Monday, May 19, 2008
RPG Design: Sick Of Saving The World?
I'm tired of saving the world. Saving the world is for wusses.
Lessons From Pen and Paper
I remember my first attempt to run a pen-and-paper game of Vampire the Masquerade. After some really cool character origin sub-plots, we got to the meat of the campaign. I immediately reached for a generic, epic plot of earth-shattering proportions... and found that it was a total dud. It just didn't work. The players were these supernatural creatures of the night who were at the top of one food chain and the bottom of another. Their mortal lives were long gone... and the big, world-saving plots just didn't ring true.
I was stuck for a while, trying to figure out what to do with the campaign. And then, I recalled running and playing an earlier, post-apocalyptic RPG called "Twilight: 2000." It was a "realistic" game of post-nuclear holocaust. High radiation didn't turn you into a mutant - it made your hair fall out and caused you to puke and excrete blood. Your enemies were disease and power-hungry local warlords who'd gotten their hands on a functional tank or two.
Twilight: 2000 was another game where "saving the world" had no meaning. That particular quest had already failed, and the world had been destroyed. That game was about trying to put the pieces back together on a small level. And yet somehow, in our games, it worked. Saving a small community of families from the chaos of the complete breakdown of civilization often felt far more significant than saving the entire world.
To resolve the Vampire situation, I went back and creatively edited the campaign. The "big bad" villain that the players were trying to defeat ended up - with a little nudge from the players - as a victim of his own hubris. What began as an epic but lifeless campaign became a subquest that merely put the players on the radar of other powerful entities... and then things got personal. And petty. Amazingly enough, the little close-to-home petty squabbles and local political infighting were far more interesting - and fun - than the big epic cross-country plot.
What About Computer RPGs?
Having the stereotypical "epic plot" of saving-the-world proportions is pretty common in all computer and console games, and RPGs are no exception. I don't know if it just caters to adolescent power-trip fantasies, or that those generic epic plots have just proven to sell more copies. But they are definitely in abundance. (To be fair - I've not read a lot of fantasy novels in recent years, but back in the day, there was an overabundance of Lord of the Rings wannabe plots, too...)
Stalin said, "A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic." As creepy as that sounds, its generally true. The more epic the scope, the more watered-down the emotional impact of the story (assuming that's important to you), and the more it becomes about numbers. Saving Kvatch (or what was left of it) was a lot more interesting than saving the rest of the world in Oblivion. And saving the world from Meteor wasn't half as satisfying as getting a little revenge on Sephiroth.
Now I am not saying that I don't want any more big, epic, world-saving or kingdom-saving plots. Those are cool, too. But I think we can use a few more computer RPGs that bring the stories closer to home, with fewer but more detailed NPCs, and plots more about people than planets. Once we get away from trying to put nations in dire peril, we can probably start coming up with some more interesting and diverse plots. Things like... uh... becoming an Avatar of Virtue and recovering a codex from the underworld. Or settling a faction war between vampires over a McGuffin that may or may not be the rise of some ancient evil.
I mean, okay, I probably wouldn't be the first one to pre-order Sense and Sensibility: The RPG. But with all this talk of what makes an RPG a more compelling experience, I think one of the things designers need to consider is that it might be time to think a little smaller.
Labels: Game Design, Roleplaying Games
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:13 PM (Permalink)
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I think the reason we need to save the world in RPGs is because we trade depth for scope.
When you save the world, you can, arguably, travel the entire breadth of it in search of the MacGuffin or battling the Foozle. If you're limited to a single town, while each and every villager will be more real and important to you, you'll still be limited to a single town. Given that most RPGs tend to have a flair towards the epic over the dramatic, most are willing to sacrifice your caring about a village in return to see sights of an amazing world unseen.
One of my favorite tabletop campaigns was run by a DM using the Ptolus gameworld because it limited scope to a single metropolis. It was a huge city, admittedly, but something about it being a singular city, where you stayed and interacted with the same people again and again, caught up in intrigues and the like, made it more memorable.
I think an RPG that tossed out a few old tired tropes might be interesting, for example if you were already a capable adventurer, and your duty was to protect a single village. The catch is, it would take very good writing for the player to accept the substitution of depth rather than scope.
When you save the world, you can, arguably, travel the entire breadth of it in search of the MacGuffin or battling the Foozle. If you're limited to a single town, while each and every villager will be more real and important to you, you'll still be limited to a single town. Given that most RPGs tend to have a flair towards the epic over the dramatic, most are willing to sacrifice your caring about a village in return to see sights of an amazing world unseen.
One of my favorite tabletop campaigns was run by a DM using the Ptolus gameworld because it limited scope to a single metropolis. It was a huge city, admittedly, but something about it being a singular city, where you stayed and interacted with the same people again and again, caught up in intrigues and the like, made it more memorable.
I think an RPG that tossed out a few old tired tropes might be interesting, for example if you were already a capable adventurer, and your duty was to protect a single village. The catch is, it would take very good writing for the player to accept the substitution of depth rather than scope.
Stalin said, "A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic." As creepy as that sounds, its generally true. The more epic the scope, the more watered-down the emotional impact of the story (assuming that's important to you), and the more it becomes about numbers.
I definitely agree. Like john said, there's a depth vs. scope issue here... in most games (and not just RPGs, though they're the most common perpetrator), scope 'wins' during development.
Considering how important story is to RPGs, and how stagnant RPG stories have become, you'd expect a little more originality on this point. I'm usually too lazy to get any game design/developing done, but one of the first things I ask myself when thinking of a concept is: "Is the ultimate goal of this game saving the world? If so, start over."
I definitely agree. Like john said, there's a depth vs. scope issue here... in most games (and not just RPGs, though they're the most common perpetrator), scope 'wins' during development.
Considering how important story is to RPGs, and how stagnant RPG stories have become, you'd expect a little more originality on this point. I'm usually too lazy to get any game design/developing done, but one of the first things I ask myself when thinking of a concept is: "Is the ultimate goal of this game saving the world? If so, start over."
I loved the old Genesis RPG Shining in the Darkness. It was the predecessor of the strategy RPG Shining Force series, but it played as a first person dungeon crawler.
SitD featured only three locations: the town, the castle, and the dungeon. The castle was exclusively for story events. The town was where you did your shopping and healing, plus the occasional side story. The dungeon was where you did all the fighting. And there was only one quest: save the princess.
I loved how focussed the story became with such limited locations. Because the characters were more than just talking heads with one sentence to say through the entire game, they felt more real. And because their problems took more than an hour long saunter through a dungeon to solve, those felt real too.
I think the problem with saving the world is twofold: first, I'm (that's me, not the character) not that attached to it in the first place. And second, the parts I am attached to are available to me on replay. The enemies can't take away the world when I have a "new game" button. But a game like FF7 works, because Sephiroth takes away your chance to play the rest of the game with Aeris, and there's nothing you can do about it. Except kill him for vengeance.
SitD featured only three locations: the town, the castle, and the dungeon. The castle was exclusively for story events. The town was where you did your shopping and healing, plus the occasional side story. The dungeon was where you did all the fighting. And there was only one quest: save the princess.
I loved how focussed the story became with such limited locations. Because the characters were more than just talking heads with one sentence to say through the entire game, they felt more real. And because their problems took more than an hour long saunter through a dungeon to solve, those felt real too.
I think the problem with saving the world is twofold: first, I'm (that's me, not the character) not that attached to it in the first place. And second, the parts I am attached to are available to me on replay. The enemies can't take away the world when I have a "new game" button. But a game like FF7 works, because Sephiroth takes away your chance to play the rest of the game with Aeris, and there's nothing you can do about it. Except kill him for vengeance.
I think there's definitely something to be said about the scope of games, and how tired the "saving the world" theme has become in this medium.
That said, I think there's another issue here.
If you were asked, "What is the story of Star Wars?", and your answer was "It's the story of one young man's quest to save the galaxy from the evil Empire," then you'd be wrong. That's just a synopsis. The problem is, if you ask the same question about most computer games, that's the only response you could get. The stories in most computer games are just synopses.
The real answer to the question has more to do with the characters and their emotions, motivations, and relationships (like Luke trying to understand and reconcile his relationship with his father). It all takes place within the context of an epic struggle between the Rebels and the Empire, but that's just the window dressing for the true stories that take place between the characters.
Games, however, don't focus on this stuff. In games, we are asked to perform the acts that save the galaxy, and that's the main focus. We're not asked to explore the relationship with our father. And that's why these games just seem like another tired exercise in traversing a synopsis.
That said, I think there's another issue here.
If you were asked, "What is the story of Star Wars?", and your answer was "It's the story of one young man's quest to save the galaxy from the evil Empire," then you'd be wrong. That's just a synopsis. The problem is, if you ask the same question about most computer games, that's the only response you could get. The stories in most computer games are just synopses.
The real answer to the question has more to do with the characters and their emotions, motivations, and relationships (like Luke trying to understand and reconcile his relationship with his father). It all takes place within the context of an epic struggle between the Rebels and the Empire, but that's just the window dressing for the true stories that take place between the characters.
Games, however, don't focus on this stuff. In games, we are asked to perform the acts that save the galaxy, and that's the main focus. We're not asked to explore the relationship with our father. And that's why these games just seem like another tired exercise in traversing a synopsis.
I think this is why I enjoyed Shadows Over Riva more than the other games in the Realms of Arcania trilogy. You spend all your time in one town and its outskirts to solve a problem for the town. The plot was carefully woven and the cast was small, so impact upon a single NPC was usually significant. While the ending was a little less significant that I had hoped, there were many times during the game that I was really on the edge of my seat with the story.
It has already been stated well on this thread about making the story significant to the player on a personal level, and I completely agree. Any story has missed the point if they fail on the personal scope, no matter the overall scope of the story.
It has already been stated well on this thread about making the story significant to the player on a personal level, and I completely agree. Any story has missed the point if they fail on the personal scope, no matter the overall scope of the story.
Baldur's Gate II had this "personal" flavor - essentially you've been always on a quest to help a friend, and then - to get back your own soul, despite the catastrophic (almost global) events surrounding you and Irenicus.
BG2 struck an okay balance, I thought - but in spite of itself. It could almost be called the poster child for having a huge scope (we loved it for that, though...)
Man, a lot of good content here on your blog! I just wonder why you don't link more topics to your forum or even better, install a decent blog system like WP instead of relying on that horrible blogger.com system. There are tons of posts I'd like to comment on or discuss but Blogger's comment form makes me cringe.
On topic: I'm currently trying to design a story for a space themed RPG and the ultimate goal is not to safe a planet but a whole galaxy ... well somehow at least! ;) I have yet to form a good and original idea for the story's plot that is both sophisticated and twisted. In fact before there can be a story there needs to be a major antagonist. In e.g. Star Wars this is the empire and the emperor but it would be lame to just copy a similar scenario.
In such a game several side-quests can be dedicated to smaller, more personal fates but you wouldn't use them for the ultimate fate of the whole galaxy. And personal fates need to be done extremely well with sympathetic characters, otherwise they turn out to be very boring. How many of us found the 'Who Dunnit' quest more interesting than saving Kwatch in Oblivion?! The 'Who Dunnit' quest has definitely a more personal scope, the characters you meet all have it coming and it's fun to play with their conscience. In fact in Oblivion the most fun where the side quests for the thieves and assassin guilds. The main quest faded into boredom compared to them.
On topic: I'm currently trying to design a story for a space themed RPG and the ultimate goal is not to safe a planet but a whole galaxy ... well somehow at least! ;) I have yet to form a good and original idea for the story's plot that is both sophisticated and twisted. In fact before there can be a story there needs to be a major antagonist. In e.g. Star Wars this is the empire and the emperor but it would be lame to just copy a similar scenario.
In such a game several side-quests can be dedicated to smaller, more personal fates but you wouldn't use them for the ultimate fate of the whole galaxy. And personal fates need to be done extremely well with sympathetic characters, otherwise they turn out to be very boring. How many of us found the 'Who Dunnit' quest more interesting than saving Kwatch in Oblivion?! The 'Who Dunnit' quest has definitely a more personal scope, the characters you meet all have it coming and it's fun to play with their conscience. In fact in Oblivion the most fun where the side quests for the thieves and assassin guilds. The main quest faded into boredom compared to them.
On the theme of limiting scope & stories in space, has anyone here listened to Phil Rossi's audiobook Crescent Station? It fits the concepts being talked about here really well. The protagonist is just trying to save himself & his girlfriend. They aren't trying to save the galaxy, planet, or even the space station. And because it isn't an epic-level story, the protagonists can be believable: There's the corrupt mayor of the station, the warlord in the next system over, the ancient curse that haunts the station. (Ok, maybe the last one isn't believable. But at least it isn't threatening the galaxy :)
If the protagonist of your story is a super-hero, then you need to conjure up super-villians for him to fight. If the hero is just some guy, then the pool of possible protagonists is *much* larger.
If the protagonist of your story is a super-hero, then you need to conjure up super-villians for him to fight. If the hero is just some guy, then the pool of possible protagonists is *much* larger.
That's why Indigo Prophecy drove me CRAZY. It started out as a very personal, almost claustrophobic plot that kept you face-to-face with all of the characters. It was so rich! So juicy. Then, all of a sudden, you're dealing with (sometimes literally) faceless secret societies and saving the entire world, and I really don't care anymore because I'm playing Final Fantasy 7 again, but with Simon Says instead of Limit Breaks.
I loved the start of Indigo Prophecy too! Such a great setup. The game lost me on the "Get a file from the filing room" puzzle, though. Somewhere in the middle of the puzzle I thought "Wait...I'm just getting a file from a filing room. WTF? This isn't fun..this is a menial office job!"
I haven't played Indigo Prophecy, though that sounded like one I really wanted to try. It sounded... different. Though it sounds like it kinda falls flat partway through, now.
Maybe I should just rent it?
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Maybe I should just rent it?
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