Forums » Smalltalk » tabletop role-playing game?

Hey guys, I just wanna ask, is rprepository a tabletop role-playing game?

I have a school assignment to create a tabletop role-playing game system for an event called designer market, but I don’t know what does ‘tabletop role-playing game’ mean.

Searched in google and it said D&D is one of it, but I don’t know what is D&D, just sometimes I heard that name and someone said it’s similar to rprepository?

RP Repository is not a tabletop playing game. RP Repository is a site where people can play all times of games, including tabletop!

Tabletop games usually have the following features.

• A Game Master (GM) / Dungeon Master (DM) who leads the story. They explain what they characters see, control NPCs, enemies and so forth. "Your characters enter a room with a large, completely bare except for a statue depicting an angel in the centre of it. A beam of light is shining down through an opening in the ceiling, illuminating it like a beacon."
• Players: Like RP you may be familiar with on RPR each player has their own character. They describe their character's actions and thoughts. "My character inspects the statue at a safe distance."
  
  The characters themselves usually have a few key features:
• They are usually built from a strict system which will put limitations on their abilities, race, backstories and so forth. For example D&D is a fantasy universe, with a list of races and classes in the book. It's likely the DM would not allow a modern-day human or a custom sci-fi alien to participate.
• A "Character Sheet" which lists the character's skills and stats. In most games, characters have a certain number of points to allocate to stats and abilities, so all characters are roughly balanced and no player unfairly advantaged.
  
• Dice Usage - throughout the game the DM and players will roll dice to discover the outcome of their actions. This is a lot of fun, because no matter how powerful and cool your swordsman is you're eventually going to roll a 1 and your group will need to adapt on the fly to make up for the unexpected setback.
  
• Map Usage - I'd say this is the least common feature I have listed here, but games will often incorporate a map so players can visualise a battle, the locations of the enemies, terrain to use as cover, etc.

Not ALL tabletop games have all of these features. For example, there are some very relaxed games with a focus on collaborative story building that do not have a DM. Traditionally they are played in person with all the dice, maps and paper laid out on the table - hence its name. However, in modern days they're often played online on sites like RPR. This is why RPR has dice rolling mechanics!

D&D is the most popular tabletop game, but there's thousands of others of all genres

I hope this explanation has helped you, feel free to ask any more questions.

RPRepository is a website where you can create your own characters in and roleplay with others, either casually, or a more professional manner. So, I gues you can say it is kind of like a Table top Game.

As for what a Table-Top Roleplaying Game is...

A Table-Top Roleplaying game, or TTRPG, is a system of roleplaying in which players play, as the name implies, on table top surface and create a character to roleplay as in a fantastical like adventure in a setting, as a "Game Master" narrates adventures or situations that the players characters find themselves in, and use dice rolls to determine if they succeed or fail in whatever situation they are put in. TTRPGs vary depending on the game and the manufacturers of said games. But most of them have a similar structure.

Players make their characters. A Game Master will narrate a story that will be an adventure that the player characters will find themselves in. And along the way, players will encounter obstacles or enemies. And Dice roll will determine the success or failure if the player succeeds or fails in combat, and the story will proceed accordingly. This is just an abridged version whoever, if you want a more in-depth examination, feel free to send me a private message. Or keep asking around. Someone with more experience might be able to help you.

Hope I was able t help a bit though.

@Claine & Michael147:

Thank you so much for the detailed explanation guys! > . <

Btw I'm still confused about dice roll system. How do you see the outcome of your action through dice roll? Already read some article about it and I still don't understand. You use more than one dice...? and what is modifier? and d20 system... percentile dice system... wait, what is that? I don't understand at all 😰

Let's imagine a warrior type character. When he was created by his player he was given a very high strength stat and according to the rules in the book, he has a +4 modifier to strength. There is also a wizard in the party who is very bad at strength. He has a -2 modifier to strength.

The warrior needs to lift a heavy rock. The DM decides this is a reasonably difficult task and requires a dice roll of 13 or higher to succeed. The player rolls a D20 and gets a 10. He adds the modifier of 4 and gets a total of 14. So he succeeds at the task.

The wizard rolls to lift the rock and gets a the exact same roll of 10. The modifier of -2 makes the final result 8! Even though they got the exact same dice roll, the wizard badly fails!

So the modifiers allows characters to be skilled at particular things. A negative modifier makes all rolls for that task much more difficult.

As for dice type - it depends on the system. D&D uses a D20 system and all ability rolls are done with a D20. Shadowrun uses pools of D6's. I don't know a system that uses percentile dice off the top of my head but I'm sure they exist! It's just a difference of rules/playstyle.

@Claine:

oh, so the DM can freely decide the minimal number required to succeed in the task? And modifier related to the character skill? I see... thank you so much! 🙏

The modifier comes from the rules in the book when your make your characters. But yes the DM makes up the minimum number