As a distinguished colleague of mine once said, Rpgs are the 'Thinking Person's Hobby'. Playing the role of someone else allows us to live vicariously through our characters. There are many different kinds, withsomething for everyone. Sadly, RPGs are not very popular, and this is a real shame. It used to be that various churches had spoken out against these games because there were a few weirdoes out there who couldn't tell the difference between fact or fiction, so their popularity declined. Now, however, since it is now socially unacceptable to subscribe to almost any religion, the main thing that b,ocks the popularity of RPGs is the misconception that the only people who play them are nerds. If having an imagination and using it for your own entertainment constitutes being a nerd, I guess they're right. All right, I'll get off my soapbox now. Basically, what follows is a few examples of the RPGs I've played(or heard of). If interest warrants, I may post info on a few of my characters here.

Dungeons and Dragons
    Ah, good ol' D&D. The first commercially marketed RPG, and the game that most RPGers start with. It's a fantasy setting, which can be played on several worlds, or on one of the DM(Dungeon Master)'s creation. There are several races and classes to choose from, and you basically do whatever it is that you want to do. Like all RPGs, you decide how your character would react to any given situation. You can wander around offering you services to the local lords for a price, You could seek revenge for your parents, who were killed by a dragon, you could go on a noble quest to slay an evil sorceror, or you could hang around in the back alleys of the cities, plucking the pockets of the local merchants. My own character, Kaldar Strongblade, has slain dragons, fought in a titanic war for the fate of the world, and ridden a silver dragon into combat over the course of his career.

World of Darkness
    This system is simplicity in itself, and very flexible, orienting more on role-playing than combat or dice-rolling. This is a Gothic-Horror style game, usually set in the present, although it could really be set in any time period. There are choices of various classes to play, werewolves, vampires, mages, changelings, and wraiths. There are also scores of other player-created classes, such as Highlander-style Immortals, or comic book mutants. A character I play in th World of Darkness is a mutant named Fracture, who so far has been infected with a techno-organic virus, stopped giant robots called Sentinels from rampaging across the Earth, been taken forward in time seven years, and saved New York city from various criminals. It's been a very trying time.

Rolemaster
    I've only played Rolemaster once, but it was very entertaining. It's a bit heavy on the number-crunching, but the critical hit tables are very amusing. In the session I played in, my character almost won an obstacle course race, but was ultimately defeated by lousy dice rolls(I was ONE away from grabbing the ledge!) and by a wet beanbag thrown by a hefty spectator(those unbalancing crits are murder).