INFINITESERAPH'S PROFILE

author=Blitzen link=topic=1644.msg26472#msg26472 date=1217970001
That's the inherent difference in crafting names for games and for stories, however. In the most mechanical video games, names are identifiers and have little else to do with the game. For example, anyone who plays Tetris knows the peices, but it is not nescessary that they have names, because the player has an idea of the properties of the piece without having to have it labelled. The pieces, although without names or shapes that exist in the real world, become symbols and thus the player gives them an IMPLIED meaning through thier interaction with them.

When it comes to CHARACTERS, they are essentially units of your game mechanic, in this case the basic RPG Mechanic structure. Any meaning you give them, ie names or graphical uniqueness that doesn't serve a discretlely function purpose, in an IMPOSED meaning. This means that you actually TAKE AWAY some oppourtunity for the player to be creative and attribute thier own meaning to those objects. An example is your typical RPG cast, where the characters are funtional representations of the stats they represent. Let's say you have a tank-style character, and as a designer you put the title of Knight on it. What you have actually just done is LIMITED the interactive experience by applying a label rather than no label. While the player could have attributed to the lableless object any value that they wished, you as a designer had gone ahead and done it for them.

It all depends what you are trying to do as a game designer if you think this is a good thing or not. Sometimes it is nescessary for identification purposes (ie the player needs to know which object is a KEY style object and which is a LOCK style object in order to progress in the game). Or, if you're designig the game with the aesthetic as vital to the gameplay experience, then it will play a huge role in your presentation.

Personally, I would think that the best games are the ones where you can take away the atmospheric elements and be left with something that is still a hell of a lot of fun. There is still a creativity in good design that can exist without an aesthetic focus. That being said, themes and aesthetics help differentiate your design if it is similar to others, to the point where it develops to become a mechanic in itself that differentiates it from other designs.

I'm not taking either side of this dialectic, but keep this in mind when you are designing your games.

I love this!! This is exactly how I feel in terms of game design. Everyone who didn't read this for whatever reason should read it again---it's inspiring!!

I just wanted to reinforce the idea that a good game, stripped of all of its atmosphere and story (in theory) would still make it FUN! Of course, an RPG stripped of its story would be somewhat lifeless, and a little confusing--but all of the elements of the game (outside of its story) should aim to be fun.

If we all did this, the story and characters would only be a part of the package, and not the entire focus.

Platform
RPG Maker XP. I may get to learn a little more RGSS along the way, but if I do any real custom programming, it will be within the original programs parameters, and not using RGSS code. Battle style will be side-view, however, and I will have a custom menu.

Story
Story will be shared when I decide on my crew; however, I will try to create/release a trailer this Monday. If not, middle of the week FOR SURE. Which brings me to my next point:

Privacy Notice
I have a wife, and a five-month-old child. I know about having literally no time on your hands. Right now, my daughter is crying in her walker and I'm struggling to finish this post.

The crew who I decide on will be dedicated, intelligent, unafraid to innovate and share their thoughts, proactive (all artists/composers/etc can beta-test, if they'd like) and productive with their time.

Also, the team will not share storyline/game secrets; My team will not upload sections, demos, or anything that isnt approved; My team will use discretion when talking about the game, and not release important/classified information.

Artists
Ideally, my artists would be creative. The job would consist of:

Custom Charsets (Important)
Custom Battle Charsets (Important)
Custom Backdrop
Custom Battle Material
Custom Chipsets (IMPORTANT!)
Custom Facesets (Only a few)
Custom Enemy Graphics (Important)

And, I may employ an extra artists for some animation.

The artists will be working directly with me. Instructions will be sent to you, files will be sent to me. Programming knowledge is unnecessary, and if one of the artists does have extensive programming skills, they can double as an assistant programmer.

When I recieve enough graphics to complete part of the game, I forward it to the composer.

Composers
Above all, should be creative. My comporser(s) should be able to take a game with no music, and by looking at the events and following my guidelines, creating music pieces for the scenes.

If they have RM knowledge--they can inputting the musical pieces themsleves and forwarding them to the beta tester to test and comment. Of course, if they see multiple scenes where a single piece would fit, they could use their discretion and fit the piece in. Also, if there is a composer who has programming knowledge, they can take on both roles.

Assistant Programmer
The assistant programmer would essentially take parts of the storyline every week and create them game. This basically means you will have your own artist (or the artist will be good enough/have enough time to work with both of us) and your own composer (ditto).

Think of it as creating sections: You will know the whole story (of course) and have everything at your fingertips and basically just help me put everything together. I would do Intro - Part A, you will do Part B - C for this week, etc. Basically help move things forward.

Beta Tester
Beta tester would play the sections of the game, section-per-section, and try to find bugs. If a section would take 15 minutes to get through, I expect a beta-tester to play that section for at least 30 minutes to TRY to make the game freeze. Obviously, as the story and characters move along, the testing will get more difficult...but, since the game will be created section-for-section, the finished product should be generally bug-free--and the testing shouldn't be so difficult.

A second beta tester, if I decide to have one, will test all the items and skills and weapons and armors and basically everything interchangeable in the game. They will try draining a ghost (which would actually damage the player, for example) They will make sure Death doesn't work on a boss; etc etc etc.

FF7 (please hold the flames) is a great example of how the characters are very interesting with lots of back story and motives however when it came down to mechanics they were essentially the same with some very minor tweaks.

Well, in your RPG, you would want all of your characters to be controlled the same way (i.e. mechanics). And if you are actually talking about defined roles in battle, then you essentially are asking for the pre-FFV days, where there was a cleric, a mage, a thief and a warrior (and every other variation of these names you can think of, including priest, wizard, rogue and barbarian).

FF7 skill development was actually more balanced then 6, 8, 10, and 12 because of the fact that you needed the materia equipped in order to have the spells, and the amount materia that you could equip was limited. If we look back to the games mentioned here:

FF6 involved learning spells though Espers.
Once you had the spell, they were yours indefinitely.

FF8 involved "drawing" spells from enemies.
Not only could you have 99 of each spell with time, they were available to that character until they ran out. Because of the expendibility, it was a little more balanced than the others.

FF10 involved a skill/spell grid where you expended AP to move across the board.
Every character could eventually run across the entire board, and own every skill/spell.

FF12 was a similar skill/spell "license" grid to FF10. Once you had the license (and bought the skill/spell) you could use it indefinitely.

In comparison,

FF4: Pre-determined character roles.
FF5: Different classes available. You could have every skill, but you were only allowed an extra skill-set 'equipped' outside of your classes skillset.
FF7: Materia system; explained above.
FF9: Weapons had learnable abilities. Could only wear specific weapons; i.e. skills were specific to character.
FFX-2: Garment Sphere system. Basically the same as FF5, but you needed to be wearing the sphere to use the spells.

*shrug* I might be taking this too far into details, but I don't think FF7's character mechanics were the same. The customization didn't allow you to have *everything*--although, if you wanted to, you could have three characters that were equal.

Finish-Start-Finish
Not so different from the Lufia I/Lufia II bit, this could consist of a band of heroes who come across some unusually powerful wizard. The group is completely annihilated/world is destroyed, and the storyline rolls back to a previous point in the story to explain how this calamity could have come to pass. Perhaps a twist is that our hero dreamt about this calamity happening (which would make it forward chronological) or perhaps our hero was somehow saved and reverted back in time to correct the disaster. Again, this is only an example, and creativity is especially necessary when telling a storyline in reverse. Even Lufia I didn't have it this bad, because perhaps Natsume just threw in Maxim to explain why his descendant had the swordfighting ability that he did, and then looked back and said heeeey....we can make a second game out of that guy..etc.

Bystander Storytelling
I semi-explained this in the Point of View section above, but basically this involved a third person who may or may not have some affiliation with the main character. Of course, since the third person isn't really part of the game, multiple events can be streamed in one for a better storytelling experience. For example, the omniscient bystander may happen to know the exact date of births of the hero(s) and villain(s) of the story. They would also know exactly when specific events happened, and what caused the events to happen (whereas following a character, the character would only know what happened, and would be hard-pressed to find out why).

Even though a certain amount of mystery is possibly lost in the Bystander Storytelling point of view, a possible twist could be events that would unfold in the present tense involving the bystander...or maybe the bystander is a surprise person that was throughout the whole game, and the audience didn't know about it..etc.

Event-oriented Storytelling
Event-oriented storytelling (EOS) involves the story revolving around an event. Instead of a character encountering multiple events, we can think of it as an event which multiple characters encounter. The closest movie I can think of that utilizes this style of storytelling is Vantage Point, a relatively new movie that was recently released. In this movie, the storyline is revolved around one event that is seen through the eyes of many different characters in the film. In fact, the movie was ultimately labelled redundant, because it involved the same event, over and over again, through the point-of-view of various different characters.

Here's another way to visualize this: When the towers fell in 2001, exactly where were you when it happened? What were you doing? What were you thinking about at the time? Were you watching TV when it happened? If not, how did you ultimately find out about it? Now, multiply and quantify that throughout the rest of the world (most of whom will be able to answer the questions I just presented) and you have an EO scenario, where the characters are revolving around the event.

While I have my doubts about how interesting one event would be in an entire RPG game, we can borrow this element from Vantage Point for specific events in our storyline. For example, if you've ever played through Earthbound for the SNES, at the end of the game the group is fighting Giygas for the sake of the planet, and you are supposed to make Paula pray during a certain amount of times to ultimately win the battle. Every time Paula prays, we get a new scene that shows a friend/group of friends from every corner of the world offering their strength in prayers.

In Jack's case, our Super CIA-Operative infused with Type-1 enhancers in my last article (5 Common Writing Pitfalls), perhaps he comes across a character in the story who he believes will help him recover his wife and children. So while he is explaining exactly what happened to this new character, the screen fades out and the character is thinking about the role he played in that event, or during that time frame. This is a rather weakish example, but I'm sure you guys get the point.

Object-oriented Storytelling
Object-oriented storytelling (OOS) is very similar to EOS in that the story doesn't follow the character. However, in OOS, the story is following a specific object, as opposed to an event.

I can't think of an RPG whose whole storyline is OOS-based. However, in Lufia I and II, parts of the storyline are based on the Dual Blade, which the main character must secure at some point during that storyline. You get a few lines of background dialogue here and there, and parts of the story follow the Dual Blade. Again, the whole storyline isn't based on the Dual Blade, but only a certain percentage of it. Once you find out, and acquire, the Dual Blade, it's mentioned a few more times by very angry villains, and the storyline is close to the end.

Again, there would be striking similarities comparing EOS and OOS side by side, but the greatest difference is that the creativity required for an object-oriented RPG is substantially higher than either event-oriented, or traditional storyline. The reasons lie, first of all, in character development. For example, let's assume that we decide to make a game that's based on a cursed sword. So we start with the creation of this cursed sword, which may be a blacksmith who is possessed with making the most powerful blade in the world. His greed, and lust for blood attracts the attention of a demon who infuses powers into the blacksmith, and upon creating the cursed sword, the sword consumes his soul and moves on to another owner.

Obviously, since the storyline is following a sword, we can assume that any character that comes in contact with this powerful sword will have incredible fighting prowess; but their days numbered. Therefore, one of the creative aspects is to figure out how to present the gameplay in an interesting, and perhaps innovative, but definitely fun way. If the player becomes discouraged because every time he levels up a new character, the character ends up dying, s/he is not going to like your game. Or you.

Perhaps a twist would be that our blacksmith creates an artifact along with the sword that nullifies its curse, and the aim of the game is to find the artifact within certain restrictions before it completely consumes you. Or perhaps the sword finds its way to a character who is insistant on surviving with this powerful blade, and it creates a string of conflicts, including hero vs. his arrogance, hero vs. sword, etc.

Another creative roadblock to an OOS-based game is the ending. I honestly can't think of an ending to the above example without using the demon as a final stopping point (destroy the demon to break the curse) or somehow throwing more characters into the mix. However, an OOS game would probably be refreshing, and interesting for the creator.

In conclusion...
So overall, there are several different creation styles, and point-of-views to any one event. While I'm not suggesting that you confine a single game to a single style presented in this article, it wouldn't hurt at all to spice up your game by borrowing a few of these ideas (or creating your own!) for specific points in the storyline. It would certainly add flavor to your game, and set you apart from the crowd in terms of creativity.

Hey RPGMaker.net:

I just finished proofing Writing Tactics: Innovative Writing for RPGs!
I will do my best to post it in the next fifteen minutes.

Enjoy!