The RPG genre is chock full of clichés, returning characters, and franchises we all know and love. There are Japanese RPGs, Strategy RPGs, American RPGs, and many many more. The genre is endless and the variation ingenious, so it stands to reason that there are more than a few terms that some people might not have heard or have a grasp of when thinking about RPGs. The traditional gamer’s girlfriend or boyfriend might get lost when listening to their loved one prattle on about hit points and chocobos. The role playing game is a language unto itself and fully deserving of an A-Z guide to get the most confused of family members or new fans acclimated to its dialect.

American Style RPG
The Japanese invented the console RPG, partly because they mastered the at-home video game phenomenon. For more than 15 years though, the options were mostly Japanese – Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Suikoden – all Japanese. But, with the rise of American gaming consoles and massive production companies on this side of the Video gaming seas, RPGs are coming out of domestic studios more and more often with a strikingly different take on style. Companies like Bioware and Bethesda put together the now classic RPGs Knights of the Old Republic and Elderscrolls. Often, the American options are more closely related to the classic Dungeons and Dragons style play first born here in the States as well.

Battle system
The most important part of any good RPG short of a hair-brained story line and a cast of oddball, weirdo characters is a decent battle system. There should be a few innovations, a few more unnecessary changes and the staple of any good RPG, the ability to carry a thousand items and weapons somewhere on one’s person without even the slightest bulge in those multihued vests and leather pants.

Character
The RPG character list is vital to any superb role playing game. You must have as vast and multifarious a crew as possible, along with some crazy, over the top villains and a few goofballs for comic relief. Ideally, you have one main character; if male, he may or may not look female, and if female, she’ll have enormous…..vests. That main character has the erstwhile love interest, a hero of the opposite sex who will undoubtedly be at odds with your protagonist for the first half of the RPG. The supporting cast will be made up of the following: mercenaries (usually in pairs), exiles (always alone), royalty (usually brings along a knight or two for protection), and at least one child (who can be any of the aforementioned, but must be incredibly strong despite their youth. Toss in a few thousand computer characters with hundreds of lines of dialogue and two or three really horrible villains and you have yourself one RPG character roster.

Dungeons and Dragons
The grand daddy of all RPGs, Dungeons and Dragons was the original table top gaming machine, developed in the 70s, resultant of the glorious effects of works like Tolkien making their rounds through droves of eager young medieval history buffs and dragon lovers. Well before the first sprite was crafted into an epic tale of love, betrayal, and war RPG aficionados have been setting up all night D&D marathons, complete with half gallons of caffeinated beverages and potato chips galore.

Emulator
Emulators are a classic option available to those depleted and incapable of gaining access to the classic games long since out of print (or too expensive). While technically not legal, emulators still thrive in the underground scene, taking on a gray area legally – if you own the game it’s not illegal, but then again why would you need the emulator if you owned it. But now, as we see classic gaming revivals on the Nintendo Wii’s Virtual Console, Xbox Live’s Arcade and ports of classics like Final Fantasy to Gameboy Advance and the Nintendo DS, the chance to own a copy of classic RPGs like Final Fantasy II and VI, both once extremely hard to find is easier than ever.

Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy is the mainstream flagship for console RPGs. You can argue about whether or not these are the best of the best, but they are definitely the most popular and have the most name recognition, something that Square is finally figuring out (for better or worse) as they start mass marketing sequels, shoddy spin offs and movie franchises. Whatever your opinion of the big SE’s biggest money maker, keep in mind that without it we might not have many of the other greats.

Genres
There are more than a half dozen sub genres of the RPG genre, and if you broke it down further probably a half dozen sub genres of those too. Sub genres are a finicky beast in that they tend to only stop when you run out of games to put in them. But for categorization’s sake, the biggees are Strategy RPGs like Disgaea, Action RPGs like Zelda, and Turned Based RPGs like Final Fantasy. There are historical games, dating sims, and even ecchi RPGs in Japan, but with something so popular there are bound to be hundreds of varieties (and messed up perversions).

Hit Points
The life blood and mainstay of any devoted Console RPGer’s line of sight. If you’re worth your salt as a gamer you keep track and maneuver your hit points to stay above the dreaded KO, and ultimately Game Overs. For the layman, hit points are the equivalent of a cat’s nine lives. Except that in an RPG, you can replenish those lives repeatedly with magic elixirs, mysterious mushrooms, and magic floating hearts you find in clay jars.

Invincible
You will never be invincible. Unless of course you spend those extra 40 hours built into your game to get the Mythril Cuirass of Invincibility, the Sixteen Shards of Super Strength, and the Ultimate Weapon. Scratch that. The Ultimate Weapon is nothing. Get the one after the Ultimate Weapon. Invincibility is always a possibility in an RPG, but you better be prepared to spend a few weeks looking for it.

Japanese RPG
Not technically a genre, but the genre itself, the Japanese RPG is more or less every turn based RPG you ever played before Baldur’s Gate or Elderscrolls. Typically denoted by their goofily proportioned characters with extremely bright clothing and spiky silver hair, these games tend to involve talking animals, floating trees, and the inevitable confrontation of a 17 year old boy with an identity crisis with God – or one of his many minions.

KO (knockout)
Don’t ever get knocked out. If you do, you’re just not that hardcore. Truthfully, if the RPG is any good, you’ll find yourself in the dirt with a Game Over screen staring you down more than a few times. But, even if you manage to never need a reset, you’ll likely face a few KO’s. Just make sure to keep plenty of Pheonix Downs, Revives, or Magic Crystals around to bring you back.

Leveling
Grind, grind, grind. You shall witness epic battles, majestic landscapes, and wondrous natural beauties, and then you shall go to a forest and fight super strong turtles for three hours to raise your level high enough to equip the spear you found on that mountain top. Leveling is the key to any RPG. You will likely spend half of your time in the RPG battling, and half of that time battling because you just lost a boss battle. If you don’t, you’ll be reseting for hours hoping to get lucky and not have the God form of the arch-villain boss cast his most powerful attack on you for thirty minutes….It could happen.

MMORPG (massive multi-player online role playing game)
The online RPG phenomenon may be new to many, the legions of World of Warcraft devotees out there, but it’s been around for a long time, since the early days of Everquest and Ultima Online. By doing away with the story lines and linear plots, the MMORPG essentially creates a giant social network for gamers. You level up, level up some more, buy some stuff, then level up some more. All the while, you spend your time with fellow gamers keeping tabs of how many MOBs you’ve p0wned and just how much loot you need to get before you can go to sleep.

NPC (non-player character)
Another acronym? Yes. RPGs are littered with them, get used to it. The NPC is short for Non-Player Character, or in our terms, 99.9% of the game. These are the random folks you’ll encounter in towns who for some reason or another keep telling you the same thing every time you talk to them, “Did you hear the latest gossip?” Yes/No, “The Princess is missing! They say, she was kidnapped by a rogue from the farmlands.” What’s that? What did you say….press X and repeat.

OST (original sound track)
Sound tracks for RPGs are generally giant, beautiful affairs with which a composer is able to craft an opus for 60 hours of gameplay. And sometimes it’s a chance to mess around with weird synthesizers and ruin an entire game by forcing the gamer to mute it.

Playstation
The RPG player’s holy grail, the Playstation, much like the SNES became the best possible thing you could own if you were a console RPG devotee. The N64 had Zelda…and another Zelda, and that was about it. For Playstation owners, the options were nearly endless though. Three Final Fantasies, a Dragon Quest, Suikoden, Persona, Grandia, Chrono Cross…the list goes on and on. Unfortunately the Playstation was also the beginning of mass production in the genre and some of the worst outings in RPGdom. Anyone remember “Beyond the Beyond”. I’m trying not to.

Quest
Once again (and if you’ve read my other guides you remember) Q is a horrible, horrible letter, derived from the foes of RPG A-Z lists everywhere. The Quest is basically your definition for the entire process. You are on a quest. It’s also a game that very few people played for the N64…not horrific.

Random Battles
The staple of the Japanese RPG, the random battle is one of the most annoying and endearing things in console RPGs all at the same time. Basically you run around a giant map for hours and the longer you run without a monster popping up, the higher the percentage you’ll be attacked is. Eventually you get attacked and the screen shatters into a million pieces, apparently you’re so shocked you can’t see for a few seconds (also known as load times) and the monsters appear. Somehow these “Random” battles tend to be about every three seconds when it’s dinner time and you need a save point.

Save Point
Which brings me to the Save Point. At times your worst enemy and best friend, the Save Point is that magic little crystal or tent, or weird looking creature hiding at the beginning and end of each dungeon and conspicuously scattered somewhere in the middle if you’re lucky, that will allow you to set a marker and keep from losing the last forty minutes of killing rock trolls and bats. Always, always save when you see one. Even if you just saved. Just save again.

Turn Based
The traditional RPG is anything but realistic when battling a giant, spike laden beast with fire breath. Instead of running around and avoiding its reach, you wait for your timer to fill up, then choose an action, wait for the action timer to complete and then cast it. It’s a carefully timed sequence of actions you choose for your characters, all the while trying to recognize the pattern of the enemy’s attacks (there’s always a pattern).

Uber/Ultimate
Everything you find, fight, or eat in an RPG has a hidden, super secret , Ultimate Form somewhere in the game. Often, it’s not the actual ultimate form, as somewhere else there’s something even more hidden and even harder to fight. These ultimate items or enemies will yield amazing results, but by the time you can find them and defeat them you’ll have no use for the +255 Sword you just acquired. The game’s made to be beaten with a +120, but that +255 sure looks cool, yeah?

Voice Actors
Recently, since the use of DVD for gaming consoles, the voice actor has a new and important job in RPGs. For years, RPGs were like great big long comic books, with lots and lots of reading. Now they’re great big long movies, with lots and lots of listening. Major sequences, even in lame games still have voice actors these days, often quite terrible and poorly recorded.

Warriors
The warrior is usually the coolest, strongest, quietest, and darkest of your characters. You can be a warrior too, but more often than not you get the option of being a little bit of everything. You’re best buddy though, the strong but silent type will beat the stuffing out of anyone who comes within thirty feet of you though. Beware, they don’t get the cool sparkly spells of the mages.

XP (experience points)
XP, or experience points are the catalyst of all that leveling. You gain XP from killing random creatures and once you get enough of them, you level up. They reach into the millions in some games, and for those thinking that it would be nice to reach level 99, keep in mind the extra 30 hours of turtle killing you’ll be doing to get there.

You can’t find a freaking Y word!
Not a single one. If you think of one, let me know. (and no names of games…that’s cheap).

Zelda
Except for this one. Zelda is never cheap, and here’s why. Zelda is by far the biggest franchise of all time, right up there with Mario, but much cooler than Mario. The Legend of Zelda series has always taken gaming to new levels, and rarely let its fans down. Even when doing so (Wind Waker wasn’t quite up to snuff) the game was still an amazing accomplishment, regardless of how disappointed we all were. Of course, Zelda is the exception that proves the rule in a genre crowded by Turn Based RPGs, with action orientation and puzzles driving its gameplay.