Webcomic / RPG World

RPG World was an award-winning webcomic by Ian Jones-Quartey, part Affectionate Parody, part Homage and part original spin on the idea of a Final Fantasy style console RPG and the characters who dwell in them, as well as the Video Game Tropes and Anime Tropes encountered in such games. One of Keenspot's earlier comics during the rise of webcomics in the 2000s.

The story follows the exploits of a guy named Hero, who sets out on a quest to save the world. Along the way he meets Cherry (a thief he meets as she's mugging a guy at knifepoint), Diane (a harlot who he just randomly picks up while visiting a town), and Eikre (a self-proclaimed ladies man) who join the adventures. Add in many shenanigans with extra characters and tons of lampshade hanging on their rather oddball world.

Seems like a fun setup, and from 1999-2004, the comic held steady, even having a crossover with Adventurers! (with the story titled "Eh It Had to Happen"). But during the series' final years (2005-2007), its fandom had devolved into complaining fanboys who weren't satisfied with how the story was turning out, which in turn contributed to Ian's Creator Breakdown (already manifesting with his studying animation and personal matters at the time in the midst of juggling the schedule for this comic), which wasn't helped by the fact that back then, Ian didn't take the fact the comic had many fans all that seriously. Ultimately all this came to a head when Ian couldn't keep up the updates and just flat-out abandoned the comic. To add insult to injury, he was working on the final story arc of the comic, right when the heroes are on the verge of facing the Big Bad, when he made the decision leaving the series on a cliffhanger that was never to be resolved.

As for Ian, his animation career has flourished. Shortly after leaving RPG World, he co-produced animated shorts called nockFORCE with Jim Gisriel - they can be viewed on their Youtube channel here. He later parlayed that into being a hired animator for shows such as The Venture Bros. and Adventure Time (even doing voicework, like for Bravest Warriors). He moved on to become creative director for Steven Universe (where the show's protagonist has Hero action figure) before eventually leaving to work on his own series OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes.

Ultimately this led into RPG World finally getting a belated ending almost 15 years after that last update, in the form of a television crossover between the comic and OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes, entitled "A Hero's Fate." The episode premiered on September 29, 2017, with Michael Sinterniklaas playing Hero. Due to positive reaction to the episode, Ian uploaded the one-page ending for the series from ''OK KO!'' to his tumblr on October 4, 2017, finally giving fans a proper close to the comic once and for all. ^note Sorta, it doesn't wrap up all the story lines of the series. But hey, close enough.

Fan Revival

On the 19th of June, 2016, a fan revival (called, funnily enough, "RPG World: Fan Revival") was started by two fans, continuing the story directly where the original comic left off. It can be found here. While it unfortunately went into a hiatus of over a year and a half when the author had trouble keeping up the updates, it returned on July 31, 2018.

The cast included:

In the "real world":

• Jim, The Guy who Plays RPG World, appearing mainly in Filler Strips.

In the game world:

• Hero: The Lvl 50 Warrior; A human with Anime Hair, who named himself The Chosen One, and is rather competent a fighter if he's not in his Too Dumb to Live stage.
• Cherry: The Lvl 50 Thief; an elven thief who can also summon, who is one part of the Love Triangle of the party.
• Diane: The Lvl 49 Mage; The magic user and healer of the party.
• Eikre: The Lvl 46 Outlaw; The enigmatic.
• Reka: The Lvl 42 Science Pirate; The girl genius.
• Dragobo: The Lvl 37 Cute Fuzzy Thing The Voiceless and Team Pet.
• Howard: Another cute fuzzy thing and apparently the White Mage.
• Rabble-Rouser: A dance battler. The strip ended very shortly after he joined the main party.
• Galgarion - the Big Bad, who had his own Theme Tune and was romantically interested in Cherry.
• ...and a Cast Herd of NPCs.

Not to be confused with RPG Mechanics 'Verse, which is when the setting of a non-interactive work functions like a role-playing game (usually of the Eastern RPG or Tabletop RPG variety).

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This webcomic displays examples of:

• Abandoned Info Page
• An Adventurer Is You: Hero and his party naturally.
• Aerith and Bob: from Eikre and Galgarion to Diane and Jeff.
• Affectionate Parody: Final Fantasy, and most long-plot console roleplaying games.
• Artifact of Doom: The Mystical Keys, which are in the shape of four books. Two known books so far, the Phoenix Book and the Tiger Book, contain encyclopedic information on taking over the world and evil ethics/war tactics/strategy respectively.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: Ian polled readers to find out which character in the comic would win a swimsuit competition. After the results were tallied, it was revealed that character with the second highest number of votes ("Red Haired NPC Girl") was really just Hero, the lead male character, dressed like a girl.
• Author Appeal: Jones-Quartey was himself an avid console gamer, which is part of the reason he started the comic.
• Babies Ever After: In the final page taking place after Hero's appearance on OK K.O., Hero and Cherry have a baby named Spaghetti.
• Backstory: Everybody has one, and they're all interconnected!
• Berserk Button: As per usual for an Idiot Hero, it's a bad idea to hurt Hero's friends in front of him. A DOUBLE bad idea since as an ex-soldier of SEVIL, he was injected with a Super Serum that activates when he's angry.
• Beta Baddie: Jeff.
• Big Bad: Galgarion.
• Brown Note: The Mystic Keys were quite possibly these. At least reading the Tiger Book made Jeff go crazy and turn evil.
• Bungling Inventor: the NPC Machine Guy creates a time machine... when he tried to make a toaster.
• The Cameo: Khrima from Adventurers! appeared in the halls of Eikre's high school in Eviltown. Hero, Cherry and Galgarion made cameo appearance in Adventurers! as well. This is all in addition to the crossover. "Clint" from Stubble Comics also appeared as the summon "Angst-Filled Teen".
• Cannot Spit It Out: Cherry has come close several times to telling Hero how she feels about him. But his stupidity makes her question this feeling as much as circumstances prevent her from saying it.
• Captain Ersatz: The whole RPG World universe is Captain Ersatz of a Final Fantasy world, most closely resembling that of Final Fantasy VII.
  • Howard Wigglebottom, a mubble, is a Captain Ersatz of a Final Fantasy Moogle, Dragobos are Chocobos, Shida is Shiva, and Reka is Lucca from Chrono Trigger...
  • Tonya, Hawk, and Exodragon are blatant CaptainErsatzes of Jessie, James, and Meowth, right down to the events of the party's first encounter with them.
• Cats Have Nine Lives: Larry and Earl, they're down to 2.
• Cerebus Syndrome: though arguably a subversion as the story went back to comedic after an extremely serious comic.
  • One strip hung a lampshade on some of the idiosyncrasies of video game plot pacing when the heroes were forced to do a lighthearted butterfly-catching minigame but were completely unable to enjoy it, because they were still broken up about a character who had just died.
• Chekhov's Gun: Ian J. created banner ads for a game called Retro Mud where he put the RPG World characters in different outfits. Diane wore her mage outfit in these ads. Cherry was depicted as an archer, although her underboob-displaying outfit never made it in. Detestai was seen in a loose skimpy robe/drape thing that was later donned by Feijoa.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Early in the comic, Hero and Cherry encounter a viking named Olaf the Unspeakable, but flee. He later appears as part of a Dual Boss fight, and is much tougher.
• Contrived Coincidence: Eikre's introduction led to a number of factors that made it look like he was obviously Galgarion in disguise such as him constantly hitting on Cherry, being overly suspicious and wearing a shirt that says EVIL on it. It turns out that he was just a pervert and EVIL is the name of his favorite band.
• The Chosen One: Actually three of them. Hero, Cherry and Diane. Long story.
  • Parodied with Hero who, while he IS someone chosen, keeps calling himself the Chosen One in Langoria, where he isn't. The elves just give up trying to convince him otherwise.
• Cliffhanger: The final battle with Galgarion which was on the verge of starting when the comic ended. And the sub-plot of Reka's robots making a time machine to supposedly save her from being killed.
• Crossover: Did one with Adventurers! Also did a Halloween crossover with Josh Mirman's Stubble Comics, named "Party Of Terror". Sadly a Missing Episode now that RPGW's and Stubble's archives are gone.
• Cutscene: Usually placed at the end of a story chapter, paralleled to the end of a disc on the game. There was an Art Shift to not only color but a more detailed style to ape the fact that console games go from sprites to more elaborate animation for such scenes in games.
• Cute Monster Girl: Subverted. Diane is revealed to be of the "monster" race but looks 100% human.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: Eikre's Top Cut manages to OHKO a boss character the group was having trouble with as his introduction but he hasn't used the move since, and it's acknowledged.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Galgarion is a borderline example of this trope. He's not exactly a moron, but his tendency to be Affably Evil makes it easy to be surprised by things like when he raided the Mubble villiage and drained the souls out of most of them, including Howard's girlfriend.
• Dance Battler: Rabble Rouser.
• Deadpan Snarker: Cherry, usually.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The inconsistency between colored and uncolored comics is explained as the television set the game is being played on constantly switches between monochrome and color.
• Distracted by the Sexy
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: The flower was Galarion!
• Duel Boss: Jeff was looking to be one of these for Eikre when the comic went on permanent hiatus.
• The Dulcinea Effect: Parodied. Hero meets the thief Cherry in the middle of a robbery and beats up Cherry's helpless, cowering victim after mistaking him for the robber, apparently solely on the grounds that a pretty girl couldn't possibly be a bad guy. Even Cherry can't believe it.
• Easy Amnesia: Hero had it, and there was very little that happened to help him resolve that.
• Edible Theme Naming: Most elves seem to be named after fruit. Bet you didn't know there was a kind of fruit called Cherimoya, did you? Or Feijoa?
• Exposed to the Elements: One of the tropes parodied by this comic.
• Extra-ore-dinary: Jeff had some metal manipulation magic powers. He only changed his dagger to an axe in the comic, but he also implied he was keeping most of his abilities secret.
• Fanservice: Across the whole main party. Even lampshaded when Ian drew Cherry pin-up style and she complained that that was Diane's job.
• Fantastic Racism: Humans v. Elves v. Monsters.
• Foreboding Architecture: Galgarion's tower.
• Fully Absorbed Finale: The OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes episode, "A Hero's Fate", if fans choose to consider it canon. By now Hero is Level 90, but left his companions behind a long time ago in his single-minded desire to defeat Galgarion. K.O. eventually helps both foes realize that they've been neglecting other parts of their lives in order to level up and defeat each other; both agree to at least suspend their feud, and Hero tracks down Cherry. After a Time Skip, they have a baby named Spaghetti.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Reka, the inventor who might be an expy of Chrono Trigger Lucca.
• Genius Ditz: Hero is not the sharpest tool in the shed, but perfectly suited to the life of a RPG protagonist.
• Genre Savvy: Diane convinces Hero to escape the village when she tells him an "Old Man NPC" wearing a mysterious cloak told them to.

  Hero: An Old Man NPC?! They never say anything impure!

• Girl on Girl Is Hot: When Cherry was nearly killed by a monster and Diane had to use her Kiss ability to heal her, Eikre was delighted. Hero didn't understand the subtext and thought Eikre just wanted a kiss of his own.
• Good Is Dumb: Hero. Not a lot between the ears, but he's saving the world all the same.
• Goofy Print Underwear: Hero wears red heart boxers (as seen when he opens his inventory).
• Halloween Cosplay: RPG World was one of the first strips to start doing this, with strip 10.5. Many others credit Ian J. for the idea.
• Healer Signs On Early: Lienne a.k.a "Diane"'s has a healing skill, Kiss, and she joins in strip 14, in the first town and after two battles without a her.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: In strip 14, Hero does this to Diane on the rename screen, whose original name was Lienne.
• Hero Looking for Group: The introductory panels are about Hero proclaiming himself the one to "vanquish the evil war horde (and its leader Galgarion) but acknowledging he can't do it alone. Consequently, he spends the next few chapters collecting a Rag Tag Band Of Misfits comprised of a thief, a harlot, and an outlaw. A science pirate, two fuzzy Team Pets, and a dance battler join later on.
• Hidden Elf Village: Langoria.
• High-Altitude Battle: In Cherry's homeland, an elven city in the trees.
• Idiot Hero: More like overly naive, but still...
  • Pun unintentional. Ok, maybe a little...
• I Love the Dead: Parodied in a filler strip in which Ian poked fun at shippers. The specific joke was about Cherry/Reka shippers. Cherry was not interested in a relationship with Reka's corpse
• Intimate Healing: Lienne a.k.a "Diane"'s healing skill, Kiss.
• Knight of Cerebus: Jeff, although Galgarion had a few Dead Serious moments.
• Lampshade Hanging: A lot considering the comic's a parody, but most of it is done by Cherry.
  • This is handwaved by saying that as a Chosen One, Cherry uses her connection to the Tatsachore to see past the bounds of their world, meaning that while Hero can power up his stats and Diane can use magic more effectively, she just gets to notice game mechanics.
• Left Hanging: The fate of the comic after Ian put it on Indefinite Series Hiatus.
• Magic Skirt: Though in Reka's case, it's Magic Saggy Pants; nothing is actually holding them up.
  • If Hero's sketchy detective work is true, they're held up by glue.
• Medium Awareness: Eikre's favorite band, "Evil", shows signs of this combined with Death Seeker in their song lyrics here. The song's point of view is a random enemy who's aware of the cursor and that their hitpoints are low and their gauge is broken. The singer is telling his opponent to attack him but "Don't compare me to you!" in defiance of the Heel–Face Turn trope.
• Mistaken for Afterlife: When Eikre is drowning, he thinks Reka is an angel coming to take him to his rest. He shortly realizes his mistake, but thinks it's just as good.
• Mood Whiplash: Parodied. Just after Reka dies, the heroes have to play a minigame where they catch butterflies - but since they were extremely fond of Reka and she happened to be a party member at the time of her plot-relevant death, they're irritated, annoyed, sad, anything but enjoying themselves.
• Mook–Face Turn: Evil Soldier #347, most badass Cannon Fodder guy to become a main character without as much as getting a name, ever.
• No Ending: In the original run, the characters reach the final boss, begin fighting the final boss and then... nothing. As it turns out, the creator just plain got tired of working on the comic and axed it. Considering that there was a just-introduced character, two missing MacGuffins, and a bunch of unresolved sideplots, the ending probably wasn't that imminent anyhow. Didn't make it any less stinging however.
  • 10 years later, however, Ian finally gave the comic a proper ending, albeit one that skips a considerable period from the last strips produced.
• No Name Given: No one knows Hero's actual name, including himself, so he just answers to the name Hero.
• Never Say That Again: Jim's friend often does this to Jim, in the form of, "If you ever ______ again, I will kill you." Usually after a hearty laugh.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Galgarion, as seen in this comic. While discussing strategy with Galgarion, Jeff used metal magic to turn his dagger into an axe and back again. When Galgarion asked Jeff why he didn't do that during the fight he lost, Jeff countered that maybe Galgarion wasn't the only evil genius.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: The elevator up to Galgarion's suite before the comic was abandoned.
• Pimped-Out Dress: Cherry's dress in the Elf village arc, which impressed Hero... with the increased polygon count.
• Pointy Ears: Elves of course have them works as a Chekhov's Gun to keen eyed readers in the first strip when Cherry was introduced to showcase she's not human. Though that also could've been a Throw It In! by Ian as well.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: Galgarion has a weapon that works like this: he uses it to suck the soul out of one person, then launches the souls as a beam of energy. It does 9999 damage, although it can also cause instant death, or unfortunately, slow and agonizing death. His use of this weapon, and later boasting about having used it on innocent people, including one underling's wife, are the first signs of Galgarion's true nature.
• Plucky Comic Relief: Reka's bots, and various one-shot characters, as well as the cast themselves on a rotating basis.
• Psycho for Hire: Jeff.
• Public Service Announcement: Marlboros (a parody of Final Fantasy's Malboros) are tentacle monsters who smoke cigarettes, wear cowboy hats, use their horrible smoker's breath to do damage and inflict status effects, and keel over dead of lung cancer in the middle of the fight. Eikre suspects that their inclusion in the game was a PSA.
• Recurring Extra: The "Times Are Tough" guy appears in taverns with no explanation of how he keeps following the group.
• Red Herring Mole: One of the most elaborate examples ever. The comic goes into so many ways Eikre could be Galgarion that it looks like it could be a parody of really, really obvious Moles, helped by the fact that Galgarion's real disguise is so incredibly subtle.
• Reluctant Fanservice Girl: The first Halloween cosplay, Cherry is in Tifa of Final Fantasy VII's outfit, and is trying to cover herself due to the short skirt.
• Running Gag: Hero's stupidity, Cherry questioning a lot of videogame tropes, Podder-head's bad luck and his complaining about not having his arm repaired when asked to attack.
• Sexy Santa Dress: In the Christmas strips.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Cherry in the ballroom scene, although Hero was more impressed with the polygon count in the model for her for this particular cutscene than with her beauty.
• Shipper on Deck: Reka for Hero/Cherry.
• Shout-Out: The name of the "Big Panda" the group fought is a nod to Big Panda, the failed predecessor to Keenspot.
• Snarky Non-Human Sidekick: Howard.
  • Together, Team Rocket CaptainErsatzes Tonya and Hawk's names form a stealthy one.
  • Detestai's Split Personality involving whether or not she has her glasses on is reminiscent of Lady Une.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Cherry is of course the only member of the party to wonder why the monsters are getting progressively stronger as the party travels. When she asks Hero what would have happened if they had taken a different path (i.e., gone Off the Rails), the concept breaks his brain.
• Split Personality: Detestai, whose glasses seem to give her an evil personality. When she has them on, she's a mastermind hell bent on revenge, when she has them off, she only wants cuddles.
• Stalker with a Crush: Galgarion for Cherry. He turned himself into a rose so he could travel in her back pocket and spy on the party.
• Stripperiffic: Diane, despite literally starting out as a harlot, isn't as stripperiffic as many fantasy genre females. Like, say, Feijoa. The elven warriors as a whole probably count too.
• Summon Magic: Cherry.
• Temporal Paradox: Averted with Donald's Time Machine, which does not trigger a paradox when messing with time, as it's explained in some irrationally conflicted explanation that makes no sense whatsoever. Podder-head is just amazed that he won't even question it.
• Terrible Trio: Detestai, Larry, and Earl. There's also a group Expy of the actual Team Rocket in one arc.
• The Power of Friendship: Although the mechanics were never fully explained, Hero gets his power from this.
• Three-Way Sex: Strip 11: Lienne still under the assumption that she's being hired as a prostitute by Hero, sees Cherry, and says "That's gonna be extra."
• Time Travel Escape: Built up to by Reka's robots and Donald to try and save Reka.
• Trouser Space: The inventory is inside Hero's pants. Don't think about it too much/
• Un-Confession: Literally uses the Reset Button for this trope. Cherry admitted her feelings for the hero, and then an enemy attacked, Total Party Kill, Game Over. The player loaded the last save file, and all progress in their love life was lost.
• Underground Monkey: The Trope Namer!
• Unlucky Everydude: Evil Soldier #347. How unlucky? GALGARION MURDERED HIS WIFE. With a weapon that works by sucking the soul out of one person, and blasting it at another.
• Unsound Effect: Convenient Scene Change!
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Detestai, Earl, and Larry can change into cat monsters as their primary power, but Detestai can only perform partial transformations as she never learned how to control herself while fully transformed. Earl and Larry even lampshade the fact that she'll have to fully transform eventually.
• Welcome to Corneria: The guy who appears in every bar they visit, and only ever says "*sigh* Times are tough."
  • First appearing in strip 9: "The Trouble with Non-Playable Characters"]].
  • Cherry found two others during the Dragobo race.
• Wham Episode:
  • The Disc One Finale, The Beach, ends with three big reveals: Cherry is actually an elf, Eikre isn't evil, and Galgarion was the flower the whole time and pulls a surprise attack on the whole cast.
  • Reka's death, proving that for all his goofiness and swooning over Cherry, Galgarion was really Evil.
• A Wizard Did It: That's the in-game explanation for cheat codes.
• You Killed My Father: Reka claims that Galgarion killed her father, an accusation he denies. Whether or not he actually did is never confirmed.

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