What is a Roleplaying Game

A roleplaying game (RPG) is a collective experience where a group gathers to talk through a spontaneously created story, like improvisational theater or some types of multiplayer computer games. The group consists of players who create and roleplay personas called heroes and a single gamemaster who manages and moderates the game.

The heroes need not be anything like the people who play them. In fact, it is often more rewarding and enjoyable to create characters entirely unlike their players since a lot of the fun of roleplaying is trying out different personalities and new existences.

The game world is operated by a gamemaster, who establishes the situations the heroes confront, moderates the rules, and generally manages what happens during play.

The rules make the game world understandable. They simulate the agreed-upon reality that links the players and gamemaster together, providing a framework for the action and events that take place in the imagined world. Most of the gameplay is verbal exchange. The players tell the gamemaster what they intend to do. The gamemaster then tells them if they can do it and, if not, what happens instead.

Dice rolls commonly determine the outcome of game actions that might be in question. Did the door open? Did the hero leap across the chasm? Did the sword strike inflict damage—and if so, how much damage did it do? All significant game variables depend on a variety of dice rolls for resolution.

Although some games last for only an evening, it is typical for a gaming group to play a series of stories (usually called “adventures”) involving the same characters and setting over time. Such adventures are referred to collectively as a campaign.

Players

Unless acting as the gamemaster, each player takes on one or more personae called heroes—their avatars in the game world. During the game, the player attempts to speak and act in terms of those personalities.

Players should try to roleplay their heroes by making decisions and actions within the limits of the characters’ personalities and abilities. That is the point of roleplaying.

The Gamemaster

The gamemaster moderates the game, creating elaborate worlds in which the heroes scheme, fight, talk, love, live, and die. Here, the world is all or some part of mythic Iceland, detailed as much as is needed for gameplay.

The gamemaster might use a published scenario or an adventure of their own creation. The gamemaster plays “the world” the heroes interact with, incidentally taking the parts of all the people, monsters, spirits, gods, and other entities that the players meet. The gamemaster provides options and choices for the players, deciding whether player actions are possible within the scope of the game.

Living and Dying

Death and danger are common themes in the Viking sagas. But the possibility of loss makes success rewarding. While there is satisfaction in non-hazardous occupations, roleplaying’s sharpest spice is the testing of your heroes by life-or-death situations. Roleplaying gives players the experience of danger, and even death, without physical risk.

An intimate relationship often develops between the player and their hero: discovering their hero’s strengths and weaknesses and experiencing their growth and development often provides a sense of pride and accomplishment for the player.

Subsequently, the death of a beloved hero is also felt profoundly.

On The Word Viking

Early Icelanders themselves used the word “Viking”, but not in an ethnic sense, as it is used in modern times. They would have understood the concept of a “Viking Age”, but to them, the idea that Nordic society was a “Viking society” would have been a misnomer. Throughout the Nordic world, a vikingur (pl. vikingar) meant a pirate or freebooter, and Vikingar were people who grouped together in bands to raid from boats. The term applied both to those who honorably (in Norse eyes) sailed across the sea to raid and to those who robbed neighbors closer to home. It was common to say that one was “going Viking”, meaning going abroad to raid towns and monasteries.

The word “Viking” is used in this book to indicate its original meaning, as explained above. The term “Viking Age” is used to describe the time roughly corresponding to the period described in the best-known Icelandic sagas, from the year 850 AD to around 1050 AD.