RPG World

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RPG World is an award-winning webcomic by Ian Jones-Quartey, part Affectionate Parody, part Take That, 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 encountered in such games. Also full of Anime Tropes.

RPG World was abandoned shortly before the Final Battle with the Big Bad, so readers get no payoff after an Archive Binge. Back around September 2009, Jones-Quartey asked for interested fans to continue the series. Nothing ever came of that though, and in January 2010, he wrote for people to just let the series die already, and that he didn't want it to continue. As of August 2010, he has apparently deleted all the actual comics from the site, although the site itself is still intact. However some fans have preserved the series, you can download it here, here and here.

It once crossed over with Adventurers!, in a Story Arc titled "Eh It Had To Happen".

Jones-Quartey later posted YouTube shorts called nockFORCE on his LiveJournal when his schedule permits. He stopped doing that since September 2009.

Jones-Quartey now works as a hired animator for such shows as The Venture Brothers and Adventure Time. So yeah its very unlikely he'll be coming back to this any time soon.

The cast included:

In the "real world": Jim, The Guy who Plays RPG World, appearing mainly in Filler Strips or moments of Something Completely Different.

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 Triang Relations 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.

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Tropes used in RPG World include:

[deep breath]

• 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.
• A Wizard Did It - That's the in-game explanation for cheat codes.
• 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.
• Bishonen - Eikre and Jeff.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Complete Monster - Galgarion seems like an ineffectual villain for most of the comic's run, only to become exceedingly evil. If read as an Archive Binge, it's surprising to see the silly guy in the mask from the early pages brag about murder in a completely unfunny fashion.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Creator Breakdown - The author seemed to turn against his own work based on what he expected from his fans vs. what he got. (Apparently one source of this was that he expected people to love the photocomics of himself and his friends as the ones "playing" RPG World that were put up between chapters as much as, if not more than, the drawn comics. When the readers found them tiresome and said they should be done away with, he was outraged.) This inevitably lead to...
• Creator Backlash - In what's still one of the more infamous tantrums in well-known webcomics, the author screamed out his fanbase, declared the comic abandoned to get back at them, and stormed off in a huff. He then spent some time afterwards doing all he could to breed resentment and hatred in the fandom that was left.
• 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.
• Easy Amnesia - Hero had it, and there was very little that happened to help him resolve that.
• Eat the Dog - one of the filler pages.
• Evil Is Stylish - Galgarion
• Exposed to the Elements - one of the Video Game Tropes parodied by this comic.
• Fan Service - 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.
• Gadgeteer Genius - Reka
• Genius Ditz - Hero
• 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 - Ask Eikre. But not Hero.
• Good Is Dumb - Hero
• Halloween Cosplay - RPG World was one of the first strips to start doing this, many others credit Ian J. for the idea.
• Hello, Insert Name Here: Hero does this to Diane on the rename screen, whose original name was Lienne.
• Hidden Elf Village - Langoria.
• High Altitude Battle - in Cherry's homeland, an elven city in the trees.
• Homage - well, sort of.
• Ho Yay - Galgarion and Jeff get this a lot. Jeff being a bit of a Bishonen doesn't help at all. It's Lampshaded in a couple of strips where the two are caught in compromising positions.
• 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.
• Les Yay - There's a bunch of Cherry/Reka stuff. Big time. And here's some more. Subverted in this comic. The girls aren't happy, but Eikre is.
  • Not to mention that Reka has become flustered by the suggestion, and protested a bit too directly when questioned whether she had past boyfriends.
• 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.
• 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.
• Moral Myopia - Inverted.
• No Ending: Dammit Ian...
• No Name Given: No one knows Hero's actual name, including Hero, 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."
• Obfuscating Stupidity - Galgarion, as seen in this comic.
  • And Jeff was hinted to be using a variation of it in this one.
• Ominous Latin Chanting - The elevator up to Galgarion's suite before the comic was abandoned.
• Orphaned Series
• Our Elves Are Better - Especially when most of them present are Hot Amazons.
• Panty Shot - Averted with Diana's Mage outfit, it's actually her leotard.
• Pimped-Out Dress - Cherry's dress in the Elf village arc, which impressed Hero... with the increased polygon count.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Sexy Santa Dress - For 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.
• Snarky Non-Human Sidekick - Howard.
• Something Completely Different - In between "discs" of the game, there would be photocomics of the real-life "player" of the game musing on what he'd just played, switching the disc, or making run-of-the-mill "two gamers on a couch" jokes with his friend. These were less popular than the comic proper, and it's theorized that this was a contributing factor in Ian's Creator Breakdown.
• 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.
• Split Personality - Detestai, whose glasses seem to give her a more evil personality then when she has them off. When she has them on she's 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.
• Theme Naming - All Cherry's family are named after fruit. Bet you didn't know there was a kind of fruit called Cherimoya, did you?
• The Power of Friendship - Although the mechanics were never fully explained, Hero gets his power from this.
• Time Travel Escape - Built up to by Reka's robots and Donald to try and save Reka.
• 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 firing it at another.
• Unsound Effect: Convenient Scene Change!
• Welcome to Corneria - The guy who appears in every bar they visit, and only ever says "*sigh* Times are tough."
• What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic - parodied
• White-Haired Pretty Boy - Eikre
• Wham! Episode - Reka's death, proving that for all his goofiness and swooning over Cherry, Galgarion was really Evil.
• Yuppie Couple - The "Times Are Tough" guy.
• You Killed My Father: Reka claims that Galgarion killed her father, an accusation he denies. Whether or not he actually did is never confirmed.