Old-School RPG Design – Navigating and Exploring

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 12, 2015

So I was going to do some research. Just… you know, research. I’m always trying to capture the feel of “old-school” gaming in Frayed Knights, and so I thought I’d go back and check out Might & Magic Book 1 – The Secret of the Inner Sanctum.  So I got hooked on it once, but on a new computer I had to start over, and I’m really only going to take a peek for just a few minutes around the world. Well, okay, I’ll spend time making characters, just for old time’s sake (screenshot with the pre-gen characters notwithstanding), and THEN I’ll just poke around for maybe a half hour. Not very long at all. Just as a refresher.

Yeah. Right. That plan didn’t work. This is Might & Magic that we’re talking about. Nevermind I’ve got tons of cool new games waiting to be played – I’m now a few hours into Might & Magic 1. Again.

The thing is, these classic old games succeed – at least for me – on a level that many of their modern (yeah, indie) imitators do not. I know – I play ’em. I *cough* make ’em. How is that possible? There’s no inimitable genius here or technological or design wizardry (pun intended) going on in this game that’s pushing 30 years old (for the Apple II version). What gets missed? What’s so addictive for an old-school gamer like myself?

There are a lot of answers to that question, but I’m going to focus on something that gets lost a lot in modern RPGs – indies included. The most basic interactions of not only these old games, but of almost all games. Movement.

Movement in these old first-person dungeon crawlers is pretty basic. You can turn left or right, move forward, or move back. Some of the games also allowed you to move left or right. In these gridded game worlds, each step was a full square, so if nothing intervened, you could traverse the entire map for a level in seconds.

There’s our first little bit of possibly accidental brilliance – movement was really fast unless something interesting happened. This, at least, a lot of games “get.”

But something interesting happened a lot. That’s a probably intentional piece of brilliance, especially in the Might & Magic series. Not just getting into fights. Might & Magic 1 cribbed from the best of the genre, so it’s not like Jon Van Caneghem was startlingly original. He just did it very well. The game doesn’t stoop to the level of Wizardry 4, where practically every step was a torturous exercise in “messing with” the player (which actually came out a year later).  But even in wandering around the starting city, you really can’t take anything for granted.

So what goes into walking around a gridded area in these RPGs? What is the world like, and what kind of state information can be accessed or manipulated?

Well, first, you have the player’s party. They have an X and Y coordinate, a facing, and a movement direction. The movement direction is usually the same as their facing direction, but not necessarily.

Then you have the map itself. For every square in the grid you may have an event tied to it, and you have four possible directions of movement which may be allowed or restricted. There are visuals representing this. If you can’t go in a direction, you’ll usually see some kind of wall or barrier. If movement is restricted by some means, you’ll often find a gate or door of some kind. And if you can pass freely, you’ll usually see nothing at all – just the square beyond.

But from there, things can get really interesting. What if there’s no natural illumination, causing no visual at all unless the player creates some form of light? What if the wall is actually an illusion, allowing the player passage but they have to hunt for it? What if a square allows movement into the next square, but that square doesn’t allow reciprocal movement back? In other words, you find you can only move one way? What if an event is triggered not only by entering the square, but based on your facing when you enter it? Then of course, there are the infamous invisible walls. Probably not the most enjoyable gameplay option, but it’s an option.

As far as events, some can mess with your state. Change your facing (an old, and somewhat annoying trick in the old days without automapping). Move you to a different location, possibly on another level (like pits dropping you to the next level), and possibly without warning or notification (leading to one of the notorious “infinite hallway” effects…)

And we can go further than this. What about the order in which the squares are entered or interacted with? How about squares that change their information based on interactions – walls moving, doors opening, illumination changing, an impassible chasm turning into a bridge, etc. Or just the event triggers changing based on other events in the dungeon. How about the timing in which you enter the square?

One of the best modern examples of this is the Legend of Grimrock series, although it was of course inspired by the Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder series. In these games, the dungeon feels much more like a collection of puzzles, and there’s definitely more of a feeling of “solving” a level more than exploring it. But the complex interactions of the map and movement across it are there.

And that, ladies and not-ladies, is a key part of the nature of these “old-school” western RPGs, and least within the “first person perspective” genre. Something many indie games would be well-advised to consider. Movement is not just something you do to get from one event to the other. Movement is a major gameplay mechanic. Exploration – truly discovering all the little tricky interactions and secrets and advantages  – is not a second-class mechanic. It’s not just something you do to find some bonus treasure. There were a whole bunch of puzzles, tricks, and gameplay to be found that had nothing to do with all the other RPG mechanics, like your inventory or experience or hit points – just with your location and orientation and the map state.

This can be fun. I think that’s what keeps getting forgotten in some modern attempts. Sure, it can get old after a while, too (a weakness in Legend of Grimrock), so it should be mixed with a variety of gameplay elements to keep things interesting (just like combat after combat can get very old very quickly). But it should be no great exaggeration to say that exploring the map is half the fun.

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