Greetings All,
I have been gaming for almost 40 years since my c-64.
What is role playing ?
When I play Skyrym,FO-4, Conan and 100’so of others have 141 games on steam alone.
I am taking the role of my toon.
Is this what they mean?
Thanks
It means acting and speaking like your character would have likely done, rather than chatting in global about last Sundays football game. RP servers generally tend to try to be more immersive than non RP servers. Hope this helps 
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There’s a myriad of different ways of answering this. But to try to make sense to someone who’s never done it, I’ll give a shot and try to keep it relatively short.
When you play a game, even a Roleplaying Game like Skyrim or Fallout, you have a personal goal in mind. That is usually to win or beat the game in question. Sometimes you’ll make decisions to see what an outcome will turn out. But at the end of the day, it is you the player rather than the character you are playing.
When you Role-play. You make decisions and take actions that the character you are playing would take as if they had their own personality, emotions, desires, and goals. Those could differ, even vastly than your own.
Depending on how far you go with it, they might even make decisions that are ‘wrong’ and self destructive. Frequently those decisions that character or persona makes is based on the knowledge said character would know rather than what the player knows.
For example, lets say you were playing a Cimmerian dude in Conan Exiles and you meet another player character (PC, a character played by another player). You can see their name over their head. Game mechanics allow for that. Roleplay mechanics do not normally allow for the character to know the name of someone without some form of interaction. Either they ask, and get a response, or someone tells them.
In this sense player knowledge and character knowledge are different.
Now lets say this person is a Stygian who just insulted your character’s lineage. Cimmerians normally don’t take kindly to this (exceptions happen), and well playing the average Cimmerian, your character would like the split the skull of this dark skinned southerner. You as a player note that they are a higher level and you wish to remove yourself from the encounter.
But alas, character goal at this moment in time is different than the players.
You might ask, if one is Roleplaying, do you always slave yourself to the decisions of the character. And that is a good philosphical question. It depends on how far into RP you are wishing to go. If its heavy RP, typically you will. If its more medium then you will do what is best for all parties considered (is such an interaction going to be fun for everyone?). And light RP you can afford to let a little bit of game mechanics dictate a few things.
At the end, the character is yours, you control it. And you are ultimately responsible for it.
Hopefully this helps and wasn’t too long of a post.
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Oh I get it.
When they recreate The Cival War Sherlock Holmes and other mock Battles or people.
Ok I get you no talking about cars,TV in a role playing Server.
Got Cha
Thanks again Taemien and Huckfarmer 
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Very well stated
I have come to appreciate role playing because it keeps religion, politics, and personal problems out of the game.
Real world issues sure.
But In-Character ones, such as ragging on Set followers for fondling snakes is totally legit. 
Role playing is kind of like being in an amateur play, where all the players are actors and talk to everyone else as their charater. Many of the have deep back stories and stuff.
Then there is erp, which is filthy, filthy ■■■■.
I just picture my toon as someone stranded in an unforgiving world. One result of this is that I find myself looking at the sunset, just like I would if I was really there.
Things like that are what I consider role playing.