Curated category
Role-playing game terminology
- Experience pointGary Gygax and Dave Arneson introduced the term experience point during the creation of Dungeons & Dragons in the 1970s.
- System Reference DocumentIn the year 2000, Wizards of the Coast released a document that would change how role-playing games are made. This System Reference Document covered the…
- Statistic (role-playing games)A statistic in role-playing games is a piece of data that represents a particular aspect of a fictional character. That piece of data is usually an integer…
- Non-player characterIn the dim light of a 1970s basement, a group of friends gathered around a wooden table covered in polyhedral dice. The gamemaster held a stack of index…
- Party (role-playing games)A party is a group of characters adventuring together in a role-playing game. This definition holds true across both tabletop and digital genres, though the…
- Random encounterIn the early 1970s, Dungeons & Dragons introduced wandering monsters as a core mechanic for tabletop role-playing games.
- Player characterIn 1979, TSR Hobbies published Understanding Dungeons & Dragons. That book described a player character as a fictional body controlled by a human rather than…
- Character creationA player sits at a table with a blank sheet of paper and polyhedral dice scattered nearby. This moment marks the start of character creation in role-playing…
- Alignment (Dungeons & Dragons)Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, introduced the alignment system in 1974. The original game allowed players to choose among three alignments…