Role-playing video games are a type of electronic game in which players move through the primary mission and frequently many side quests, gaining experience that enhances various skills and qualities for their character or group of characters. The majority of the genre’s origins can be traced back to the 1974 release of Dungeons & Dragons by TSR, Inc. D&D is a role-playing game (RPG) for small groups in which each participant assumes a specific role, such as a healer, warrior, or wizard, to aid the player’s party in battling evil under the guidance of the group’s Dungeon Master, or designated storyteller. Video RPGs have also explored the worlds of science fiction and the covert world of espionage, yet fantasy settings continue to be popular.
RPGs for a single player
The fantasy setting of elves, dwarfs, trolls, goblins, and dragons, as well as the character traits of constitution, strength, skill, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma, was all original features of early video RPGs. The earliest attempt to create an electronic version of Dungeon & Dragons was Dungeon (1975), an unofficial adaption for the PDP-10 minicomputer made by Digital Equipment Corporation. It was primarily text-based, but it also featured overhead maps of the dungeon that indicated where players had ventured.
RPGs with multiplayer
Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), often known as persistent multiplayer game worlds, have their roots in the earliest text-based multiuser dungeons played on mainframe and minicomputers. Most of the first graphical multiplayer RPGs settled for small worlds with only a few players because the addition of visuals in RPGs pushed early PCs and telephone connection speeds to their limitations. For instance, AOL’s Neverwinter Nights (1991–1997) initially only allowed a small number of players on their exclusive dial-up network to access the game world. Like this, four players could log in to the game’s universe at once by joining Blizzard Entertainment’s Battle.net game-hosting service in the action role-playing game Diablo (1997), which was initially launched for Windows OS and later for the Mac OS.