Design A Minimalist RPG!
Jamie Fristrom has an article about an old (but AWESOME) strategy game Slay. If you haven't played it, you should. In "Notes on Slay," he comments about the use of minimalism, depth vs. breadth, and how the simplicity and solid AI make Slay such an excellent game.

Slay is a 'conquer the world' strategy game with no randomness (except for the AI choices), and a handful of very simple but compelling rules, and really nice balance. I was introduced to it by Steve Taylor, a good friend (and former boss) from NinjaBee (hey, now you KNOW where he got his inspiration for the not-quite-so-minimalist Band of Bugs).

But being such an RPG geek, Jamie's article made me think of the computer role-playing game angle. What would a minimalist RPG be like? It's hard to answer, because the definition of RPG is really fuzzy.

One might be tempted to say NetHack or other roguelikes, but the only thing minimalist about NetHack is the graphics. From an underlying gameplay standpoint, Oblivion is minimalist by comparison. Diablo comes even closer to the that description, but it's also pretty far from the mark.

My own candidate might be the freeware Really Really Random RPG - which I personally think of as the "Really Really Abstract RPG." If so, it may underscore a problem with the concept of minimalism in RPG design. The minimalism of Slay is part of its appeal - it strips through all the trappings and accessories to reveal a really solid core of fun game mechanics. But RRRRPG's minimalism reveals pretty uninspiring mechanics. It'd be easy to shift the blame on RRRRPG's designer, but the game mechanics have been abstracted from countless commercially successful RPGs.

Maybe Slay just did a better job at the abstraction. Maybe the designer just pulled out the right mechanics and balanced and polished them to a fine sheen. I definitely feel that's part of the answer. And I also feel that - when you strip away things down to their bare minimum - RPGs themselves are strategy games at their mechanical heart. After all - they began life as wargames.

But I think a big part of the problem is simply that RPGs are very context-sensitive. While I don't believe an RPG really needs much of a "story" to be an RPG (after all, I consider NetHack and most roguelikes to be RPGs), I think it is that story - or at least "context" - that provides much of the entertainment value.

Still, it's an intriguing thought. I took something of a stab at it with Hackenslash once upon a time. So lets say we wanted to design a good (as in, fun) minimalist RPG. What key game mechanics would we have? What simple but powerful story could we weave into it? So what kind of things would you put in a minimalist RPG? You don't have to provide a complete design or anything - just what sorts of things would make a simple-yet-compelling RPG in your mind. And feel free to cite examples.

For convenience and posterity's sake, I've even made it a thread on the forums. Because I just love to give. :)


(Vaguely) related navel-gazing.
* Are Hybrid RPGs Just the Poor Man's RPGs?
* What Makes a Great RPG - The Story
* The Evolution of Computer RPGs
* But Is It An RPG?
.

Labels: Game Design, Roleplaying Games, strategy games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:06 AM (Permalink)