Frayed Knights Dev Diary: Prologue - Background and High Concept
As promised last week, here we go with the start of a development diary where I will be, week by week, sharing my experiences as an indie game designer biting off quite likely more than I can chew. I hope this will be something of an interactive, two-way process. I hope it will be entertaining and educational. And mostly, I hope I don't embarass myself too badly.

This first article is more of an introduction: What I am doing, and why I am doing it. It is part of the result of months of poking around with ideas, generating reams of notes, and further defining and clarifying the project. Once I get out of the design stage of discussion, I'll be talking more about real-time, "What I Did This Week" type stuff. (Mostly, this week, I've been putting the notes into the design document and working on Apocalypse Cow.)

Starting Out: Why An RPG?
Most of my game development career has been action games. What gives? Why am I stepping outside my comfort zone?

I discovered Dungeons & Dragons the same year I got hooked on arcade games, and the same year I got my first computer and learned to program. I think this is why, to me, computers and RPGs seem inextricably linked. But my poor computer, a 1K (yes, that's a kilobyte, kids, about the size of a 32 x 32 .jpg ) Sinclair Zx80, wasn't really powerful enough to run any program of consequence. I read with jealousy about the games available on that really popular, powerful computer --- the Apple II. I read about games with names like Wizardry, Ultima, Alikabeth, and Zork. But I couldn't play them. I could only read about them, and teach myself how to program.

When we got one of the first Commodore 64's off the assembly line, I was in heaven. 64K of RAM seemed almost unlimited. There were almost no games the first few months (not that I had any money to buy them, anyway), so I once again had only my imagination of what those games for other computers were like. But now I could write my own! As a fan of Dungeons & Dragons, one of my favorite tasks was simulating the experience of playing D&D on the computer, for those times when I couldn't get the gang of friends over for a real dice & paper game.

I succeeded - kinda. The games I made couldn't compare to games I later played like Ultima III (which totally blew my mind at the time), but to me, those little adventures and RPGs I cobbled together were masterpieces. I was hooked on game development.

How I DIDN'T Make RPGs
A couple of decades later, after years as a professional game programmer, I decided to strike off on my own and make my own games - without a publisher or board of directors or a marketing guy with a hot license in his hand telling me what game to make. I didn't start very goal-directed, and I had no concept of things like the indie game development community, or affordable 3D engines already available. So I started by tinkering.

My first project, right out of the chute, was a 3D MUD. That's right, a massively multiplayer RPG. I started from scratch, making my own 3D engine. I've included an old screenshot I was able to dredge up of it. Later, realizing I'd gotten in a little over my head, I changed projects. This 3D engine morphed into an awesomely fun multiplayer 3D space combat game called Void War. But while space combat games were among my favorite, I really envisioned Rampant Games as an indie RPG development house. Someday... soon! Or... not as soon as I'd like.

While working on another game project that I eventually cancelled (because it sucked), I couldn't keep away from making RPGs. On a dare, I did what I could to whip up a Temple of Apshai-esque RPG in only 40 hours of development time - using all free tools, with no budget, and without a 3D engine. My experience was chronicled in an article published in GameDev.Net called "How To Build a Game In a Week From Scratch With No Budget." I can't say I'm extremely proud of the resulting game (and I use the term "game" loosely), Hackenslash, other than the fact that it even exists given the constraints I worked under. I learned a lot from focusing my attention on a deliverable with a ridiculously short schedule, and a lot of people have told me that the article was valuable to them. So I call it a win.

I had another RPG I started work on - a modern-era horror RPG - but I had to put it back on the shelf because it was too ambitious on far too many levels. There was too much experimentation, and I still had too little experience working with my engine of choice, the Torque Game Engine. That, and there was the simple fact that I still had no experience creating a "real" RPG yet. I needed more time, more practice, and a simpler, "back to basics" RPG to cut my teeth on first before coming back to this one. But come back to it I will. I'm in love with the concept - it'll just take some time.

So I started up Apocalypse Cow as a quick and dirty "filler" project (which, of course, ballooned into something much larger) while I went back to the drawing board.

Back to the Drawing Board
After a couple of false starts, I had come back to looking at a blank page of RPG design. What now?

I started with two criteria:

#1 - It had to be something exciting that I wanted to play, and something that distinguishes itself from what's already out there (no clones or purely "me-too" efforts)

#2 - It had to be able to be created and completed fairly quickly. It couldn't be some big, sprawling, epic game with zillions of features.

The next thing I had to decide was what sort of technology the game would be based on. I wasn't going to go back and revisit the Void War engine. I considered Python and PyGame, like I used for Hackenslash, though I was a little more impressed with the capabilities of the Torque Game Builder (TGB) for its 2D capabilities. I even considered using RPG Maker, though at first blush it felt a little too limiting. Eventually, I settled on the Torque Game Engine - TGE - the original 3D game engine by GarageGames.

Why Torque?
Why did I choose Torque as the underlying game technology?

The short answer is that I'd already invested the money and the time into learning it. Go with what you know and feel comfortable with.

The longer answer was that it provides some key pieces:
* A decent terrain system
* Good interior rendering of CSG-style levels, completely integrated with terrain handling.
* Cross-platform support
* A mature engine, meaning reasonably robust with plenty of "free" features
* A pretty active and helpful community, as well as content packs I might be able to leverage into my game.
* A pretty decent built-in scripting engine
* Built-in UI creation & scripting tools - because an RPG would undoubtably be pretty UI-intensive.

While it wasn't apparent at the time, once I found out that I could combine TGE with the 2D game engine - TGB - things became even more clear. TGB could be used for all kinds of easy, scripted-out-of-the-box UI animations and and controls.

One of the interesting things about limiting your options with a decision like this is that it can actually make other decisions easier. Bearing in mind the second criterion, I simply asked myself, "What would be the simplest type of RPG to make using Torque?"

The answer was fairly obvious. Out of the box, TGE is geared for first-person-perspective games. I have always enjoyed first-person dungeon crawlers like the Elder Scrolls series, and Ultima Underworld. But I couldn't create something to compete with Oblivion. I don't have the time or budget. I needed to create my own niche (or borrow and extend an older one that nobody's really using right now) where I could be the big fish in the small pond.

Yes, I was already thinking marketing. I've been corrupted.

Back to Basics
I'm an old-school gamer. So I drew upon it. I thought back to games like Wizardry 7, the Bard's Tale series, the Gold Box AD&D games, and Eye of the Beholder II. Party-based RPGs. You don't get many of those anymore, particularly not with the first-person perspective. So - a party-based game with a true 3D first-person perspective.

It's been done semi-recently (Wizardry 8, Minions of Mirth), but I thought there was plenty of room to grow. There are a lot of stories to be told and fresh ideas to try with that kind of game, even after all this time. I think it can provide a fundamentally different experience from some of the more modern, mainstream titles on the market. As an example, a party-based dynamic could mean some interesting tactical combat options. That's one thing I love about MMO's and pen & paper RPGs - getting different characters with completely different skill sets working together as sort of a "combined forces" against common challenges.

So far, we have a party-based fantasy RPG with a first-person perspective.

Controversial Decisions
The next design decisions cascaded from this one.

First off, it is very hard to control multiple characters in a real-time RPG. So... why not go back to turn-based combat rounds? You could still wonder about freely in real-time, but when combat is joined (or any other timing-critical event), the game would resolve it in turn-based sequence. I'm cribbing from jRPGs (eastern RPGs, like the Final Fantasy series) on this idea - but it has proven to work.

Another problem: Perspective. Party-based means that in combat, to position everyone I'd need to break out into a third-person perspective to move everyone around. That can get ugly - a whole new subsystem that I'd need to add to the game. In what is sure to be another decision not universally embraced by players, I once again drew upon some older games: How about going with simple, abstract positioning? First Rank / Second Rank, etc., a la the Wizardry and Bard's Tale games? The party is always assumed to be facing the enemy.

Now that was REALLY old school. But abstract positioning has been used as recently as 2003 with Final Fantasy X-2, wasn't it (albeit with the third-person perspective)? The trick here - for me at least - is that I like interesting tactics. I hate combat systems that are nothing but "attack / attack / attack / cast spell / defend." But I have a few of ideas for tackling this problem head-on and keeping combat interesting.

By this point, I'm not even ready to commit the idea to paper yet, and I already know I've begun to alienate my potential audience with some of these decisions. Turn-based combat? Abstract combat positioning? First person perspective? And I'm just getting started!

Giving It Some Personality...
There are two things that stuck in my craw over what I had so far.

The first was the lack of the "hook." Gamers have explored HUNDREDS of generic dungeons over the last many years. Nuking dozens of generic evil Foozles to save many, many worlds. At this point, I didn't have a game concept. What I have is some bastardized bits of nostalgia. Some ideas to convert stock TGE into an RPG engine.

The second problem was that in the old party-based first-person games, I always thought the characters in the party were sorta... lifeless. They were just portraits in the UI that mutely followed your orders, bashing monsters and leveling up as required. If they had any personality, it's because you brought it with you.

Here's where one idea kinda blossomed and solved both problems at once. For me, at any rate.

Going For Laughs
I'm a huge fan of the comics Order of the Stick and Knights of the Dinner Table, and more recently the comic "DM of the Rings." I enjoyed the anime series "Louie the Rune Soldier" (or just "Rune Soldier"). These are all comic portrayals of RPGs specifically, and Tolkienesque fantasy worlds in general. While we're at it, I could also cite the card game Munchkin (a gaming geek favorite), and the pen-and-paper RPG Hackmaster (by the creators of Knights of the Dinner Table), the semi-parody of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons - but also a pretty fun game in its own right.

After all, the whole situation in most RPGs is pretty ridiculous once you think of it. There are all these DUNGEONS everywhere that serve no purpose but to be hotels for monsters. Said monsters tend to ignore the fact that life-and-death battles are occuring next door, content to hang out staring at each other until the adventurers come kicking their own door open. You've got entire towns of people who are too incompetent to live unless adventurers come to perform basic tasks for them.

In my opinion, there's plenty of comedy to be had with the hobby of RPGs. The more I thought about it, the more I thought I had some fun and entertaining things I could do with it.

However, it takes a lot more than just a bunch of corny little gags to pull something like this work. Good comedy has to be about something. The above comic examples began as simple jokes about genre and gaming, but they have all evolved into character-based stories. We keep reading not just because they poke good-natured fun at a hobby and genre we love, but because we've come to like the characters. We want to see how these specific characters deal with certain situations. We want to see what happens to them next, even if we (particularly in the case of DM of the Rings) have a really good idea of what will happen next in the overall storyline.

The Frayed Knights Are Born
So here's the part where a bunch of the old-school Western RPG fans will lose interest. In order to make it work, I felt that I needed to make the game about very specific characters, rather than trying to create a generic world, story, and comic elements that would somehow properly respond properly to whatever kind of character the player wanted to create.

This is especially tricky with a comedy, as many (most) players just "play themselves" in RPGs. I want to make jokes at the character's expense, but not at the player's expense. Really, that's why many humorous adventure games worked so well. Monkey Island wouldn't have been nearly as funny (in fact, might have been downright offensive) if it was about the player, and not about Guybrush Threepwood. And I'll let people who've played the recent Sam & Max adventure games (I've only played the old one from the early 90's) weigh in on how the "player characters" influence the humor of that game.

With this decision made, there were a lot of interesting options that opened up. First of all, if those little names and portraits in the UI had their own personalities, why not have them... well... chatter? Jokes, banter, commentaries, and asides while in the middle of combat? So long as it doesn't get too repetitive (the funniest joke doesn't usually get funnier in the retelling), it could work. What if these characters - while ultimately controlled and "played" by the player, can't resist adding in their own little bit of personality and flair into actions that they take?

The game's story is very specifically about THEM. As infuenced, directed, and portrayed by the man or woman behind the keyboard. Four (hopefully) likeable losers and misfits, who must somehow succeed where others far more competent than them have failed.

Now that I had much of my ungodly Frankenstein's Monster of a "high concept" together, I needed a working title. I kicked around a lot of ideas with friends, and got them to vote on what they thought was the best title.

Then I rejected it favor of one I personally preferred. "Frayed Knights."

Yeah. A couple of different puns there. Like a frayed knot. Or frayed as in afraid, which knights should never be. Yeah, I know, I totally crack myself up. I just liked the multiple meanings of the title. So how does it figure into the game? As explained in the design document:

Our unlikely band of heroes originally called themselves the "Battlefield Quartet." But everyone else calls them the “Frayed Knights” after an unfortunate incident with killer vampiric squirrels and a hemp golem, a tale which managed to circulate even after the four swore never to speak of the incident again. Unfortunately, it is the latter name that is doomed to stick.

So now you know the background and the key design decisions for Frayed Knights. Now I feel like I've thrown my hat over the fence, so I'm committed to making it happen. I guess we'll see if I've got the chops to pull this thing off.

All I can say is that it seemed like a good idea at the time...



Think the idea sucks? Got suggestions? Questions? Something to say? Post a comment here... or in the brand-new forum! Yeah, I know, I'm really asking for trouble now....


(Vaguely) related tales of saner days:
* You Can't Design Fun On Paper
* But Is It An RPG?
* Original Dungeons & Dragons Trivia
* The Dread Gazebo
.

Labels: Frayed Knights, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:30 AM (Permalink)