The Lantern Hall
Painting: an ancient lexicon open on a carved lectern in a dark chapel of books, glowing runes and symbols lifting off its pages like fireflies.
TermGeneral term

The party

The group of player characters who adventure together, pooling complementary skills. Its fantasy prototype is the Fellowship of the Ring; its gaming form is the fighter, cleric, wizard and thief of early D&D, carried into computer RPGs and the holy trinity of MMOs.

The group of player characters who adventure together, pooling complementary skills. Its fantasy prototype is the Fellowship of the Ring; its gaming form is the fighter, cleric, wizard and thief of early D&D, carried into computer RPGs and the holy trinity of MMOs.

Quick answers

What does "The party" mean?
The group of player characters who adventure together, pooling complementary skills. Its fantasy prototype is the Fellowship of the Ring; its gaming form is the fighter, cleric, wizard and thief of early D&D, carried into computer RPGs and the holy trinity of MMOs.

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Player character

Tabletop term1974

A character controlled by one of the players rather than by the Game Master. The shift from commanding armies to embodying a single persistent hero, who remembers, grows and can die, is what separated the roleplaying game from the wargame.

Character class

Tabletop term1974

A package of abilities that defines what a character does, such as fighter, wizard, cleric or thief. Classes make roles distinct and parties interdependent, and they became a backbone of computer and online RPGs, from Wizardry to World of Warcraft.

The holy trinity

Digital term

The three-role party structure of group content: a tank to absorb enemy attention, a healer to keep everyone alive and damage dealers (DPS, damage per second) to kill things. It formalized the fighter-cleric-wizard balance of the tabletop The party for real-time online play.

Painting: a single plain gold ring lying on an old hand-drawn map beside a candle, and beyond, through a window.

The Lord of the Rings

Novel1954–1955

A hobbit carries the Dark Lord's ring across a dying world to destroy it — the twelve-year epic that defined high fantasy and handed the tabletop and computer RPG their races, rangers and quests.

TPK

Tabletop term

The death of every player character in a single encounter, ending the adventure (and often the campaign). Feared, joked about and occasionally engineered by devious Game Masters, it has an online equivalent in the raid wipe.

Blobber

Digital term

A first-person dungeon crawler in which the whole party moves around the grid as a single unit, or blob. Wizardry, The Bard's Tale, Might and Magic and Dungeon Master are classic blobbers; Legend of Grimrock and Etrian Odyssey kept the form alive.

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