The
roleplaying and
strategy games that one sees on computers and video game consoles are one permutation of a much older legacy. The originals were played with a book of rules, pencils, paper, dice, models and imagination - a form of low-tech virtual reality. These are still popular today, in many forms, the most widely known of which are tabletop
RPGs and tabletop wargames.
The default format for a tabletop RPG is for one player to be selected as the
Game Master while the others each create
Player Characters who will collectively act as the heroes of the game's plot. Individual sessions or "episodes" of the game are commonly called "adventures", and the ongoing game story itself is usually called a "campaign" (a holdover from these games'
own earlier legacy as the descendants of tabletop wargames).
These
tabletop RPGs get a lot of flack from society — usually due to misinformation or simply misunderstanding. Common myths include: that roleplaying games lead to devil worship, that players (and not their fictional characters) carry out magical spells, and that players actually
become their characters (which isn't so farfetched; roleplaying games and mental instabilities do not mix well, and some unstable players
have 'lost themselves' in the game, though the stories that are commonly spread are largely apocryphal).
Another subset of the tabletop games category is the
tabletop wargame, of which the most common format is an area set up as a battlefield (which may have a background map or miniatures to represent terrain) on which counters or miniatures are placed representing combat units. Players take the role of generals and attempt to defeat their opponents. The game may have a
Game Master, or may rely solely on clearly defined rules. Historical and fantasy settings are most popular, the best known fantasy games probably being the internationally successful
Warhammer and its sci-fi counterpart
Warhammer 40000.
Chess could be defined as a simple form of wargame.
Tabletops games are
Older Than Radio with
Kriegsspiel ("wargame") being created in 1812 by Prussian Leutnant Georg Leopold von Reiswitz and used by Prussian officers for training. Reportedly the Kaiser and his Generals spent many long nights
playing the game conducting exercises.
Yet another subset is the live-action role-playing game (or LARP).
LARPs are similar to Tabletop RPGs in how they play, but instead of sitting around the table, players actually act out the story physically. Since these situations don't lend themselves very well to long stat sheets or rolling dice, most LARPs use greatly simplified game mechanics, ranging from the "paper-rock-scissors" system used under White Wolf's first-edition
Mind's Eye Theatre rules to semi-contact boffer-weapon systems clearly influenced by the Society for Creative Anachronism and other recreationist groups. These games vary greatly in size, from intimate affairs similar to traditional RPGs, to massive events such as those run by the
International Fantasy Gaming Society
.
Another popular type of tabletop game is the
card game.
Played with cards, Card games come in two flavors, collectible/trading and dedicated deck, though the rules vary greatly from game to game. Trading card games are generally the ones most often associated with other types of tabletop games. Notable trading card games include Magic: The Gathering and The Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game.
Tropes commonly used by tabletop games are:
Quotes 
