Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 15
Role-Playing Games
Role-playing games allow players to interact with a game world in a wider variety of
ways than most other genres do, and to play a richer role than many games allow.
Most role-playing games also offer an experience impossible in the real world: a
sense of growing from an ordinary person into a superhero with amazing powers.
Other genres usually provide players with these powers immediately, but in a role-
playing game, the player earns them through successful play and gets to choose
which particular abilities he wants to cultivate. This chapter first defines the role-
playing genre and then describes the unique gameplay features, modes, and
mechanics of this type of game. The chapter focuses on single-player role-playing
games that use both avatar-based and party-based interaction models. (Chapter 21,
“Online Games,” discusses online multiplayer games, including role-playing ones.)
In addition, we'll look at the world, story, and settings common to role-playing
games and delve into the attributes of the avatars and other characters involved in
the game. We'll also look at the various game modes and some special issues for
designing the user interface of a role-playing game.
Unfortunately, there isn't room for more than a general overview of role-playing
games. They include more different types of gameplay than most other genres and
have the second most complicated user interfaces. (Construction and management
simulations have the dubious honor of the most complicated user interfaces.) For a
more detailed discussion of the subject, read Neal and Jana Hallford's
Swords and
Circuitry
(Hallford and Hallford, 2001).
Computerized role-playing games are an outgrowth of the original noncomputer-
ized, pencil-and-paper role-playing games, of which
Dungeons & Dragons
is by far
the most famous example. (For simplicity's sake, this topic calls computerized role-
playing games
CRPGs
and the noncomputerized kind
tabletop RPGs
to distinguish
them from each other.) The object of both kinds of games, computerized and oth-
erwise, is to experience a series of adventures in an imaginary world, through an
avatar character or a small group of characters whose skills and powers grow as
time goes on. A group of characters who go on these adventures together in an RPG
is universally called a
party
.
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