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Definition: Play By Post, MMRPG, MORPG, D&D, RPG, RP

Definition: Play By Post, MMRPG, MORPG, D&D, RPG, RP

Name: Arlene

Comments: What's the defitnition of all these short letters in gaming: Definition: Play By Post, MMRPG, MORPG, D&D, RPG, RP, etc.

RP RPG Dragons and Dungeons MORPG MMRPG Post Play Definition

Happy to oblige, and I'll add a few others for the sake of completeness:

RPG - Role Playing Game (also phrased roleplaying or role-playing). In the context of this particular section of the forums, this refers specifically to tabletop roleplaying games (sometimes abbreviated ttrpg), which means the kind using physical books, character sheets, pencil, paper and dice, wherein players sit around a table or living room and usually roll dice and narrate in-game actions.

RP - a shortened version of RPG, this usually is an abbreviation for "roleplay", which in context, may refer to a certain aspect of an RPG, such as some players are better at or really enjoy "RP" (interacting with other characters), or it may refer to a broader type of forum-based "play" (see Play By Post), where dice or any sort of resolution may not exist, but be entirely freeform.

FFRP/FFRPG - Freeform RP or RPG, as matching the second definition of RP, directly above, which is more of a cooperative or competitive (depending on the style) forum (or more rarely chat-based) role-play activity, where players simply narrate their characters' actions, without any task or skill attempts or resolution; everything is automatically successful, usually, or some other non-random type of resolution system is used. Some freeform RPs have been plagued with complaints of "God Moding", where people just one-up each other with ever more powerful characters, while other freeform RPs carry on good naturedly.

PC - Player-Character (or Character). In most traditional tabletop role-playing games, all but one player creates a character, called a player-character, and these characters form a party or group of adventurers; the last player agrees and is elected and trusted to take the role of the GM, or Game Master, described next.

DM/GM - Dungeon Master or Game Master - the person who is in charge of mediating and controlling a roleplaying game; a sort of referee, who also is popularly considered to act as a movie director, with the players being actors, and the adventure being the plot. The GM is responsible for playing and describing and keeping track of everything else that is not directly related to the PCs, such as the random people they meet, like the innkeeper or wild animals, as well as weather, time and events, as well as locations and tracking of where and how far different things are in relation to the PCs, AND the GM must also be fair and help provide a good challenge for the PCs, by playing the enemies and monsters and obstacles intelligently, but with an eye toward good ideas and good story development.

Play By Post (aka Play By Post/Play By Post/Play By Post) - a tabletop roleplaying game run using a bulletin board or forum medium, where all the players and GM (if there is one) post publicly; some Play By Post games have a Party Leader that summarizes all the player-characters' actions for the GM

MMRPG, MORPG , MMORPG - Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. This includes games like World of Warcraft, EverQuest and now Lord of the Rings, Warhammer and various Star Wars, Star Trek and other games that allow people all over the world to create characters to adventure in the same persistent visual world via their computer and the internet, cooperatively (or competitively). While there are a few games or ways to allow a similar experience to tabletop gaming with these, MMORPGs really aren't the same as true tabletop role-playing games because there is no single and active Game Master controlling the non-players - everyone is a player, and there is an intricate series of dynamic programing libraries to control how the environment, monsters and rules of the game process what the players do, when things happen, etc.

D&D - Dungeons & Dragons, a game of imagination using only brains, visualization, pencils, dice and paper, to create a pseudo-Medieval fantasy world of dragons, elves, princesses, magic treasures, dangerous enemies, etc. If not THE first, definitely the most NOTABLE and famous first true tabletop roleplaying game, still going today, from its historic roots in wargaming roots in the "Chainmail" miniatures tactical game from the 1970's. In its first few decades, a victim of early suspicion, misunderstanding and prejudice, associated with "devil worship", insanity and suicide, along with anti-social tendencies, awkwardness and various other negative stereotypes, D&D remains one of the the most popular tabletop role-playing games, and likely most new players' first introduction or portal (or "gateway drug" as some people jokingly and perhaps in poor taste, refer to it) into tabletop roleplaying games. D&D is currently in its 4th Edition, though the 3.5 Edition still has a massive amount of material, both official, third party, and fan-created. There was D&D and Advanced D&D, but it would be best to consult a search engine for any deeper information on the topic.

IF - Interactive Fiction. Text adventure games, one of the best known being Zork, from the 1980s, were played by typing full English text at a cursor prompt, and the program would parse your command and if it was valid and could be carried out, would display the results of your action, such as: >take all (this would take any objects lying around on the ground in the "room" you were in). These were popular at the same time graphics were becoming more sophisticated, so were ultimately soon to be replaced by point-and-click adventures, and later, MMORPGs, but for a time, ">kill troll with sword" was the catchphrase of many a gamer.

MUD, MUSH - Multi User Dungeon, Multi User Shared Hallucination. These terms are almost unheard of now, but refer to old text-only based multiplayer games, similar to MMORPGs, but which were played only by typing text at a cursor carat, and getting a response from a computer, in order to interact with the narrated environment and other players, such as: >look at Wendy (this would display whatever the description was that Wendy's player wrote for her). These were a multiplayer version of Interactive Fiction (IF).

I'm sure there are other things I should have added, maybe other people will append some much needed additions.