RPG Design: Justifying Your Design To Make a More Believable World
Kevin Carter, formerly of EverQuest fame (and a module-writer for the soon-to-be-defunct Dungeon Magazine), has written an article for GamaSutra entitled, "Living Worlds: The Ecology of Game Design", about the fine art of making more immersive, believable worlds in games. While it is appropriate for several different genres (and mentions action games as much as RPGs), it ought to be of particular interest to RPG developers. His rules are mainly focused on creatures (thus the "Ecology" element), and they boil down to the following:

1. Creatures are part of their environments: Begin the level design process with your Non Player Characters (NPCs) in mind
2. Creatures are territorial: Congregate Creatures in Groups Around Resources
3. Creatures organize themselves into innate hierarchies: Arrange like creatures in a hierarchical manner
4. Tying it all together: Create consistent ecological patterns for players to learn

Which further boils down, in my mind, to one big suggestion: Provide clear contextual rationale for your design decisions.

I think this applies not only to creatures, but also to any other objects and level-design decisions. In fact, it's something a pet peeve of mine. After all, you'd never expect to find, say, a table, chairs, and a fine dining set just sitting there out in the middle of a desert. Yet many games (particularly Japanese-style RPGs) will plop treasure chests out in the middle of nowhere like that.

Now --- one thing I will never say is that there should never be chests stuck out in the middle of nowhere in a game. In fact, one of the complaints about the initial release of Aveyond (sure, I'm goin' all indie here... that's my thing!) was that there were these paths leading nowhere in the game. Exploration was not rewarded. Amaranth responded by updating the game and adding a number of treasure chests and other elements to be discovered by taking the paths less trodden. This improved the game immensely! So from a gameplay perspective, this was a good call.

Working Backwards
I also won't say that the player shouldn't find a full dining room set in the middle of nowhere. In fact, it sounds like such an awesome idea I may try and figure out how to work that one into Frayed Knights. But if I discovered such a thing, as a player I should be asking myself "why?" Just as he should be asking himself this question when encountering treasure chests just stitting there down a side-road that goes nowhere. Not only the "why" of the treasure chest, but also the "why" of the side-road. Who made that path? Why is it there? There are some major (and fairly recent) RPGs that I have played only answered the question with an implied "Because the designers thought it should be there."

Inexcusable? Hardly. But it still breaks the immersion. Sure, I'll take good gameplay over believability or immersion any day. Or that dreaded word, "realism." Aveyond, with both a "before" and "after" version, makes a very sound case. But can't we have it all?

IMO, it comes down to justifying your design decisions. Answering the "why" and "how" questions to yourself, as the designer, first, and then providing at least hints to the player as to the rationale.

Motivated By Childhood Embarassment
I remember being asked this during the first D&D game I ever ran as a Dungeon Master. I had an orc, a hobgoblin, and a zombie all in the same room guarding a stairway. Hey, I was twelve years old, and I didn't realize it sounded like a joke! Anyway, a player asked (rhetorically) how come the three different creatures were there in the same room working together instead of killing each other. Were they enchanted in some way?

Huh - well, uh, yeah! Of course! Enchanted! That was it! I muttered something to that effect to cover my little gaffe, and continued playing. I even had the monsters act enchanted and zombie-like during the combat (easy enough, for the zombie). Fortunately the game didn't last too long, so I didn't have to come up with a better explanation of who had enchanted them and why. Which actually would have been pretty cool, as those questions could have led to more questions, which could have led to a far more interesting story with a ton of really cool details and mysteries for the players to sort out.

Ban Plotonium!
Maybe that little panic-attack as a kid is why I get so annoyed at games that overdose the player on plotonium-powered events, with minimal if any justification other than the vague explanation of "it's magic." Yeah. And I intended those three monsters to be enchanted to work together in my crappy first dungeon. In other words, the game becomes about guessing what the designers had in mind rather than about what's supposed to be happening in the world and story.

Games aren't the only culprits. Witness many of the criticisms against Spider-Man 3. I felt is was an enjoyable movie. Yet I couldn't help wondering where the other half-hour of movie went that actually explained why characters were changing their minds and reversing their decisions. I mean, sure, I'm a fairly smart and creative guy, and I found myself filling in the blanks with very plausible explanations. But that's not as satisfying.

In a game, you can even leave much of the exposition off to the side where the player can ignore it if they don't want to wade through it. This is one advantage games have over linear media. Maybe a young school-girl likes to sing a silly song in town square about the forest-gnomes and their elaborate tea-parties held in the middle of the wilderness, and how they sometimes get interrupted by the big bad mecha-wolverines, and forced to abandon their dinnerware and furniture to escape.

Bang! Not only is there some minimal justification to satisfy curious players, but it could lead to a whole side-quest. Or the focus of an entire game. A rather bizarre game, but at least your game world wouldn't be generic.


(Vaguely) related tirades:
* When Magic Becomes Mundane in RPGs
* Are Graphics Really Killing Gameplay?
* Why Can't I Get Past This Stupid Door?
* Fair Game Or Drama?

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Labels: Game Design, Roleplaying Games

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