[ziggytrix]

but to answer your question, they are called role playing games, because they originally involved creating a whole character, with his own story, who would then interact with other characters to form a more pic story.

"massively multiplayer online role playing games are also often just called MMO's (dropping any mention of role-playing) because the fact that you have so many people playing together is more important than any individual's story. pure role-playing is just interactive storytelling. pure gaming is random number generators (dice, cards,computers) and/or reflexes (pacman, football, whatever).

of course, a game could have any amount of either or both elements, but role-playing and gaming are distinctly properties of some person's idea of a good time.

:dissertation