Role-play

Abstract

Role-play is broadly defined either as unconsciously altering behavior to fulfill a social role, or as consciously assuming an imagined or real character in a performance, game, or educational setting. From the 1970s, history educators claimed that using role-play by trained staff at heritage sites and museums could foster a meaningful and democratic engagement with history through interactive immersion. Role-playing games combined wargaming rules systems with improvisational theater to create an immersive, collaborative form of game-play that added a level of individual agency. Various games were spawned in informal gaming networks, but in 1974, Dungeons and Dragons—regarded as the “first modern role-playing game”—became commercially available. The role-playing of these characters is featured at specific events, such as recreated medieval tournaments. Techniques of historical reenactment’s mock combat were added to table-top or computer-based role-playing games, and participants costumed themselves as their game characters in order to play out game scenarios in “live action.”