Action-adventure is a genre that is a sub-genre of both the action genre and the adventure genre. Like the adventure genre, action-adventure tales often include travel in interesting settings, quests, and a sense of danger. Like the action genre, action-adventure stories tend to assume that the problems of the protagonists can be solved with violence. This makes action-adventure a common genre for role-playing games, since combat is easy to mechanise, and the tropes of adventures make for good hooks and exciting backdrops for combat.
Action-adventure is the most common genre of story in role-playing games, ever since the original Dungeons & Dragons in 1974.