Role Playing Game

A Role Playing Game, often abbreviated RPG, is a type of game, just like how there is "Sport Games", "Adventure Games" and "Racing Games". Mario is no stranger to RPG's, as he has starred in Paper Mario, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time and, of course, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars.

Differences Between Action Games and RPGs
There are many differences between RPGs and Action Games such as Super Mario 64 or Super Mario Sunshine. One of the differences in that the player takes on a certain role and often involves elements such as money and items which are usually missing from action games.

Also RPGs have new kinds of features: HP, Defense, Attack, Speed and many other kinds of points. HP is the RPG kind of lives and HP doesn't only appear in RPGs. It also rarely appears in other kinds of games. Defense is how strong the character is-meaning if an enemy attacks, the higher defense the less HP the character will loose. Attack is how strong at attacking the character is-the moire attack the character has, the more HP enemies will loose when attacked. Notice enemies like Goombas also have HP, defense, attack, speed and other kinds of points.

Also when fighting enemies, the characters take turns attacking. The character with the highest speed goes first. If it's the player's turn to attack, then the player can choose to attack (using one of many moves), use items or do many other things. Enemies usually have only one thing to do: attack. However a few enemies such as Popple can have items and heal themselves.

All RPGs have sidequests, meaning quests that can be done in the game, but are not necessary to beat the game. Also most (and possibly about 95%) of the RPG games have the final bosses of the game in their "fake forms". For example in Super Mario RPG after Smithy is defeated the first time, he will reveal his true form and reveal that the form he had for the whole game (not counting the end) was a fake form.

Trivia

 * A SecuriMeow from Super Paper Mario says that RPGs shouldn't take less than 180 hours to beat not counting sidequests. Whether this is true or not, it is unknown.
 * Super Paper Mario has RPG elements but is actually more of a platformer.