Role-Playing Video Game

A role-playing video game (RPG), also called a computer role-playing game (CRPG), is an electronic game genre in which players advance through a story quest, and often many side quests, for which their character or party of characters gain experience that improves various attributes and abilities.¹¹ The genre is generally defined by a detailed story and character advancement, almost always features combat as a defining element, and traditionally used turn-based combat, though modern examples commonly feature real-time action combat or non-violent forms of conflict resolution.¹¹¹² Because the genre exists on a spectrum shaped by narrative control, social interaction, and inherent mechanics, and because distinct regional traditions have developed, no single universally accepted definition exists; some writers treat the RPG as an approach to gameplay rather than a strict genre.¹²

Tabletop origins

The genre is almost entirely rooted in the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), published in 1974 by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, in which each player takes a role such as healer, warrior, or wizard to help a party battle evil as directed by a Dungeon Master, or assigned storyteller.¹¹²¹ The origins of the tabletop hobby trace to the early 1970s wargame Chainmail, which served as the framework and launching point for what became Dungeons & Dragons; where Chainmail focused on units and their abilities, D&D instead focused on individual characters and their statistics.¹² Early video RPGs generally kept some or all of the original aspects of D&D, including its fantasy world of elves, dwarfs, trolls, goblins, and dragons and its character attributes of constitution, strength, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma.¹¹ The term “role-playing game” itself predates D&D, having emerged in developmental psychology and Cold War simulations before it became attached to the hobby.¹⁹

Early computer RPGs

The earliest CRPGs of the mid-1970s were largely text-based adventure games on mainframe computers.²⁰ The first effort to produce an electronic version of D&D was Don Daglow’s Dungeon (1975), an unauthorized adaptation for the Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-10 minicomputer that, although basically text-based, included overhead maps showing where players had explored.¹¹²⁰ Contemporaries included Rusty Rutherford’s 1975 dungeon crawler *pedit5*, described as the first dungeon crawler in RPG history, and Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood’s dnd (1975), credited as the first video game to introduce the concept of bosses.²⁰

The first commercial D&D-style games were Origin Systems, Inc.’s *Ultima* (1980) and Sir-Tech Software, Inc.’s Wizardry (1981), both originally for the Apple II home computer.¹¹ Sequels of Wizardry were produced over the next two decades for the Commodore Amiga, MS-DOS personal computers, and the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation consoles, while sequels of Ultima, later owned by Electronic Arts, were made over 25 years for the Amiga, Mac OS, Windows, and consoles from Atari, Nintendo, Sega, and Sony.¹¹

The 1980 hobbyist creation Rogue is cited as a pioneering computer RPG and the rare game to lend its name to a genre, the “roguelike”.⁵ Like nearly every geek-fantasy creation it drew heavily on Dungeons & Dragons, retaining the concepts of character skill attributes and earning experience to improve levels, while offering no option to create a party and no character classes.⁵ It replaced twenty-sided dice and statistical lookup charts with the computer’s ability to calculate damage and apply modifiers, and it automatically generated a new random dungeon on each play.⁵ American RPGs were widely built on some variant of the Rogue blueprint, and its influence extended to later titles such as Diablo II and the massively multiplayer online role-playing game.⁵

Development and later evolution

Traditionally, computer gamers were treated to a deeper experience with richer, more complex stories than early consoles; a standout example was *Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar* (1985), in which players’ characters were directly affected by the ethical choices they made.¹¹ By the 1990s, console games had made great strides, with titles such as Chrono Trigger (1995) and Final Fantasy VII (1997) redefining players’ expectations.¹¹ Popular single-player console franchises include Square Enix’s Dragon Quest (1986– ) and Final Fantasy (1987– ) and Sega’s Phantasy Star (1987– ), while Nintendo’s Pokémon (1995– ) became the most successful RPG franchise in total media sales.¹¹

As graphics grew richer, players demanded more sophisticated artificial intelligence and storylines, requiring designers to create believable motivations for the dozens or hundreds of characters and rooms with which the player may interact.¹ BioWare’s Neverwinter Nights shipped with the Aurora toolset and a C-like scripting language, NWScript, used to control characters, storyline, and even weather and lighting; a single early vignette in that game required nine scripts distributed between a non-player character, an invisible tripwire, and a dialog file.¹⁸

Regional traditions and subgenres

Commentators distinguish several overlapping subgenres. A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is played online by thousands or millions of people who log in to a central server to create and improve a character and undertake missions; the most popular remains World of Warcraft, with other examples including Guild Wars 2, EVE Online, and Star Wars: The Old Republic.¹⁴ Action role-playing games focus on combat as a major component, exemplified by the Diablo series along with Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Borderlands.¹⁴ The computer or console RPG classification usually denotes a single-player, pre-scripted experience through a specific storyline, associated with BioWare games such as Mass Effect and Dragon Age and with titles like Planescape: Torment and Disco Elysium.¹⁴

A frequently debated cultural divide separates Western RPGs from Japanese RPGs (JRPGs).¹² Japanese RPGs, which first originated on game consoles, tend to favor linear plotting and party management and to find drama in relationships around save-the-world storylines, with Final Fantasy, Pokémon, Chrono Trigger, and the Persona series cited as examples.¹⁴⁵ Western RPGs by contrast offer a central storyline surrounded by optional content and dozens of side quests, tending toward open-world design.¹⁴ Even Japanese RPGs, however, retain a connection to their roots, with many console franchises producing dungeon-crawl spinoffs such as Chocobo’s Mysterious Dungeon and including optional roguelike sections within larger games.⁵

Role-playing elements have also migrated into games rooted in other genres. Amplitude Studios’ Dungeon of the Endless (2013) combined roguelike, real-time strategy, and tower-defense elements, giving the player control of multiple heroes who level up and can permanently die, using a Baldur’s Gate-style active pause system.⁴ Turn-based tactical squad simulations such as the Jagged Alliance series likewise blend combat statistics and character management with strategic play.⁶