Role-Playing Games - Fundamentals of Game Design - page 474

Settings
CRPG game worlds tend to be set in fantasy and science fiction universes because
both offer players opportunities to do things that they can't do in real life: use
magic in the former case and use advanced technology in the latter. They also
make possible a huge variety of enemies, aliens, and monsters that don't exist in
the real world. Finally, such settings make the unrealistic rate of growth that game
characters experience more plausible. If you were to set a role-playing game in the
present day with ordinary humans as characters, it would be difficult to believe
that within a few weeks of game time they could become dozens of times stronger
or more resistant to injury than they were at the beginning. Even if you're the
strongest man on Earth, you can still be killed by a single bullet and everyone
knows it. Fantasy and science fiction settings help players suspend their disbelief
about these things.
This is not to say that you must choose only a science fiction or fantasy setting for
your CRPG. You could, for example, create a role-playing game about a police offi-
cer or a spy whose character grows by acquiring new skills such as forensic
examination or using bugging devices rather than weapons and magic. In such a
game, you could easily set your story in the present day or the near future.
No matter what setting you choose, however, you must spend a lot of time and
effort making it appealing to explore. This is more true of CRPGs than any other
genre except adventure games and action-adventure hybrids. In an action game,
the player is often moving too fast to appreciate the landscape much; and in a strat-
egy game, he's often too busy commanding his armies and building his defenses. A
CRPG is a slower-paced game, so players have time to look around. Novel and dra-
matic scenery is an important part of how these games entertain.
A recent trend with CRPGs, evidenced by Neverwinter Nights , Elder Scrolls III:
Morrowind , and Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura , is that an editor within
the game lets more involved players create their own scripted adventures in the
game world.
This is a trend to be encouraged because it extends the sales life of the game, which
in turn increases sales. Neverwinter Nights takes this to the extreme, allowing play-
ers to edit an adventure in real-time as other players journey through it.
Chapter 4, “Game Worlds,” discusses the creative work you need to do to design
your setting.
Story
Once you have a setting, you need to decide what will happen there—the story of
the game. A CRPG story is seldom simply a straightforward quest in the style of
Lord of the Rings ; it's also a mystery. It's a problem to be solved but also a riddle to
be unraveled. The objective bring back the really valuable treasure is not sufficient to
sustain player interest for long.