I have an awful lot to blog about. What I really want to do is make sure that everything I say has some sort of context to you guys. So to that end, I’m starting with what I feel is the most basic difference between Tephra and most other RPGs here; the fact that Tephra only has one playable character.

Single guys have it tough
Each time you add another character to the party, things get a bit easier for the player. Your moves per turn, your damage output and total health pool all increase. New skills are brought to the table, and the chance of any individual team member being hurt decreases. If one character dies, the other characters can pick up the slack and even revive the dead character. A team of four is better than a team of three, which is better than a team of two.

But now, consider a “team” of one.

You get a total of one move per turn. If you attack, 100% of your turn will be attacking. If you heal, then you won’t be dealing any damage. When your character gets hit by a strong attack and goes down, there’s no-one to get them back up again. If you get stunned, you do nothing(don’t worry you won’t be getting stunned in any game of mine) until the stun naturally wears off. There’s no dividing up damage either; every attack will land on the same character.

Basically, a single-character RPG is absolute. Everything is in ones and nothing can be wasted. A single-character RPG is, by nature, ruthless and cruel. If done incorrectly, it is frustrating and difficult. If done correctly, it means that every move is critical.



Offensive vs. Defensive
In normal RPG play, using a good mix of offensive (damaging) and defensive (buffing/debuffing/healing/blocking) moves during battle is essential. This is because separate characters can perform separate roles, achieving multiple tasks in the one turn. This means you can build up your character’s strength and keep them healthy without compromising damage output; and outputting enough damage to kill your opponent before they kill you is the goal of every RPG battle.

Now, keeping that goal in mind, consider a single-player RPG again. With only one move, 90% of the time the player will want to dedicate it to dealing damage. After all, if you don’t deal any damage, then you’ll never win the battle. A good example of this difference in play-style is with a spell that blocks all damage to your party for a turn.

In a multi-character RPG, the cost of this spell would need to be very high to stop it from being overpowered. Imagine; every turn you cast this blocking spell and attack with your other characters. You would never take any damage, while still dealing damage to the opponent. Unless there was some large cost to this spell, it would become a dominant tactic very quickly.

But imagine the same spell, with only one character; when you cast the spell, you may not take any damage, but you also deal no damage, gain no buffs, and give your opponents a free turn to power up. The only possible use for the skill would be to block monsters that attack in patterns(like a monster that uses a big attack every third turn).

So, by taking the number of party members to one, an over-powered spell becomes nothing more than a rarely useful novelty. Single player RPGs are games that follow a ruleset separate to any other RPG.

In summary
What sets a single-character RPG apart is that:
-There is no way to be revived upon death; death is an instant game over
-There is only one move per turn
-Certain moves that would be useful in multi-character RPGs become useless when their ability to synergize with other moves in the same turn is removed
-Offensive moves become more useful than defensive/support ones when you only choose one move per turn

So what am I gonna do about it?
In order to keep all sorts of moves useful:
-Non-damaging moves must have potent and worthwhile effects
-Some moves must provide multiple types of effects
-Some moves must provide effects that span multiple turns, allowing the player to act as if they have multiple actions

I plan to explain how I will do these things in my following blogs(although there will probably be a blog on my item system first since it is pretty essential to not completely getting boggled).

I hope this wasn’t too confusing, and thanks for reading!