Role playing games (RPG) and their evolution into MMO RPG

RPGs are fictional life games in which people participating, referred to as players, assume a role. Once a player has assumed a role, they travel through a fictional gaming world to reach the end game objective, normally managed by rules or a game master. This article covers the origins and evolution of RPGs. For more information on role playing itself, visit What is "Role playing" and role playing games online: MMORPGs The ancestry of RPGs begins as a branch of pen and paper fantasy wargames.

Tabletop and LARP

Fantasy wargames are fictional battles where players control imaginary soldiers, normally including magic and sentient non-human entities. This hobby branched off from normal wargames and grew in popularity around the 1950s, coinciding with The Lord of the Rings novels rise in popularity. 20 years later, RPG’s had become a popular subculture.

By the 1970’s, RPG’s had two popular manifestations:Tabletop RPGs and Live Action RP (LARP). The renowned TTRPG, Dungeons and Dragons, was also the forerunner of the genre on a publically available level. Different TTRPGs have varying rules, but most use a rule system similar to D&D, but the rules and game mechanics can vary.

This variation is referred to as the Role-playing game system, but the different variations is impertinent to this article. The most important mechanic is how decisions are reached, and this is normally done through: group consensus or a game master. Game masters are impartial 3rd parties that serve as referees. Game masters are also used in LARPs, especially its most successful club: Dagorhir.

Dagorhir is a LARP organization that was also conceived in the 70’s, independent of D&D. To grossly oversimplify, Dagorhir organizes events for groups ranging from a handful to a few thousand participants. RPGs remained hugely popular until the start of the 90’s. Reasons are that TTRPGs and LARPs had heavy drawbacks. TTRPGs are strictly imaginative, while LARPGs are both costly and difficult to manage. Players were seeking an easier, more interactive way.

Computer RPGs

Even in the mid 70’s, conception had begun for Electronic role playing games. Enthusiasts had created TTRPG inspired programs on mainframe computers, the two most renowned being DnD and Dungeon. While still in a pen and paper style, logical progression led to the 1980 release of Rogue, a dungeon crawler that represented sprites with letters, numbers and symbols. While crude, this opened a whole new branch for the RPG genre: video games.

In 1982, the first true Role playing video game, Dragonstomper, was released on the Atari 2600. In 2005 Forbes magazine named Dragonstomper as “The best title ever made in the history of U.S. videogaming”. Many of the best RPG games in history followed, spanning multiple consoles such as the Zelda and Final Fantasy titles. Around this time, another RPG branch was forming. While known as MUD during the early years, this RPG sub-genre would later be coined: MMORPG.

MMORPGs development had actually run linearly with electronic role playing games, rather than branching off. In 1974 the multi-user game Mazewar was released, and the Rogue-like MUD Island of Kesmai was released in 1985. But the turning point for MMORPGs came out in 1991, with the release of the legendary Neverwinter Nights.

It featured the first ever 3D virtual world in a MMORPG, and popularity began to snowball over the next few years. Soon famous titles such as Ultima Online and EverQuest were released. More titles followed, and by 2005 there were roughly 20,000,000 players worldwide for subscription MMORPGs alone.

Life is Feudal

Life is Feudal is a title in the MMORPG genre: Sandbox. Sandbox MMORPGs enable players to not only adventure through the world, but use terraforming , free building and politics to shape it. More info at Best sandbox games: terraforming and free building.  Sandbox environments allow players to create their own adventures with great detail, allowing more interactivity and immersion than is available in other good RPG games.

In terms of combat, LiF will be like Mount and Blade, and is discussed in length at Life is Feudal the action MMO RPG No target combat and double bars. Following the timeline of role playing games online, patterns begin to form. With the growing popularity of sandbox MMORPGs, entertaining titles such as Life is Feudal were inevitable.