50 Fun Facts About Role-Playing Video Games

Which monster-catching RPG series grew out of Satoshi Tajiri's childhood hobby of collecting insects?

Pokémon took shape when Tajiri pictured bugs crawling along the Game Boy's link cable from one player to another. As a boy he had wanted to become an entomologist.

Which post-apocalyptic RPG series uses bottle caps as currency and has a mascot called Vault Boy?

Fallout began in 1997 as a spiritual successor to Wasteland, a 1988 game made at the same company, Interplay.

Which online RPG's 2005 virtual plague, Corrupted Blood, was later studied by real epidemiologists?

World of Warcraft players carried the curse out of its dungeon through infected pets, and outbreaks hit the capital cities. Researchers valued it as a record of how real people react to an epidemic.

Which 2022 action RPG's backstory was written by George R. R. Martin, author of A Song of Ice and Fire?

Elden Ring gave Martin a free hand with events before the main story, while director Hidetaka Miyazaki stayed lead writer of the story players actually see.

Which tabletop game, created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in 1974, inspired the first computer RPGs?

Dungeons & Dragons was being copied onto university mainframes by the mid-1970s, and video games still borrow much of its vocabulary, settings and rules.

Which fifth Elder Scrolls game, released on November 11, 2011, casts the player as the Last Dragonborn?

Skyrim sends its hero after Alduin the World-Eater, a dragon prophesied to destroy the world. The Dragonborn can absorb the souls of slain dragons to learn their shouts.

Which RPG series follows Geralt of Rivia, the monster hunter from Andrzej Sapkowski's Polish fantasy novels?

The Witcher games are unofficial sequels to the books, and Sapkowski sold the rights for a lump sum. After the series took off he asked for more, and a 2019 settlement gave him extra royalties.

Which open-world RPG set in Night City features Keanu Reeves as the rebel rock star Johnny Silverhand?

Cyberpunk 2077 is based on Mike Pondsmith's tabletop game series, and Reeves's character survives only as a digital copy lodged in the hero's head.

Which action RPG series sends a boy named Sora between Disney worlds with Donald Duck and Goofy?

Kingdom Hearts was pitched in an elevator: Square and Disney shared a building in Japan, and producer Shinji Hashimoto ran into a Disney executive there.

Which animated TV comedy got an RPG, The Stick of Truth, after its creators approached Obsidian in 2009?

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone wanted a role-playing game that looked exactly like the television show, and development ended up taking four years.

Which word for a wizard's spell-casting energy in RPGs comes from the Polynesian languages of the Pacific?

Mana means power or authority in Maori and other Polynesian languages. The missionary Robert Henry Codrington described it for English readers in an 1891 book, decades before games began counting it out in magic points.

Which three-letter RPG term for a computer-controlled character became an online insult from around 2018?

NPC started at the tabletop, where it meant any character run by the gamemaster instead of a player. As an insult it suggests a person who cannot form opinions of their own.

In RPG parties, which role deliberately draws enemy attacks so that healers and damage dealers stay alive?

Tank characters are also nicknamed meat shields, and because they pull and hold the monsters' attention they often end up as a group's unofficial leader.

Which Japanese animation company made the animated sequences for the RPG Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch?

Studio Ghibli had just finished Ponyo and its animators had no project lined up, which helped persuade its president to say yes. Its regular composer Joe Hisaishi co-wrote the score.

Which spiky-haired mercenary swings the enormous Buster Sword as the hero of Final Fantasy VII?

Cloud Strife got his spiky blond hair because designer Tetsuya Nomura wanted the lead to stand out. He later drew the most fan support of any Final Fantasy character for Super Smash Bros.

Which creature, first seen in Final Fantasy II, has served as a rideable mount in nearly every entry since?

Chocobo creator Koichi Ishii based the bird on a chick he bought at a festival market as a schoolboy, which his parents gave away to a neighbour while he was at school.

Which 2015 indie RPG, made almost single-handedly by Toby Fox, can be finished without killing a single enemy?

Undertale lets players talk monsters out of a fight and then spare them, and its ending depends on how those encounters were handled. Fox also composed the whole soundtrack.

Which Larian Studios RPG became the first to win Game of the Year at all five major awards ceremonies?

Baldur's Gate 3 settles almost everything with the roll of a twenty-sided die shown on screen. Rights holder Wizards of the Coast had turned down Larian's first pitch to make it.

Which monster, a staple of Dragon Quest and Dark Souls, poses as a treasure chest to ambush adventurers?

Mimic monsters first appeared in a 1977 tabletop monster guide, invented as a trap for unwary treasure hunters exploring underground.

Which sci-fi RPG trilogy follows Commander Shepard's fight to save the galaxy from the Reapers?

Mass Effect lets players choose Shepard's gender and personality, and decisions made in one game are imported into the next.

Which 1995 time-travel RPG united the creators of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest in a so-called Dream Team?

Chrono Trigger gave New Game Plus its name: after the credits, players can start again with the same levels and equipment, which makes its multiple endings easier to see.

Which Super Nintendo RPG by writer Shigesato Itoi sends a boy named Ness across a quirky version of America?

EarthBound came close to cancellation until programmer Satoru Iwata joined the team. Iwata later became president of Nintendo.

Which action RPG series is named after a mountain near creator David Brevik's home in California?

Diablo was first planned as a turn-based game, until publisher Blizzard urged its makers to switch to real-time combat and add online multiplayer.

Which Star Wars RPG, set about 4,000 years before the films, pits the player against Darth Malak?

Knights of the Old Republic hides a famous twist: the player's own character turns out to be Malak's former master, the amnesiac Darth Revan.

Which Atlus RPG follows Tokyo high school students who secretly reform criminals as the Phantom Thieves?

Persona 5 plays out over a single school year, so its hero, codenamed Joker, has to fit classes and friendships around his heists.

Which 1996 SNES adventure, developed by Square, lets Bowser join forces with his plumber nemesis?

Super Mario RPG grew out of Shigeru Miyamoto's wish for a role-playing game starring his mascot, and it was the last Square-made SNES game to reach North America.

Which tactical RPG series, home to Marth and Roy, traditionally removes fallen units from the army for good?

Fire Emblem later softened its permanent death with an optional Casual Mode, which revives fallen characters at the end of each battle.

Which genre of randomly generated dungeons and permanent death is named after a 1980 Unix game?

Roguelike games take their name from Rogue, which caught on with college students in the 1980s partly because it shipped with the Berkeley Software Distribution.

Which console did Square pick for Final Fantasy VII because CD-ROMs held far more than Nintendo's cartridges?

PlayStation won after tests on Nintendo's hardware ran into technical trouble, and Square moved all of its other planned projects to Sony's machine too.

Which manga artist designed the heroes and the Slime mascot of the Dragon Quest series from its 1986 debut?

Akira Toriyama was hired while he was still drawing Dragon Ball, so that the new RPG would stand apart from its rivals. He worked on every Dragon Quest for the rest of his life.

Which resting places act as checkpoints in Dark Souls, refilling Estus Flasks but reviving most slain enemies?

Bonfires were creator Hidetaka Miyazaki's favourite addition to the 2011 original, meant as somewhere to relax in an otherwise harsh fantasy world.

Which Canadian RPG studio, later bought by Electronic Arts, was founded by three newly graduated doctors?

BioWare was funded by its founders' success in the medical field, and the three kept practising medicine while the studio found its feet.

Which Elder Scrolls publisher keeps the name of the Maryland town it left for Rockville in 1990?

Bethesda was nearly called Softwerke, until founder Christopher Weaver found a Virginia firm already using that name. Its first release was written in his house in about nine months.

Which RPG class of holy knights is named after the twelve legendary peers of Charlemagne's court?

Paladin became a playable class in a 1975 tabletop rules supplement, reportedly modelled on the knight hero of Poul Anderson's novel Three Hearts and Three Lions.

Which RPG statistic did Dave Arneson devise so that a monster could not kill a player's hero in one blow?

Hit points borrowed a mechanic from the wargames Don't Give Up the Ship and Ironclads, and Arneson coined the term himself.

What do RPG players call repeating the same battles over and over to earn experience and level up?

Grinding reuses an older sense of grind as steady, tedious work, first recorded as college student slang in 1851. A close cousin, farming, means repeating a task to collect a particular reward.

Which random-prize system in free-to-play RPGs is named after Japan's capsule-toy vending machines?

Gacha spread through Japanese mobile games in the early 2010s, and in 2012 the country's consumer agency outlawed one variant known as complete gacha.

Which Final Fantasy composer was working in a Tokyo music rental shop when Square first offered him work?

Nobuo Uematsu never took a formal piano lesson, having taught himself from the age of twelve. He kept the shop job at first and saw composing as a way to earn money on the side.

Which $2.50 add-on for 2006's The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion became a byword for video game microtransactions?

Horse armor was simply a set of barding for the player's steed, yet it became the model that later games followed when selling small extras.

Which browser-based fantasy RPG did Andrew and Paul Gower first run from their family home in Nottingham?

RuneScape was recognised by Guinness World Records in 2008 as the world's most popular free MMORPG. Later in its first year the brothers co-founded the company Jagex to run it.

Which Ultima creator, known inside his games as Lord British, flew to the International Space Station in 2008?

Richard Garriott went up as a private astronaut 35 years after his father Owen, a NASA astronaut, flew on Skylab. He also coined the term MMORPG in 1997.

Which indie game, built by Kan Gao in RPG Maker XP, follows two doctors altering a dying man's memories?

To the Moon grew out of its designer's thoughts about mortality and regret after his grandfather fell seriously ill in 2010.

Which programming language did RPG Maker MV adopt in 2015, replacing the Ruby-based system of earlier editions?

JavaScript arrived alongside multiplatform support, which lets finished RPG Maker MV projects be played on mobile devices as well as PCs. The 2020 edition, MZ, kept it for plugins.

Which 2001 computer-animated Final Fantasy feature flopped so badly that Square closed the studio behind it?

The Spirits Within was the first photorealistic computer-animated feature film, and its losses even delayed Square's merger with rival publisher Enix.

Which dragon summon in the Final Fantasy series shares its name with a giant fish from Arabic tradition?

Bahamut is a vast fish that forms one of the layers of the world in Arabic lore. One writer traces the dragon version to a tabletop RPG character of the same name.

Which free-to-play RPG from Chinese studio miHoYo was criticised early on for resembling Breath of the Wild?

Genshin Impact is set in Teyvat, a world of seven nations each tied to a different element and ruled by its own god. Its makers openly named the Nintendo adventure as a main inspiration.

Which Sega series swapped street brawling for turn-based RPG battles in its 2020 entry, Like a Dragon?

Yakuza hero Ichiban Kasuga's favourite video game is Dragon Quest, and Sega asked that series' creator, Yuji Horii, for permission to mention it.

Which RPG led by Estonian novelist Robert Kurvitz stars an amnesiac detective and has almost no combat?

Disco Elysium gives its hero 24 skills that behave like voices in his head, each able to speak up and sway the player's decisions.

Which text-based online game, born at the University of Essex, was named in tribute to a variant of Zork?

MUD stands for Multi-User Dungeon, and in 1980 it became the first multiplayer online RPG on the internet when the university linked its network to the ARPANET.

Which 1981 dungeon crawler by two Cornell students became a lasting hit in Japan and inspired Dragon Quest?

Wizardry was the most popular Apple II game of 1981, and in Japan the series long outlived the American original, with almost every spin-off developed there.