LIMITED LOCATIONS

Posts

Pages: 1
Do you believe an RPG can be set in limited locations? By this I mean, as opposed to adventuring across entire continents, you instead explore a single city and its surroundings.

If so, do you believe that this limited setting would more likely boost or hinder the gameplay?
pianotm
The TM is for Totally Magical.
32347
An RPG can be limited to a single room. RPG is about playing a role. Role-Playing. How gameplay is going to be affected is based entirely on what you want your game to convey. Actually, you know, this might make a good event. Limited locations without exploration. Most of us here do expansive exploration settings. Get people out of their comfort zones.
I'm inclined to agree with you. In fact, limiting your setting opens up a whole variety of potential stories that expansive exploration doesn't really allow for.

One could argue that without a variety of fun and exploring places to go off and explore, the player/creator is forced to focus more on the finer details. RPGs are inherently character focused, as pianotm said it's all about playing a role - and so, without the entire world to explore, you are instead forced to spend more time exploring the characters.

Of course, that isn't to say a limited setting can't be just as interesting, I just mean that I feel it offers a greater chance to really explore the inner workings of a character's mind - which is the kind of game that I enjoy most.
Limited locations means you have to put a lot more effort into making that location more interesting to the player but it can be done and has been done before.

Games like Harvest Moon/Rune Factory, where the story is based around a town and a handful of characters, with maybe a few extra areas to explore, can be quite popular.

One on this site, that I recommend to everyone to play, is Sunset Over Imdahl. You are locked in a city with no way out, searching for the origin of a plague - and it's an amazing game.

Another, which is more adult-oriented and very dark, is Beautiful Escape - also centred around a few places in a city. It's involving but, as I said, quite dark with violence and not for those easily triggered when it comes to things like rape and torture. But it does draw you in and is an interesting game to play.

So, yes, as long as the player is engaged, it's perfectly fine to limit the area they can go.
Zeigfried_McBacon
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
3820
Diablo 1 basically took place in a single town and a single labyrinth that went down MANY floors, if that helps you any.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
I'm not sure I've ever seen a game that needed to be set in more than three cities. Final Fantasy 7 would have lost nothing if the setting were limited to Midgar, Junon and Nibelheim, for example. I would go so far as to say that, 99% of the time, it's not okay to have more locations than that. You're diluting the experience and making it impossible to care about the setting.

Regardless you definitely don't ever want the player to feel like they're exploring every location on the planet, that's beyond retarded. It absolutely ruins the story's credibility, and there is no possible excuse for it.
Golden Sun I,II were among my favorite adventure games. Exploring on a planetary
scale does not undermine the journey.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
I mean, I'm exaggerating a little in my above post, there are games that need that sense of scale for the story to work. Chrono Trigger's setting would not have functioned if each time period were limited to a single city and its surrounding area. The game needed the player to see that the major events of the game affected the entirety of civilization.

Normally, games don't need all those locations though. When your plot is character-driven, it can mostly happen anywhere, so there's no need to move around. And when your plot is event-driven, those events need to be linked to each-other, so moving around can easily be actively harmful. I guess it's mostly useful when your plot is... discovery-driven? Especially if those discoveries are about the nature of the world.
slash
APATHY IS FOR COWARDS
4158
author=Liberty
One on this site, that I recommend to everyone to play, is Sunset Over Imdahl. You are locked in a city with no way out, searching for the origin of a plague - and it's an amazing game.

Woah, cool. I've seen a couple stories that started off being about quarantines recently, but none of them pulled through. I'll have to try it sometime!

Considering how many RPGs try to span entire continents or planets, I think we could use a few more that take place in a single location, especially if it changed over time. Imagine a game that focused on a town like Clock Town from Majora's Mask - constantly changing as the game goes on and based on previous events. Plus, you could save a lot of time on graphics and mapping :P
author=LockeZ
I'm not sure I've ever seen a game that needed to be set in more than three cities. Final Fantasy 7 would have lost nothing if the setting were limited to Midgar, Junon and Nibelheim, for example. I would go so far as to say that, 99% of the time, it's not okay to have more locations than that. You're diluting the experience and making it impossible to care about the setting..


wat

In FF7 the planet itself was a character. Have you ever played the game? The whole point of it is to see the inner workings and grander scale of the planet that you're trying to save. You know, the Lifestream thing and all that?

In terms of the topic question, just set your game where it needs to be set. Regardless of whether that's a single city, country, continent, planet, or even multiple planets. As long as you NEED the space that you're allotting to the game then it makes sense.

author=LockeZ
Normally, games don't need all those locations though. When your plot is character-driven, it can mostly happen anywhere, so there's no need to move around. And when your plot is event-driven, those events need to be linked to each-other, so moving around can easily be actively harmful. I guess it's mostly useful when your plot is... discovery-driven? Especially if those discoveries are about the nature of the world.


I think that you could make an argument for showing those characters/events against different backdrops and atmospheres around the world though. Perhaps not on the traditional scale of an entire planet, but moving around isn't always a bad thing in stories like this.
If you're making a shorter game, I don't really think that limiting it to a few select locations is much of a problem.

In longer games, however, I know from firsthand experience that being stuck in one place really sucks. In Dragon Age 2, you almost never leave the city of Kirkwall and that just wrecked the game. And when you do leave, it's to visit the same few locations over and over again. After the first few visits, it really gets kind of tedious.
I dunno, I liked Dragon Age 2. It helped that the town was pretty lively and had it's different areas - it was like a series of areas unto itself and I think it worked well.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=Pizza
In FF7 the planet itself was a character. Have you ever played the game? The whole point of it is to see the inner workings and grander scale of the planet that you're trying to save. You know, the Lifestream thing and all that?
Right. I totally learn so much about the planet in Costa del Sol and Rocket Town that I wouldn't if the beach scenes happened on the deck of the transport ship and the rocket were being launched from Junon.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the "planet is a character" thing, but the way that its character is communicated in FF7 is rather poor. It's much harder to care about a character when most of the story arcs about that character are not actually connected to the main plot. The character ends up feeling unimportant and kinda random.

In the same way that I think the backstories and characterization arcs for your other characters should all be centrally involved in the main plot, I also think that the locations in your setting should all be centrally involved in your main plot. This makes the player care more about them, and also care more about the plot.

I'll amend my list of necessary FF7 locations to also include the Forgotten City of the Ancients, though.
author=Liberty
I dunno, I liked Dragon Age 2. It helped that the town was pretty lively and had it's different areas - it was like a series of areas unto itself and I think it worked well.
I guess I should note that I enjoyed Dragon Age 2 more the second time I played it, when my expectations were not sky high. I also played Hawke as the snarky/sarcastic character that time, which was much more satisfying than pure evil Hawke. I still wasn't thrilled about being trapped in Kirkwall, but I enjoyed the game, at least.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Kirkwall was infinitely better than the bloated world of the first Dragon Age game.
Pages: 1