Archived comment by Lemur-Cat:
It sounds like they're talking about an RPG, or maybe D&D, where you have a "party" of people and they have to fight monsters and find valuable items and usually save the world, but that doesn't quite make sense because if you work hard enough you really should be able to level up your party enough to avoid failing, even if they suck. (Although I have had some bad experiences with Dark Cloud where you need items to get money to get items. But generally you have to be pretty incautious to get yourself into an impossible situation.)