What is a role-playing game?
Role-Playing Games (commonly abbreviated to RPGs) are interactive, story-telling games in which one player takes on the role of a referee, or games master (GM), who creates and moderates a self contained game "world", the other players create the characters of "adventurers" who co-operate with the referee to live out a story, called a campaign.

The games master devises scenarios into which the party is plunged, with objectives to achieve. These could be as simple as stealing some gold, finding a lost person or defeating a monster. Along the way the players will encounter a variety of obstacles, collect clues or artifacts, and play the game as if they were those characters.

Right: A typical scene during a D&D game

What are the different role-playing games?
Many RPGs are based on fantasy worlds like Dungeons and Dragons, or RuneQuest. Others are based in a science fiction environment, such as Traveller; or horror fiction like Call of Cthulhu.

Left: Frying tonight !

The RPG section of Hinckley Adventure Games Society has several groups. Most play versions of Dungeons and Dragons. But there are also Traveller and Fading Suns (another science fiction game) campaigns. In the past we have played Runequest, Call of Cthulhu, Universe and DareDevils amongst others.

To give referees a chance to both run and lay in games we alternate between refereeing and playing, both by starting new campaigns from time to time and by running different campaigns at the same time on alternative weeks.