Online text-based role-playing game

An online text based role playing game (OTBRPG) (also sometimes called a Post By Post Role Playing Game or a PBPRPG) is a somewhat common internet role-playing activity based on text-based websites instead of graphical interfaces. The origins of this style of role-playing are unknown, but it most likely originated in some form during the mid to late 1980s when BBS systems began gaining in popularity. Today, hundreds of players all over the internet play OTBRPGs using countless forms and systems of rules to role-play characters, without the rigid systems of a Tabletop RPG or Video Game.

The OTBRPG method of role playing has many advantages and disadvantages in comparison with more traditional role playing systems. On the one hand, the freedom that the style allows the players to have, in addition to using writing as a medium, gives the players an opportunity to truly shine, sometimes writing a piece that could be worthy of a published novel. The vastness of the internet also makes it much easier to get a group of individuals to get together and play a game. This freedom, though it is a great strength to the system, also has the potential to be a great weakness. Such broad freedom of expression can easily be grossly abused, most often by new players unfamiliar with the mostly unwritten etiquette of the OTBRPG community. This has caused many more experienced players to form tightknit cliques.

Though countless systems of rules exist, far too varied to be properly summed up, there is a single universal criterion that separates role-playing from collaborative writing — there must be a variable under the control of one or more players that some other players cannot control. The most common example of this is for each player participating in the activity to have their own characters that no other participant may write dialogs or actions for. This is generaly known as power-playing or god-modding the character (or eventually the game in general). Others refer as god-modding being all-powerful and power-playing controlling other characters' actions. There are written and unwritten rules about power-playing and god-modding.

See also

• Role-playing game
• Computer role-playing game
• Fighting Fantasy Game Books - Text-based role-playing games in paper format.

External links

• OTBRPG dictionary definition at HomeStayFinder.com
• OTBRPG at TheFreeEncyclopedia.com
• D&D Online Games - notable OTBRPG based on Dungeons and Dragons settings.
• The Land of Avalon- A good example of a text-based roleplay.