Identify Item

When a magic item is first acquired, its actual properties are unknown and it must be identified before the player is told what it does. Games vary on if an item can even be used (such as hitting things with an unidentified magic sword without knowing its special properties) and if those special properties will apply if you do so. Trying to use an unidentified item is often a good way to wind up with cursed equipment as Stuck Items in less forgiving games.

A staple of early fantasy tabletop roleplaying games and the Roguelike genre. Requiring items to be identified has crept into general RPG design despite not including any of the other parts of the genre, like limited resources to identify with or magic items being rare, that gave it a gameplay purpose, rendering it only busywork and a minimal Money Sink.

Tabletop Games

 * Dungeons and Dragons is the Trope Maker. Editions have varied wildly on how hard it is to actually identify an item and if it is possible to do it for free.
 * Pathfinder, being based on the above mentioned "world's oldest roleplaying game", carries this over. In Pathfinder magic item identification is quick and easy, but requires a character capable of casting Detect Magic (all characters capable of casting at first level can cast this an unlimited number of times for free) and having a high Spellcraft skill (already mandatory for Wizards, but otherwise not common for other casters).

Video Games

 * In Nethack most items require identification. One important player skill for completion of Nethack is learning how to identify items to a reasonable without expending rare scrolls and spellbooks of identify . Most appearances are randomized on game start to prevent players from memorizing this information between games.
 * Diablo series. In the first game identification takes up limited inventory space and the ability to teleport to town is similarly rare yet cursed items were common. In the second game however a character can carry 20 cheap scrolls in limited inventory space and easily teleport to town to restock these and (if they completed an early sidequest) get everything identified for free, rendering the whole system kind of pointless.
 * Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura features this for magickal items, but not technological ones. Items can only be identified by gypsies who live on the outskirts of town (lots of walking) but is otherwise of minimal difficulty. Mastering the divination school of magick allows one to do this for free, but divination spells are otherwise useless. There isn't a large variety of magick items that can be found unidentified in the game however and most have unique appearances, so a player will quickly learn what an item will do.