RPG vocab

[Jumpman]

Can Anyone give a list of words typically used in RPG games?

[richvh]

What kind of list are you looking for? Equipment? Could be huge, and will vary depending on the game. Monsters? Could be huge, and will vary depending on the game. Character parameters? Will vary depending on the game. Besides, this isn't a game guides site.

[Qaantar]

Some typical ones:

たたかう　（戦う） -- tatakau = fight
まほう　（魔法） -- mahou = magic
アイテム -- aitemu = magic
にげる　（逃げる）　-- nigeru = flee

Those are the basics. But seriously, there's hundreds of words. Grab a dictionary and start learning!

[piepiepie75]

Don't you mean "アイテム=Item?"

Anyways, just learning common words in general would help a great deal probably. If you know katakana, you'll probably be able to translate a decent amount of words without looking any of them up. If you're just looking to be able to play an RPG (As opposed to knowing the story, characters, etc.) then you won't have to learn too much, and you could probably figure out most of the mechanics and commands by experimenting.

[Yudan Taiteki]

And if you want to actually understand the story, it's impossible to just learn a specific subset of Japanese for that. The vast majority of words used in RPG stories are just the same words used in any other form of Japanese. You tend to find a lot of archaic, extremely formal/polite, and extremely casual/slangy language in RPGs, though.

[Qaantar]

Ha! Whoops, of course, aitemu = item

It's true that most RPGs are very involved with their story lines, and they're usually using some strange set of vocabulary anyway (aside from slang...) that is unique to the plot-line. Fortunately most of those are explain in the story, but if you can't read the basics, it doesn't matter.

I have a nagging feeling the OP just wanted to know enough to navigate menus. As piesan says, learning katakana is probably good for that. Hey, even Final Fantasy used ファイア (faia) for "fire."

[Jumpman]

Thanks guys. I needed to know how to navigate menus, which Qaantar helped with with.

[yukamina]

I just started an old RPG today...so many new words already!
If you really want to understand the game, you need more advanced Japanese...

Anyway here's some other words that might help reading menus and navigation:

装備　そうび　soubi - equipment
はずす hazusu - remove
攻撃　こうげき kougeki - attack
防御　ぼうぎょ bougyo - defence
剣　けん　ken - sword(at least, I assume it's read 'ken')
アクセサリ akusesari - accessories
戻る　もどる modoru - return
セーブ seebu - save

It's weird; after a while katakana words look more like their English equivalents than the romaji.