RPG Theory

I’m getting warmed up. Before I really start working on this thing, I need to have some idea of what makes RPGs tick. I’m going to apply a lot of this to my storyline, which is a little painful, since it goes against a lot of what I usually think is good in writing. But damn it, I’m going to get this right if it kills me.

The first is the hero. And I hate to say this, but I am going to go with a generic RPG hero here. The RPG hero is ubiquitous. He is a tabula rasa. He is between the ages of 13 (Ness) and 17 (Isaac), he is a he, and he lives in a small town. He is inherently good and pure, and he has some kind of special ability or history. He is naïve, but brave and willful. To top it all off, he doesn’t usually talk.

Naturally, there are a few exceptions. Cecil, in Final Fantasy 4j, is a thirty-something (I think) Dark Knight in the service of the king of a major power, ans as such he lives in the capital city. But for the most part, you can’t really escape the standard RPG hero.

The only thing on the above list I’m not going to use is the silent protagonist, because that’s just not how I roll.

Second: the villain. The RPG villain is rarely on an even footing with the hero, and is usually inherently evil, which makes it less objectionable when you kill him. He is often an ex-human who has ascended to godhood or even some kind of force in and of himself. He’s very rarely a human at all, at least by the end of the game. Giygas is the embodiment of the essence of all evil in the universe, Mithos is the ruler of the angels, and Kefka is an insane general who has attained godlike power.

One really weird exception is Golden Sun, which doesn’t have a villain. The characters who would be villains actually have complex motivations, and by the end of the game the characters end up mostly agreeing with them, even if they have to kill them. They’re also definitely human and admit the possibility that they’ll fail.

But fuck that. If I’m going with the inherently innocent and good main character, I’m going to juxtapose him with something really, really evil.

Next is the party. There are so many stock characters in RPGs that I could easily just pick and choose them, but I’m not going to. I have to draw a line somewhere. The natural assumption is that the main female lead is a healer/mage and uses a staff and is probably in love with the hero. Also, one of the male friends is big and dumb, one of them is small, intelligent and shy, and one of them is grizzled and cynical. And then there are sidequest characters. Some of this is alright, but I’m going to change some of it up.

Here are some ideas I’m throwing around. I’m thinking the healer is not going to be a pure magic girl, but might actually be a male cleric-in-training who joins the hero to save his master. I’m keeping the main offensive caster as a female, but instead of being cute and collected, I’m going to make her a dangerous psychopath. She has some kind of horrible mental disease brought on by Evil. She probably uses fire magic, too.

I like the idea of the shy, intelligent friend juxtaposed with the big, dumb one, but I’m changing that, too. The shy friend is a girl, which I guess is sort of alright, and I’m sure it has a precedent. She’s from the hero’s hometown, so she’s naturally the first party member, and she’s probably secretly in love with the hero. She’s also not an offensive caster, since we already have one of those, so she is in fact the only strictly fighter-type character for most of the game. Since the hero is a jack-of-all-trades who can do a little offensive magic, healing, and fight pretty well, she’s going to just have attack power, but have it in spades, with fancy attack techniques and shit. Doesn’t go well with her personality, but that’s interesting.

In contrast, the big dumb guy is acquired in the middle of the game, and is a barbaric tribesman from some wasteland with crazy tattoos and warpaint and skulls. He’s also strictly a fighter, and instead of having techs like the quiet girl, he has a typical berserker rage mode where he does a fuckton of damage but also takes more. He also has some kind of shamanistic magic-type thing, but I don’t know what that does yet.

I don’t know about sidequest characters yet. I’ll probably have some; the barbarian guy might even be one. I definitely don’t want to just have the Light Warriors Party of Four, but I don’t want to go the way of Suikoden and have something totally ludicrous 256 possible characters, either. I’m thinking between eight and twelve, with four being the active combat party, and maybe a row system so your second party can give support, too.

I need some towns, too. I’ve decided to structure this in a pretty standard way: you go to a town, which has a problem, and you fix the problem. You are rewarded somehow, and you move on to the next town. The rewards are pretty varied, and they can be anything from a major dungeon to a plot element to a new character to a key item. In fact, I might have every non-waystation town have a character to acquire, necessary or not. Or maybe I won’t, since that could get to be kind of ridiculous if the game is long.

I do intend for towns to be pretty big, though, so maybe it’s okay. One of the (few) things that really annoyed me about Golden Sun was that the first town, Vale, was a huge monster of a town with at least five screens of scenery, even though it was supposed to be a tiny village in the mountains, and then every town after it was basically a crossroads, even the two towns that were supposed to be gigantic merchant metropolises. So I’m going to make all the towns big and multi-layered but maybe not have so many of them.

I am going to have a world map, I’ve decided. Just to clear that up because I’m sure you were all wondering.

Anyway, some towns:

• The first town is your home, obviously, and you are sent away from it, along with Quiet Girl, to save the world. This kind of thing happens. It doesn’t have a problem in and of itself; rather, the whole game is its problem.
• There’s a town early on in the game, maybe the third or fourth one, which has sprung up around a monastery. Its problem is that something has happened to the high priest of the monastery, which understandably has everyone pretty freaked out. He’s either dead or kidnapped. You acquire Priest Guy here.
• The fifth or sixth town is a big city, one of a few major city-states in the center of the civilized world’s politics. Its problem is that there has been a rash of arsons in the residential areas, and people are starting to lose sleep over them. Obviously, you acquire Pyromaniac Girl here.
• There are at least two other city-states, each of which are at some level of hostility with the others. This is preventing them from seeing the encroaching threat of Evil, and much of the game revolves around scrambling to bring peace. They’re all big cities, and they all definitely have sidequest characters, if not important story-driving characters.
• One of the mid-game towns is a tribal settlement on the frontier. Its problem is that Evil is slowly and inexorably killing the land and life in and around it, and nobody knows why. You acquire Barbarian Guy here.
• There’s definitely a port city, and probably one or two crazier cities, like a flying castle or something.

Okay, so that was cool and handy. Stay tuned, kids. I don’t know what I’ll do next post, but it’ll be something.

~ by pieboy on March 22, 2008.