What Was The First Ever RPG?

Summary

Role-playing games, known asRPGs, place you in the shoes of a fictional character as you travel through a new land, oftentimes completing a heroic journey to defeat some sort of evil or malicious force. RPGs are classic, with many of the best video games belonging to this genre.

There has to be a ‘first’ RPG though, right? Here, we are going to take a look at what the first ever RPG was, and how it influenced other RPGs to come after. This will dive into both video games and tabletop games (known as TTRPGs), which predate video games.

The First TTRPG

Prior to RPG video games, we hadTTRPGs, or tabletop role-playing games. The first modern TTRPG is often considered Dungeons & Dragons, as it was the first to become a commercially available game in 1974.

Still, this may not be the first true RPG out there, as Braunstein by David Wesely may predate D&D. Braunstein has its roots in the ‘60s, with David Wesely serving as a Dungeon Master-type referee who guided 20 players (each with a unique role) in the town of Braunstein.

The First Video Game RPG

TTRPGs began to rise in popularity with the commercial success of Dungeons and Dragons, and it was only a matter of time before the genre spread to video games. Many university mainframe computers ran very basic RPGs that were directly based on D&D, including ‘dnd’, which was located at Southern Illinois University in 1975.

Colossal Cave Adventure is often regarded as one of the first RPGs as well, as it’s one of the most influential games out there. This game came out in 1976, and allowed players to explore a cave to find treasure. Colossal Cave Adventure expertly combined adventure with an RPG, taking players through a complex cave system.

Many also consider Rogue to be one of the first RPGs that was commercially available, which came out in 1980. This game leans into the Roguelike genre (it was the very first of the genre!), in which there is a permadeath system that causes players to lose all progress upon death. Rogue has gone on to inspire the entire Roguelike genre as well, acting as its namesake.