wolf company has a series of inter-connected games, some of which are Vampire: The Masquerade, Werwolf: The Somethingorother (can't remember), as well as several other games in that vein (har). You play a vampire, werwolf, etc. and do whatever they do, generally involving killing innocent people at night, without getting caught, of course. Probably their most interesting game, at least to me, is Hunter. You are a normal person, save that you can see the monsters that threaten humanity. Your job is to protect the innocents. You can't go to the police, they'll either laugh at you or kill you. The monsters are everywhere, your only friends are those that you know can see the monsters too. Entertaining to be a character with no special powers. I've only gotten to play that one once, I'd love to try it again though.
By far the most amusing RPG I've played is called Paranoia. I have no clue who made it, as it's been out of print for many years. Basic premise: WWIII, between the US and USSR, resulted in a nuclear holocaust that killed off most of mankind. Few are left, and those that are live in domes that keep the radiation out. The 'leader' of each dome is The Computer. The Computer is your friend. The Computer will also kill you if you break any rules. This game borrowed heavily from 1984. Anyway, you can't trust anyone, because they don't trust you. It's illegal to have a mutant power, but because of the radiation, everyone has a mutant power. You have to hide it. Everyone is a member of a secret society, this is illegal as well. Characters die so regularly in this game that when you make a character, you really make a character with 5 clones. This is called a 6-pack. When the last clone dies, you have to start over. Navigating your way through even a single session without dying once is a major accomplishment. Getting through an entire adventure on your first clone is so incredibly amazing it's almost unheard of. Fun, everything goes type of atmosphere in this one. Backstabbing of others in your party is encouraged.
There are literally hundreds of RPGs out there, I've only touched on a few I've actually played. There's a new one that lets you be a soldier in WWII, effectively melding wargames and RPGs. I don't think that one is doing too well, though. Most RPGers want things a bit more....unlike reality.