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Role-playing video games
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Role-playing video games (RPGs) are a genre of gaming that generally puts you in direct control of a character, or party of characters, abilities, items, skills, and other attributes. The RPG is notorious for stories of epic proportions and long length.

The genre has origins in tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs), which in turn has origins in ancient wargames such as the Indian/Persian Chess and Chinese/Japanese Go.

As internet connections proved more popular in the home, and the speed of connections grew to a point where playing games over the internet was possible, a new brand of role-playing-games sprung up: the MMORPG, or Massively Multi-player Online RPG. In an MMORPG, each player has a customized avatar that shares the same game world with other characters and work together to accomplish goals and strengthen their characters, much like in a single-player RPG. Besides sometimes cited as an evolution of turn-based RPGs, the Action RPG genre exists almost as much time as its turn-based counterpart, being both subgenres that coexist.

Sub-genres[ | ]

Action RPG[ | ]

Turn-Based RPG[ | ]

Platforms[ | ]

List of RPGs[ | ]

RPG Wikis[ | ]

Roots of RPGs[ | ]

The following diagram shows the roots and influences of various role-playing games:

RPG roots

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