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In roleplaying, participants adopt and act out the role of characters, or parts, that may have personalities, motivations, and backgrounds different from their own. Roleplaying is like being in an improvisational drama or free-form theatre, in which the participants are both the actors who are playing parts, and the audience.

A roleplaying game (RPG) is a type of game where players roleplay by assuming the role of a character in a fictional story. Its origin is in miniature fantasy wargames, with rules for individual combat and the use of magic spells in fighting, hence the focus of many early roleplaying games on combat and on the medieval-period fantasy genre. Many modern RPGs emphasize social game play, storytelling and characterization and/or use a modern setting.

Gameplay progresses as free improvisation within a predetermined system of rules and guidelines. Player choices shape the direction and outcome of roleplaying games. Roleplaying games are typically more collaborative and social than competitive. A typical roleplaying game unites its participants into a single team that adventures as a group. A roleplaying game rarely has winners or losers. This makes roleplaying games fundamentally different from board games, card games, sports and most other types of games. Like novels or films, roleplaying games appeal because they engage the imagination.

Most roleplaying games are conducted like radio drama: only the spoken component is acted, and players step out of character to describe action and discuss game mechanics. The genre of roleplaying games in which players do perform their characters' physical actions is known as live-action roleplaying games (LARP). While most games are played face-to-face, some online text-based role-playing games use the internet as their medium. Computer role-playing games do not include role-playing as described in this article, though the chat facilities of massively multi-player online role-playing games can be used to play a role-playing game alongside the hack and slash wargame.

According to Tracy Hickman and Monte Cook, roleplaying games deal with conflicts between good and evil, such that morality becomes the protagonist of the adventures: during a game players face ethical dilemmas whose outcomes determine and are determined by their characters' personalties.