Hey! You Got Your Adventure Game in My RPG!
Once upon a time, we didn't really have the term, "Role-Playing Games" (RPGs) - for either the dice-and-paper variety or the computer gaming equivalent. And typically, what soon became called "Adventure Games" (based on the seminal game entitled, "Adventure") ended up lumped into the same category when you were talking computer games. That's right, Ultima, Wizardry, The Wizard and the Princess, Apventure to Atlantis (an Apple II game, can't you tell?), Zork, and the old Scott Adams adventures were often kinda jumbled together into a big mix sometimes called "Adventure Games" or "Fantasy Games."

I still like a dose of adventure game in my RPGs. Maybe because there's still some old programming in my head that still mixes 'em all together like they did in 1981, but a little bit of the old adventure game puzzle-solving makes the grind go down easier. So long as it's not too much of a head-thumping experience, that is - and with the ease of obtaining hints on the Internet, that's not too much of a problem anymore.

The problem is that the adventure game puzzles can run counter to what I consider good RPG design principles, and that creates a jarring experience.

For example - in an adventure game, you've generally got one - usually convoluted and amusing - solution to a problem. A good RPG, on the other hand, should make that puzzle a goal condition and leave other options to achieve that goal available. Failure to do that leads to frustration, as in the "plot-driven door" problem (or as a friend of mine calls it, "objects made of the indestructable material plotonium"). In an adventure game, you expect it - but even then, it gets frustrating when you see what appears to be an obvious solution which doesn't work.

Then there's the expectations of the genre. If an RPG player encounters a dragon on a Persian rug, she is not going to attempt the bare-handed dragon-vanquishing technique. (Then again, that eluded many Adventure players back in the day, too...). Nope. If at first she doesn't succeed with her axe, she's going to go off and level up for a bit and come back - maybe with a bigger axe. Eventually, she figures, that dragon's gotta go down.

So it's a little tricky. In the pilot experiment for Frayed Knights, I made a gate which is locked and capable of being picked by the party rogue.... but extremely difficult. The hard way is to brute force the way through the door, which will probably result in a lot of random encounters. (Ideally, the party will get spotted and face an organized defense as they hang out in front of the locked gate, but that was just way more effort than I felt like putting into it.) Or you can just go find the key in a nearby room. The concern here is - like the dragon problem - that without providing a lot of hints and nudges, players will fixate on the brute-force answer rather than searching for alternatives. (Shades of myself pummeling locked doors into submission in Ultima Underworld...)

Ultimately, the solution is to set the expectations in the game. Hints and nudges in the exposition can help. There's a puzzle in the early stages of Aveyond 2: Ean's Quest that hints right up front that there's a monster in a cave that's beyond your ability to take on. I don't know if it's possible to level up and defeat the beast at any point (I never tried), but when I entered the cave my goal was already framed as a puzzle I had to solve, not a monster I had to vanquish.

Unfortunately, the other problems of adventure game design begin rearing their heads. Most RPGs with adventure game puzzles often commit the kinds of design mistakes that adventure game developers have since learned to avoid. The kinds of sins Ron Gilbert harped about ages ago.

Still, I don't think these problems are insurmountable. But now - will we see more graphic adventure games with RPG elements, too?

Hopefully.

Labels: Adventure Games, Game Design, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:07 AM (Permalink)