Role-Playing Video Games
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50 free Role-Playing Video Games trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Role-playing games grew out of dice, paper and imagination in the 1970s, and they have since become some of the biggest stories in entertainment. Along the way the genre gave gaming much of its everyday vocabulary, from levelling up to boss fights. This RPG quiz covers the whole field: Japanese classics such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, Western adventures from The Elder Scrolls to Dark Souls, online worlds, indie favourites and the studios, composers and designers behind them. A few questions look at genre jargon and at RPG Maker, the toolkit hobbyists use to build games of their own. It suits lifelong fans and newcomers alike. The questions open with household names and get tougher from there, and every answer comes with a short explanation, so the quiz works for a solo run or a game night with friends.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which monster-catching RPG series grew out of Satoshi Tajiri's childhood hobby of collecting insects?
Pokémon
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.
Q 02Which post-apocalyptic RPG series uses bottle caps as currency and has a mascot called Vault Boy?
Fallout
Fallout began in 1997 as a spiritual successor to Wasteland, a 1988 game made at the same company, Interplay.
Q 03Which online RPG's 2005 virtual plague, Corrupted Blood, was later studied by real epidemiologists?
World of Warcraft
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.
Q 04Which 2022 action RPG's backstory was written by George R. R. Martin, author of A Song of Ice and Fire?
Elden Ring
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.
Q 05Which tabletop game, created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in 1974, inspired the first computer RPGs?
Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons was being copied onto university mainframes by the mid-1970s, and video games still borrow much of its vocabulary, settings and rules.
Q 06Which fifth Elder Scrolls game, released on November 11, 2011, casts the player as the Last Dragonborn?
Skyrim
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.
Q 07Which RPG series follows Geralt of Rivia, the monster hunter from Andrzej Sapkowski's Polish fantasy novels?
The Witcher
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.
Q 08Which open-world RPG set in Night City features Keanu Reeves as the rebel rock star Johnny Silverhand?
Cyberpunk 2077
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.
Q 09Which action RPG series sends a boy named Sora between Disney worlds with Donald Duck and Goofy?
Kingdom Hearts
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.
Q 10Which animated TV comedy got an RPG, The Stick of Truth, after its creators approached Obsidian in 2009?
South Park
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.
Q 11Which word for a wizard's spell-casting energy in RPGs comes from the Polynesian languages of the Pacific?
Mana
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.
Q 12Which three-letter RPG term for a computer-controlled character became an online insult from around 2018?
NPC
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.
Q 13In RPG parties, which role deliberately draws enemy attacks so that healers and damage dealers stay alive?
Tank
Q 21Which 1995 time-travel RPG united the creators of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest in a so-called Dream Team?
Chrono Trigger
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.
Q 22Which Super Nintendo RPG by writer Shigesato Itoi sends a boy named Ness across a quirky version of America?
EarthBound
EarthBound came close to cancellation until programmer Satoru Iwata joined the team. Iwata later became president of Nintendo.
Q 23Which action RPG series is named after a mountain near creator David Brevik's home in California?
Diablo
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.
Q 14Which Japanese animation company made the animated sequences for the RPG Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch?
Studio Ghibli
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.
Q 15Which spiky-haired mercenary swings the enormous Buster Sword as the hero of Final Fantasy VII?
Cloud Strife
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.
Q 16Which creature, first seen in Final Fantasy II, has served as a rideable mount in nearly every entry since?
Chocobo
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.
Q 17Which 2015 indie RPG, made almost single-handedly by Toby Fox, can be finished without killing a single enemy?
Undertale
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.
Q 18Which Larian Studios RPG became the first to win Game of the Year at all five major awards ceremonies?
Baldur's Gate 3
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.
Q 19Which monster, a staple of Dragon Quest and Dark Souls, poses as a treasure chest to ambush adventurers?
Mimic
Mimic monsters first appeared in a 1977 tabletop monster guide, invented as a trap for unwary treasure hunters exploring underground.
Q 20Which sci-fi RPG trilogy follows Commander Shepard's fight to save the galaxy from the Reapers?
Mass Effect
Mass Effect lets players choose Shepard's gender and personality, and decisions made in one game are imported into the next.
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.
Q 24Which Star Wars RPG, set about 4,000 years before the films, pits the player against Darth Malak?
Knights of the Old Republic
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.
Q 25Which Atlus RPG follows Tokyo high school students who secretly reform criminals as the Phantom Thieves?
Persona 5
Persona 5 plays out over a single school year, so its hero, codenamed Joker, has to fit classes and friendships around his heists.
Q 26Which 1996 SNES adventure, developed by Square, lets Bowser join forces with his plumber nemesis?
Super Mario RPG
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.
Q 27Which tactical RPG series, home to Marth and Roy, traditionally removes fallen units from the army for good?
Fire Emblem
Fire Emblem later softened its permanent death with an optional Casual Mode, which revives fallen characters at the end of each battle.
Q 28Which genre of randomly generated dungeons and permanent death is named after a 1980 Unix game?
Roguelike
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.
Q 29Which console did Square pick for Final Fantasy VII because CD-ROMs held far more than Nintendo's cartridges?
PlayStation
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.
Q 30Which manga artist designed the heroes and the Slime mascot of the Dragon Quest series from its 1986 debut?
Akira Toriyama
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.