# role-playing games tags: #thoughts We could make references to what Wikipedia says or crack open a book and cut and paste the first 6 inches of the first chapter, but that doesn't solve the problem. Let's take a more direct approach. A **role-playing game** is an *activity* in which you take as your own point of agency within the context of the experience, a role, whether that be a character which exists within the intended fiction, a force of nature, or just the role of the author creating the experience which is occurring. A key part of that description is that it is active. You cannot be a passive participant in a role-playing game. You may be waiting your turn to act or your action may be to simply choose not to act at the moment, but you always have something to do at an interactive level. That means that yes, [[Kingdom|Kingdom]] by Ben Robbins is a role-playing game, as is his [[Microscope|Microscope]], in which individual characters are passed around like candy, galactic forces are the order of the day, and what you are personally responsible for at any given moment may be completely arbitrary… But you do have a role. That role is yours.