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Role-Playing Game 'Verse
(aka: RPG Verse)

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Role-Playing Game 'Verse (trope)
A world straight out of a Role-Playing Game, without actually being an RPG itself — sometimes without even being a game. Some are adaptations of either computer or tabletop RPGs, others were created independently — inspired by these games and their cultural ancestors.

Will use some, if not most, of the Role-Playing Game Terms, but how many obviously depends on the writers. This type of world is often set in The Time of Myths or Medieval European Fantasy with any technology being Lost Technology or perhaps Schizo Tech.

Compare RPG Mechanics 'Verse, when the characters themselves are aware of game mechanics. Also compare Sudden Video Game Moment.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • .hack A franchise where characters literally get sucked into online roleplaying games.
  • BASToF Lemon is another anime where real people get literally transported into a game.
  • KonoSuba A boy dies and a goddess reincarnates him into a fantasy world like the games he loves so much.
  • Fairy Tail. Guilds? Check. Mission board? Check. Stat improving armor sets? Check. Expansion Pack World? Oh yeah.
  • Rune Soldier Louie takes place in Forcelia, the world created for Lodoss. The main cast is comprised of stock rpg archetypes: Louie is supposed to be the mage, but tends to serve as their "fighter" instead. Jeanie is the group's swordswoman, Merrill is the thief, and Melissa is the Staff Chick. They spend much of the series in search of old ruins in hopes of finding treasure to line their pockets. But, in classic rpg fashion, a bigger plot gradually unfolds for our heroes.
  • The first Alternate Universe in Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi was a spoof of the Role Playing Game Verse.
  • In Magic Knight Rayearth, the world of Cephiro is a lot like the typical fantasy world in roleplaying games. Fuu repeatedly even comments about how much Cephiro is like an RPG. It makes the twist at the end of the story's first half—that the princess who needs to be saved actually summoned the Magic Knights to Cephiro in order to kill her—hit even harder.
  • Beet the Vandel Buster takes this a little further than most, with direct references to level grinding and all Busters having their level emblazoned on their chests in roman numerals. Vandals also have a similar system, but this is a slightly more organic 'star' system, where they're rated on the number of crystals implanted into them.
  • Persona 4: The Animation keeps the date-change and character-stats screens from the actual game, giving it this feel.

    Audio Plays 
  • Le Donjon de Naheulbeuk is a classic example where characters will casually discuss their levels, skills, bonuses, hit points and dice rolls. Dungeon Masters, however, are actual characters within the setting, and downgraded from an all-powerful narrator to ordinary people who simply happen to own and administrate a dungeon. In a case of Recursive Adaptation, the series was later adapted into a Tabletop role-playing game and a board game.
  • Likewise, Reflets d'Acide takes place in an RPG-verse with explicit RPG mechanics, and characters will frequently discuss their abilities and levels, in-between lengthy conversations ''in verses''.
  • Following the previous two, countless imitator series more or less thrived on the formula, at least on the French MP 3 series scene.

    Comic Books 
  • Rat Queens is a Deconstructive Parody of stories set in D&D-type universes, concentrating on just how annoying adventurers would be to "ordinary" citizens.
  • Black Moon Chronicles: The books start with a nobody called Wismerhill going on a journey and adding more friends to his party while facing various perils that are thrown in their way. It helps to explain a lot of what happens when you know that the series was inspired by one of Froideval's old Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, and that he worked on AD&D for TSR in The '80s.

    Comic Strips 

    Fan Works 
  • In The Keys Stand Alone, the sequel to With Strings Attached, the gods have finally given the skahs the world full of monsters and adventure that they desperately wanted. There are now monsters, dungeons, mines, and lairs aplenty. Except the gods didn't do this; the C'hou of this book is a giant telepathic MMORPG, the Con Fusion, created by Jeft as the Grand Game Master, that the skahs eagerly inhabited. So it's a real RPG Mechanics Verse. The real C'hou is more or less the same as it had been six years prior to the story.
  • Paradoxus:
    • The plot is set up in a way that roughly resembles your typical World of Warcraft expansion pack storyline, just with an interdimensional flair. One of the Burning Legion's leaders starts wreaking havoc and can only be stopped by the conjoint effort of several peoples who ally. The key players are powerful characters who slowly unravel the mystery and own powerful artifacts, belong to a distinguished lineage, or both. There are several targets to kill, mooks that only elite characters can defeat, and a vast world to explore (with the corresponding fast methods of transportation).
    • In the third chapter, as Bloom is traveling through the Eastern Kingdoms, she notices several people approaching her asking for favors, i.e., the In-Universe equivalent of quests. She ignores them in favor of focusing on returning home and is puzzled by this behavior.
    • In the fourth chapter, Bloom inexplicably stops feeling fatigued moments after entering Quel'Danas. World of Warcraft has a mechanic that allows characters to get an XP bonus after spending some time at a city, garrison, or inn because they feel rested there. In Bloom's case, she's been traveling non-stop for many weeks (normal state) but ends her journey at Undercity, from where she teleports via orb to Silvermoon (rested state).
  • Vow of Nudity, being a Dungeons & Dragons fanfiction, uses game mechanics like character stats, experience points and dicerolls to determine when characters succeed or fail at what they attempt, but the characters themselves aren't aware of this facet of their existence.
  • The world of C'hou in With Strings Attached might have played this trope somewhat straight in its history, since it explicitly started out as being based on Original Dungeons & Dragons. However, by the time of the actual story, the skahs warriors of Baravada have long since wiped out everything even remotely dangerous on that continent. The four find the skahs adventure-starved and so desperate for something to do that when Ringo enters a pub yelling that the Ghost City of Ehndris is full of monsters, the entire skahs population of Ta'akan immediately leaps up and tries to get down there, despite not actually knowing whether he was telling the truth. (He was; getting them to go down there en masse was his Batman Gambit to make things difficult for the people who were already there, and also to provide him with a way to return there.)
    • Averted with Ketafa, which was spared all the adventure nonsense and developed normally.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is an Unbuilt Trope. The book series itself predates role-playing games like D&D and in fact codified many High Fantasy tropes. However, after the Fellowship is formed and before it is disbanded, the plot and characters would fit right into an RPG verse: a party that includes a wizard, an elf, a dwarf, a knight, and a ranger set out on a dangerous journey to destroy an Artifact of Doom, facing many typical genre perils like monsters, bands of orcs, and evil sorcerers trying to thwart their progress. The second and third films avert this, being closer to epic war movies.
  • Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is explicitly a D&D movie with everyone having a class and only using the skills and abilities their class can use (the bard can sing and only use minor spells, the druid can shapeshift into animals, the barbarian can kill you with a potato), though it plays a little fast and loose with the rules because Rule of Fun and Rule of Cool. Still, when it can use the rules as written to engineer a cooler or funnier situation, it's willing to stick with them (like the graveyard scene where the resurrected dead can only answer three questions before going back to death, forcing the PCs to dig up a dozen graves to find the MacGuffin they're looking for. D&D rules apply, but the characters never mention them or talk about bonuses or skills or anything fourth-wallish; they just treat the D&D world as normal and navigate it to the best of their ability.

    Literature 

    Live-Action TV 

    Video Games 

    Web Animation 

    Web Comics 
  • Many webcomics take place in a more or less literal Role Playing Game Verse.
  • Amya is based on a tabletop RPG played by the authors, with adjustments to fit the webcomic format. The character sheet mentions character classes, and the comic proper mentions kolyaruts and tanglefoot bags by name.
  • Crystal Heroes takes place in a stock RPG setting moved to the present technologically and culturally, and the characters do refer to dungeons, bosses, and white and black magic by name, but it stops short of being an RPG Mechanics 'Verse.
  • Cucumber Quest is brimming with Affectionately parodied RPG story tropes. Although RPG game mechanics have not been significantly referenced in-story, the site's character bio page actually assigns RPG stats to each character.
    • Erfworld is based more on a turn-based strategy game than an RPG, but the strategy game it's based on has lots of RPG-ish mechanics, like individual units "leveling" based on experience. The inhabitants are so aware of game mechanics that it strikes them as odd that Parson (an import from our world) doesn't just innately know that units can't move across "hex boundaries" unless it's their side's "turn".
    • Homestuck also utilizes many RPG tropes, especially once the game of Sburb starts.
  • morphE is an adaptation of a Mage: The Awakening game and goes out of its way to explain game mechanics in-universe. The end of chapter 2 deals with a character expending all of his mana and needing to be introduced to tass to replenish his supply.
  • MSF High definitely qualifies, though it's not immediately obvious. Switches to the sister trope when characters become Inspired, a specific class.
  • Problem Sleuth is both this and an Adventure Game Verse, leaning more heavily towards RPG mechanics in the later half of the series.
  • Tower of God has several different character classes, scouts, close-range fighters, long range fighters, magicians, and a Mission Control character class in which each cast member falls. They do this to have a functional team in their quest to reach the top of the Tower, scaling it floor by floor, in other words level by level. Their equipment and basic skillsnote  are from F to A with a special S Class and decimal sub units (10-1). And once the Regulars reach the top, they get ranked based on how they performed during their ascension. The best thing about it: it takes some time until you notice that due to how the concepts are interwoven with the narrative so that they make sense in-universe and contribute to creating a believable world, rather than present themselves as arbitrary and making sense strictly to the outside observer.
  • Weregeek takes this to extremes and has a dozen of individual gaming storylines set in distrinct RPG Verses and running parallel to the Real Life plot.

    Western Animation 
  • The world of Adventure Time is so heavily inspired by the classic RPG Dungeons & Dragons that even its own creator has admitted it. The show has presented alignment, class, experience, and gold systems as well as dungeons (being the namesake of an episode), quests, and magical items. Some examples straight out of DnD are the Stoneskin Potion, the frog-gnome-knight, Princess Bubblegum's protective gems, the Dire (Fire) Wolves, the Bag of Holding within Finn's hat, the treasure-vomiting mimics, the slime cube, and the Demon Cat being a Displacement Beast. Several episodes revolve around Finn and Jake exploring the mystical Land of Ooo in search of adventures and those that don't, often start with them just coming out from one of those adventures or charging headfirst into one at the end. Given the characters are very aware of these mechanics, the show hinges on an RPG Mechanics 'Verse.
  • The Dungeons & Dragons (1983) cartoon.
  • The Futurama movie "Bender's Game" takes place partly in Cornwood, the setting to a Dungeons & Dragons game that some of the characters were playing earlier in the movie.
  • Jumanji: The Animated Series had elements of this, albeit based on a board game rather than a tabletop RPG.
  • The Legend of Vox Machina, which is based on the first D&D campaign of Critical Role and as such is brimful of fantastic races, taverns, monsters, overly obstructive doors and the like.
  • Wakfu, based on the computer RPG of the same name, takes place in a monster-filled, medieval-ish world inhabited by various fantastic races with different magical abilities.


Alternative Title(s): RPG Verse

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