Sexual role-playing games are even older and sometimes offer an unwanted element of confusion amongst people unaware of existance of role-playing as a respectable hobby. The French have a further problem where the French term for role-playing, "jeux de role", is also the Fench name for pyschodrama?, causing a different problem that experienced in the anglophone? world.
Role-play can be thought of as free-form theatre or improvisation within certain boundries (like the motavation of the characters involved).
Modern RPG's evolved from wargaming roots where the emphasis became more on the individual characters than the manipulation of army statistics. Generally considered the first and probably best-known of these types of games is Dungeons and Dragons.
The computer adventure games now also known as role-playing games are derived from this strain of role-playing.
Originally, RPGs were played on a tabletop, because they involved paper, dice, and maybe miniatures. Some games owe more to their wargaming roots where attributes or "stats" form an important component of the game, to the other end of the scale where the rules are periphery to the roleplaying characterisation during the game.
The term "Roleplaying game" can be applied to a number of distinct genres.
See Also : MUD, MUSH, false document