# Roleplay, Role-Play, or Role Play?



## Twin Rose

At this years GenCon, I was at lunch with a couple of publishers, and the issue of how to best spell Role-play and why came up.  See, as many know, I'm dabbling in publishing, and I use Role-play in my book.  Of course, others had explanations of why it was roleplay, and their explanations were in fact valid.. Except that one word doesn't become the acronym "rp".  Sooo ... After coming home I've talked to a few others: editors, writers, gamers... And it seems like a real toss up.  Therefore, I've decided to let the gaming public decide.  It won't make any differece in the long run, I'm sure, but let's see what you all think.

(Feel free to post oppinions and pros and cons)


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## Bagpuss

I think role-play is most common and certainly what microsoft's spell checker and most dictionaries I've checked have, although I prefer roleplay and that is becoming the more common usage. Most of the rulebooks I have that have been published in the last few years say they are roleplaying games (Mutant and Masterminds, Fading Suns, Star Wars, etc.).


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## Tom Cashel

Are you looking for opinions or the _correct_ usage?  

The correct usage is role-play, from _role-playing game_.  Both "role" and "playing" describe the game, so they are hyphenated into one adjective.

Merriam-Webster's 10th ed. lists the transitive verb "role-play," meaning _to act out, to play a role_.


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## C. Baize

I prefer 'role-play'. It works better, hyphenated, AND that's what my dictionaries say.


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## Twin Rose

Oppinions and correct usage.  After all, shouldn't a product read the way people want it to?  I use it a lot in everyday conversations, as well - I spend a lot of time on here, and in the #dnd3e chatroom (Thanks bynw, tika and morrus!) and obviously the word comes up a lot in these areas.


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## Verdigris

I believe the correct form of the spelling is as follows:

roll play

[Legend has it the game we currently enjoy had its roots in Zurich's "sudden-theatre" movement of the 1920s. Apparently employees in industrial bakehouses would gather in public places to imitate their favorite breadstuffs.]


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## Twin Rose

Verdigris said:
			
		

> *I believe the correct form of the spelling is as follows:
> 
> roll play
> 
> *




How does one, exactly, play a "roll"?  That was put in the poll sort of as a joke.  "Roll" is what you do with the dice - in that sense, you could call monopoly a RPG.  It's not, though - in a RPG you "play the role of your character".  (You don't play the role of your dice).


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## Wombat

I look upon "role-play" as a rather scientific, detached, and probably psychological term.

"Roleplaying" is a composite name to define a new type of game; therefore it is the term that I use (and have put into my personal dictionary in my computers over the years).

Personal taste, I suppose.


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## ichabod

As a former editor of RPGs, I voted for roleplay. I find role-playing to be slightly clunky, and I believe it is more important to have the text flow smoothly. As for what dictionaries say, I'm a firm believer that dictionaries should come from language, not the other way around.


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## Jim Butler

Compound words are used to combine words that aren't generally used together into a single word that has a unique meaning. Performing a role and playing a game weren't generally actions that went together in the early 70's, but when D&D started that changed everything.

Certainly among the roleplaying audience, the term roleplayer is a known quantity. There's no reason to try and tie the terms together in a fashion that lets people know that they're really two distinct terms. They're such a part of our vocabulary that keeping them as compound words doesn't serve any useful purpose.

Besides, don't we have enough hyphens in our products?


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## drquestion

IMO, 'roleplaying' is appropriate when referring to RPGs.  It seems to have become the common usage within the industry, and I see no reason not to follow it.

'Role-playing', on the other hand, is the standard usage in more mainstream publications, but covers a wider variety of activities (educational or erotic role-playing, for example).

In short, D&D is roleplaying, while a scenario in which one student pretends to try to sell drugs to another for an anti-substance abuse program is role-playing.

drquestion


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## Faraer

As Jim Butler says -- and speaking as a copyeditor -- 'roleplay' has long been naturalized into both British and US English. This is just an instance when the dictionaries (even _The New Oxford American Dictionary_) are lagging.


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## BenBrown

I vary between "roleplay" and "role-play" using the latter more often.  Usually, though, I just write "RP".


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## haiiro

Roleplay has always looked and sounded best to me -- role play and role-play seem a bit stilted.

I don't mind that roleplay doesn't technically lend itself to begin shortened to RP. I think it works just fine.


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