What Does RPG Stand For?

What does RPG stand for in games?

In gaming, RPG is short for role-playing game. Each part of the name carries its own idea:

What makes a game an RPG is less about the setting and more about growth. Your character earns experience points, gains levels, learns new skills and picks up better gear. Many RPGs also let you shape the story through dialogue choices, so two players can finish the same game with very different results.

Tabletop and video game RPGs

The term began with tabletop games in the 1970s, played with books, pencils, paper and dice. One person, often called the game master, describes the world and plays everyone the heroes meet. The other players each control one character and describe what that character does. A roll of the dice decides whether a sword swing hits or a lock opens.

Video game makers soon borrowed the idea. On a computer or console, the software handles the rules and the math, and the game master's job is split among the story, the map and the computer-run characters. Those background characters are called NPCs, short for non-player characters, a term that also came from tabletop play.

Common kinds of RPG

Players add letters in front of RPG to name a style. These are the ones you will run into most:

• JRPG: Japanese role-playing game. Often turn-based battles, a fixed party of heroes and a long, story-driven quest.
• ARPG: action role-playing game. Combat happens in real time, so reflexes matter as much as stats.
• MMORPG: massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Thousands of players share one online world at the same time.
• CRPG: computer role-playing game, a label often used for older or more complex games played on a PC.
• TTRPG: tabletop role-playing game, used to make clear the game is played in person or over video with dice.

RPG in the news and at work

When the letters appear in a news story about a conflict, they almost always mean rocket-propelled grenade, a light weapon fired from the shoulder that launches an explosive warhead. The short form comes from a Russian name for a hand-held antitank grenade launcher, and the English phrase was later matched to the letters.

In an IT department, RPG can name a programming language first built for business reports on large office computers. It is still used to run some payroll, inventory and banking systems. If a job listing asks for "RPG experience" next to words like server or database, this is the meaning. You can find more letters like it in our tech acronyms list.

Using RPG in a sentence

• "My favorite RPG lets you choose a class at the start, and I always pick the healer."
• "We play a tabletop RPG every Friday night at the library."
• "That game has RPG elements, like skill trees and loot, even though it is a shooter."
• "The report said the convoy was hit by an RPG."
• "I spent the weekend grinding levels in an old JRPG."

Spelling, saying and look-alike terms

Say it as three letters, "R P G." Capital letters, no dots. Since the letter R starts with a vowel sound ("ar"), use an: "an RPG," not "a RPG." The full phrase can be written role-playing game or roleplaying game; both are common, and the hyphen version is the most traditional.

RPG is easy to mix up with RPM (revolutions per minute) and with RTS, real-time strategy, a different game style where you command armies rather than one hero. For more on why some letters are said one by one, see acronym vs abbreviation.