CHARACTER BIOGRAPHIES, WORLD HISTORY, AND GAME STORY - PART I

If you have been dying to write a good story and game world history for a RPG Maker project, this is the article to turn to. In here, I will explain the different areas of developing a rich history and a intriguing story for your RM game.

Down to the bare bones
First, you must choose your story. It might be better if you have read myersguy's article before you have read this. Anyways, you need to know what your game's about before you start doing anything, even writing the history of your game.

After that, you need to know what kind of a world the adventure starts in, and whom your character is. Those three things are needed before you continue.

Writing the Character's Biography
Compile everything about your character, age, birthplace, birthday, history, class, weapon (if possible), alignment, and of course, gender and personality. Let's start off with the basics. While writing the biography, do it section by section, keeping the order of characteristics of a character first, and then moving to the history. What I'd do is write everything about the character- age, birthplace, etc, before continuing to write the character's history. Also talk about what the character is adventuring IN. If he was a human, he'd wander around the regular world. If he were a god, he'd either be up there or down there. If he was a spirit, he would be in a spirit realm.

Now, write the character's history. Is he/she good or evil? What kind of family does this character have? What is his/her purpose? And a lot of things, such as if your character was born in the scourge of war, on a peaceful island, or isn't born at all, either just created, or something else.

That's all you need to compile a good character. It might be a large pile of information, but it gives us a in-depth look of the character.

Writing your adventuring world's history
This one is a very big section. The parts of writing a world's history is included in three different sections right here in this article. Let's start off.

When first writing this, start with the creation of the world, when it was believed to be created and where it is, in a certain galaxy? (Not recommended unless having a Sci-Fi theme using the universe as an example) Who are the gods, if there are any? When writing about the gods, do a VERY short character profile. What they are god of, and whom they were created by.

Now, let's talk about world geography. However, I'm not giving you a social studies lesson. Talk about where the continents are located and what is their climate in this section. Is the climate warm or hot? Is the continent connected to other continents? Also, after talking about this, state the size of the continent, but NOT MATHIMATICALLY. Just say if it's big or small, or in the middle of those size ranges.

Lastly, talk about where the people of the world tend to live. Inside a village or town? City or fortress? A lot of this information is needed. Then, talk about the state the world is in right now. Is it in a apocalypse state? Is it normal? Brink of destruction? Write all of the above in either a really chucky paragraph, or three different paragraphs using this format.

Writing your game's story
Finally, after writing the world's history and all of your character's biographies, you need to create a story, some type of adventure for your world. Start out with a place where the hero is, or a place where the action begins. Include a small amount of information about what the character is doing- either engaging the empire in war, adventuring or a superhero type game, where Master of the Wind is the best example.

After all of that, set up the scene. Where the character starts adventuring. Start out with something like the following: At home, and then the character gets called to meet somebody or engage in a war. At war, after it ends, and heading home, but then, danger strikes. Walking or going somewhere, when getting attacked and hit unconcious, and awakening a place that is far from home. After setting up the scene, that's the end of the introduction. Don't add something as The End, but add something at the end that wraps the introduction and story for your game up. The story should be about six to eight sentences long.

The final wrap-up
That's all the information you need (hopefully) to crete a good story, character biography, and rich history for your game. This article will be improved in the near future, and will be re-written for modern-setting stories. There are a few more things in this series.