Few game genres have had such a dedicated and enthusiastic audience as role-playing games, and all this without ever being the most popular or best-selling genre. Role-playing games first gained worldwide fame with the creation of several board games and tabletop games, most notably Gary Gigax’s Dungeons & Dragons, a franchise that still remains largely unified with role-playing games as a whole, and particularly with tabletop RPGs. Much of the initial inspiration for what has become a staple RPG was found in the famous Lord of the Rings trilogy of books, along with other fantasy books, as well as myths and legends from various cultures.

Role-playing games remain possibly the most misunderstood game genre, due to the presence of many monsters and demons, and because many role-playing games offer players the option of aligning themselves with the forces of good or evil, some religious leaders have considered role-playing games to be bad. influence, and some even consider them to be Satanists or sympathizers of Satanism. Some others reject RPGs for other reasons, such as the common perception that many RPG players are geeky or just plain unpopular, thus ‘uncool’ in some people’s eyes, however the enormous popularity of modern PC massively multiplayer online role-playing games (or MMORPGs for short) like World Of Warcraft have clearly shown this stereotype to be untrue.
 
Today, role-playing games come in many different forms, from tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons, to popular console RPG series like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, to the many highly popular PC RPGs. beloved ones such as the best-selling Blizzard Diablo II and World Of Warcraft franchises. RPGs have even helped spawn a host of hybrid genres, with some of the most popular being the Action/RPG genre, which combines elements of action games with the exploration and setting of an RPG or adventure game, and the Strategy/RPG genre, which combines turn-based strategy gameplay with the leveling and story development often found in an RPG.

Newer related subgenres include the massively multiplayer online role-playing game, which focuses exclusively on online play with a large number of people, within a persistent and constantly changing world. These MMORPG games, like the aforementioned World Of Warcraft, almost always require you to pay a monthly fee of about $5-30 dollars to play, though there have been a few exceptions, the most famous being the Guild Wars series of games that has allowed gamers to play. to play online with no monthly fee. These MMORPGs have also had the most success with mainstream games, with best-selling games like World Of Warcraft setting all sorts of subscription and sales records that RPGs had never enjoyed until very recently.

Although MMORPGs continue to be huge sales successes, traditional RPGs have remained a niche, with many of the gamers engaged, but not as many gamers as some more popular genres have enjoyed.