Dear Game Designers: You need to stop telling me what roleplaying is

What is roleplaying? 

Asked no one who ever took the time to actually read a game's corebook. It's an annoying to waste book space on explaining a concept like "what is roleplaying?" to people. It's usually a vague description about having a conversation with your friends and rolling dice. They don't do a bad job of describing what roleplaying is, but then I'm sure someone could do a solid job of answering the question "what is brain surgery?" and that wouldn't get me any closer to actually being able to participate in brain surgery.

I know the reason game designers put it in their books. They want desperately to believe that someone picked up their game book on a whim and genuinely had no idea what an roleplaying game actually is before they start flipping through it. This does not happen. Even people new to the hobby that are interested in finding out more about RPGs are at least tacitly aware of what they are getting themselves into.

It's also an assumption that the person reading the book is clueless about what they are doing. If it wasn't at least partially assumed by a game designer, then it wouldn't be listed in there. On top of that trying to define what roleplaying is in a grand sense is a wasted effort. There are too many variations to really try to give it an overall definition that does any justice an explanation of RPGs.

The more important question is: how do you roleplay?

Games don't seem to want to spend any time on how you roleplay with their game. It's assumed that just knowing how to make characters and run skill tests will be enough to run with it. While no one is gonna argue that knowing the rules isn't important, it will only get you halfway there. You can know how all the pieces move in chess, but that won't make you a great chess player.

I understand that some game designers feel that giving instructions on how to roleplay their game would feel like they are imposing restrictions on the players. That isn't a bad thing. Nothing will make a campaign suck worse than all the players trying to play a different version of the same game based on how they interpreted the rules.

Now I don't think it's necessary to explain in detail how to play the specific game, but at the very least what sort of play styles a game favors. There is no need for a concrete list of commandments for players. That being said, a list of best practices or standard expectations would do wonders for new players just getting into the hobby.

It's fine to talk about it, but let's see you put your money where your mouth is, bub. 

Here's some examples of what I mean. First from a published game:

Player Objectives

Once you have created a character, your goals in playing this game are three-fold, as

follows:

1. To portray your character’s personality as much or as little as you want, and to make decisions for them as they move through the locations and situations presented by the GM.
2. To explore dungeons made of nightmare, and to survive these forays as long as possible, until your character dies, or until you decide they should retire. Once your character is dead or has no reason to continue adventuring, you have finished the game, though you may continue to play if you make a new character.
3. To work together with the other players to portray a cohesive group of characters who go adventuring together. You are not playing individual games involving only yourself and the GM—you are all playing one game together, in which your characters, all of them, are the protagonists. They aren’t enemies or strangers, they all know and work with each other.

Straight and to the point. It's a list that explains that the player has some responsibility for the game. It explains what that responsibility is and it does so in a concise way that doesn't restrict player behavior.

If I had to create my own list it'd be pretty similar. Here's my attempt at it, in no particular order of importance:

Player Expectations

• Know your character's personality and abilities. Don't need to know how the abilities all work, the GM will help, but just need to be aware they are options you have.
• It's up to the players and NOT the GM to get your character to engage with the game. The GM only presents the situation, it is the player's responsibility to have their character interact with the situation they find themselves in.
• Buy into the fiction of the game. Although you're dealing in fiction, you're accepting the setting/world is, as far as the game is concerned, a real place with real people and real consequences to actions. That means you should expect the world to react to your actions (positive or negative) with a reasonable response given the fiction.
• Give the GM feedback about what you liked and didn't like about the game session, but always wait until after the session. There is no reason to grind a game to a halt because you want to argue over a GM ruling. Tell them after the game you think they were being an asshole. Don't become the asshole by interrupting everyone else.

There aren't really any RPGs that come to mind that encourage a session 0, or pregame session, or RPG tribunal, or whatever other name you want to call meeting up to discuss the game before you get the the actual game. To me, all the games I've run that started with discussions about the possibilities of the game and set expectations about the game that's about to be played worked out better in the long run than the games that didn't. 

Fix it

Maybe the whole list of expectations could be done away with if the session 0 idea was used more widely. It would definitely get rid of the need to waste space on answering the question "what is roleplaying?" It doesn't add anything to people's understanding of RPGs or how to play them. Figuring out how everyone wants to play, on the other hand, is the best way to figure out how everyone can best play together; which will just lead to a better game for everyone involved.