PLANNING YOUR RPG

I start with the central character and his personal story, the work around it from there. This way I can ensure that the protagonist has a fluent experience with some kind of reprecussion from his journey. The system of the game is also a big factor for me, influencing the world setting and some of the game objectives. For example if the magic system is going to be through equipping certain weapons to use certain skills, I'd include a history of why this is and quests to find powerful artifacts. A decent villain is normally also a good place to start - who wants to save the world from somebody who was never that much of a threat to start with right?

See, I start with the world. I come up with a backstory for it/its history and a reason why a game should take place here. Then I do what Enker does, I build the story around the central character, then it branches out to include other characters in the mix.

It depends.
Sometimes I start out with the gameplay idea, and build off the game like that.
Other times, I begin by creating the story for the game, then building the world off that.

I guess in the end it depends on what inspires me to start the game in the first place, and build off that.

me 3


First, I decide how I want the game to play like. I have a few ideas already, but if not, usually while I'm at school something will come to me. Like, I'm playing Volleyball, then "Volleyball RPG! Let's see how it goes". I take out a paper, and draw out what I want the HUD to generally look like. It's obvious a WIP, so it can change once I get more ideas/characters.

I get the general idea, then see how the player will control it. Will it be a tactical RPG? In this Volleyball RPG, how many characters do you control, is it real time or turn based, how do I balance the characters, and things like that.

I decide based on what I can feasibly do, and how many characters work for the battle system on the amount of characters I need. If it's 4, I'll have 4 characters throughout the game. If you're looking for a plot twist where a character dies, you're not going to find it in my game. It's too cheery of a world for it to happen.

I then fill in the characters, like their description, looks and stuff. I tend to draw them so I have a good idea of what they'd be like. I also base them on people I know.

The story is the least important part to me, so planning that comes after I see that the battle system works well.

I usually use Word or Excel to place in numbers to test, to put in info, character data, and other things.

As for setting, I usually use either a modern/fantasy Island setting, or a medieval style. In the medieval one, I don't go very much to the fantasy side, so I may do a bit of research for it to get ideas.

I am a role model (because I posted it the first).

I plan out all my classes, their stats/lvlup, their spells, what equipment they can equip and what special abilities they get (like Steal). I always have a rogue class because they are my favorite (I like stealing). I do ALL of this in Textpad.

Like Ocean, I then balance out the numbers in Excel before adding them to the RM2k3 database. I then add all the special battle events to a "master" Monster Group, and then copy that whenever I want a new Monster Group.

I don't plan out monsters much - I pretty much make them on the fly. Same with dungeons/towers/etc... - I map them on the fly, too.

The story I begin to think about when I start to map the world map (which I usually do first - at least for the section of the game I'm about to make). I usually go for the "Save the World from the Evil Ancient Demon" medival plot and setting. It's tried and true.

Resource gathering is a pain, but I'm pretty happy with the collection I have built up over the years. I make nothing original, but will do edits.

Dungeons and towns, I map them on the fly, but I have a good idea of what I want them to look like/function before hand. They may stray a bit from the original idea once I'm implementing it, but things happen. I'll give an example. For the Ancient Ruins, I planned the interior to have a stealth minigame throughout. So it's not focused on battling (with few exceptions), but rather avoiding enemies and traps, while setting some of your own. However, the looks of it ended up very different than when I first planned it. Originally I was just going for a broken down old grey castle, but it ended up as a ruined Golden mayan ruins style thing after seeing a screenshot which inspired me.

For dungeons, I keep a few things in mind, though I don't always map it out on paper beforehand (I do sometimes, not always). I see what I could do to make it different from the previous dungeon the player went through. I don't want it to feel repetitive. I take into consideration what type of area it is. I hate switch puzzles and block puzzles, so I avoid them. I design the areas based on what I like. I have a tendency to get lost, so I avoid making it too non-linear. I want it to be easy for the player to get out if they just want to finish the area. So there's a clearly defined correct path the player can take to get out. If they want to explore, the option is there.

If I feel an area is repetitive (before I go on actually mapping, this is still in the planning stage), I see what I could do to make it different. If I can't, then I don't really see the use of having 2 of the same thing, so I'll drop it. Better to work on a few dungeons and make them good than to make 30 dungeons all alike in my opinion. FF6 is a good inspiration.

Much of what I do is very spontaneous- I just have a general idea of where I want the story to go. As for how I originally got the idea, I can't remember where I started or anything, as that was years ago. >.<

I always found Brickroad's planning stuff interesting. He would map out his dungeons on graph paper. He has the pictures uploaded somewhere.

Me, I've realized I need to get all of my ideas out on paper before I start... otherwise I end up just scrapping the project because I'm getting bored, all because of the fact I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. So, I start out by thinking of my characters, what skills they might have, and for what reason they have them. How the characters might intract, especially if I'm going for the comedy effect. All the while, I think of general points throughout the storyline. That way changes can be made as I go through the game. I try to get all of the stuff that's going to go on in the battle system first, like the skill set, items, status effects, etc. and so forth before I actually start on mapping and actually developing the storyline, no matter how many ideas I actually have for it. I keep all these either in a notebook, or on a notepad file on the computer where I'll have easy access for it. Some things, I do on the fly, usually with mapping. However... resources are so hard to find T_T.

Normally I think of a storyline and let it swim around in my head for a long time until I have the main parts of it all figured out. I also make sure that my storyline isn't anything generic, or anything that I've heard of happening in anyone elses game. (I try to be original) Then I like to build a world map, then think up events that will take place at each town that I decide to throw on there. Then I work on the battlecharacters/battlesystem. After that I start actually making the towns and making certain events just giving a description of whats going to happen in the town, and go back later to actually put all of what I wrote down into action. Then once again go through the whole thing to do touch-ups and make sure everything that I wanted to happen will, or get rid of any loose ends, fix typos, and anything like that.