Role-Playing Game Manifesto

These rules are written on paper, not etched in stone tablets. Rules are suggested guidelines, not required edicts. If the rules don't say you can't do something, you can. There are no official answers, only official opinions. When dice conflict with the story, the story always wins. Min/Maxing and Munchkinism aren't problems with the game; they're problems with the player. The game master has full discretionary power over the game. The game master always works with, not against, the p...

 Art of Dungeon Mastery

Being a good Dungeon Master involves a lot more than knowing the rules. It calls for quick wit, theatrical flair, and a good sense of dramatic timing—among other things. Most of us can claim these attributes to some degree, but there's always room for improvement. Fortunately, skills like these can be learned and improved with practice. There are hundreds of tricks, shortcuts, and simple principles that can make you a better, more dramatic, and more creative game master.

 RPG as a World

ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is a world. Of course, this world is not complete. It needs organizers and adventurers to order and explore it. It needs you1 A fantasy role playing game is an exercise in imagination and personal creativity. The organizer of the campaign, the Dungeon Master, must use the system to devise an individual and unique world. Into this world of weird monsters, strange peoples, multitudinous states, and fabulous treasures of precious items and powerful magic stride fe...

 RPG as Collaborative Creation

Playing D&D is an exercise in collaborative creation. You and your friends create epic stories filled with tension and memorable drama. You create silly in-jokes that make you laugh years later. The dice will be cruel to you, but you will soldier on. Your collective creativity will build stories that you will tell again and again, ranging from the utterly absurd to the stuff o f legend.

 RPG as Storytelling

The Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game is about storytelling in worlds of swords and sorcery. It shares elements with childhood games o f make-believe. Like those games, D & D is driven by imagination. It’s about picturing the towering castle beneath the stormy night sky and imagining how a fantasy adventurer might react to the challenges that scene presents. [...] Unlike a game of make-believe, D&D gives structure to the stories, a way o f determining the consequences o f th...

 RPG as a Game of Imagination

It's a game of your imagination, where you get to tell storeis by taking on the roles of the main chractes-characters you create. It's a game that offers a multitude of choices-more choices than even the most sophisticated computer game, because the only limit to what you can do is what you can imagine. The story unfolds like a movie, except all of the action takes place in your imagination. There's no script to follow, other than a rough outline used by the Gamemaster (GM): you decide what ...

 RPG as Cooperative Storytelling

An RPG is a process of cooperative storytelling: the Gamemaster lays out a situation or scenario for the players, such as, “You hear an alarm coming from the First National Bank!” The players then choose how their characters react (“We rush to the bank to see what’s going on!”). Things proceed in a back-and-forth manner, with the GM explaining the unfolding story (how a super-villain is robbing the bank and trying to escape with his ill-gotten gains, etc.) and the players decidingvw...

 RPG as Discovery

In a roleplaying game, the players take on the roles of people in a fictional world. Each player creates a character to portray, and together, the players create a story. In their imagination, the players experience the same challenges and rewards that their characters experience. To facilitate this, the rules of the game govern whether characters succeed or fail at what they try to do. This book sometimes refers to the player characters as PCs. In addition to the players who are the charact...

 RPG as Cooperative Experience

A role-playing game is a cooperative experience between multiple participants. At its simplest, it can be described as an organized form of group make-believe, with a set of rules and procedures to keep things consistent and fair. The goal is not to win - there are no real "winners" in a role-playing game - but simply to have a good time.

 RPGs are Without Limitations

The greatest beauty of roleplaying is its complete lack of limitations. If you can imagine it—or if any of your friends can—you can do it, and magic, strange worlds, supernatural monsters, and legendary heroics are its stock in trade. In the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, all of these elements combine to weave a tapestry of fantasy gaming that is at once classic and new. Yet this lack of limitations also means that no single book can serve every possible variation. At 576 pages, the Pathfi...