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- Group: Member
- Joined: Jun 22, 2005
- Posts: 1325
(There once was a topic with this name, long ago. It's now archived and lost to us, and I have no idea what's in it, but I really liked the name and so I thought I'd bring it back, albeit in a potentially unrelated format! Also I am going to try to do this weekly, but I might update it faster than that and then not at all for awhile, so imagine it as being about as scheduled as the Map Design topics are! Lastly, these topics are meant to generate discussion rather than act as "guides" or something like that.)
The Critical Element 4/13
Every game needs a world. Even games that take place entirely in one room need a world; some backdrop against which the events are set. Even games set on Earth have to create their own world; not from scratch like some do, but there has to be some critical difference between our world and the game's that let the events unfold in-game. Maybe it has a seedy underworld of crime or a nether-dimension of spooky beasts, or maybe some enemy power won some critical battle. At any rate, there is some great change that enables all changes to follow it. Sometimes the game covers the change, sometimes the change comes before the game's story picks up, or sometimes the change is never even directly mentioned, but it's always there (with the possible exception of non-fiction, which is a pretty rare thing to see in games).
This change is what makes the world interesting, or more interesting than our own. People who are interested in certain aspects of history often want to relive that history in different ways; this (for me, anyways) is because you know how the actual events played out, and so you start looking at what if? scenarios. It provides a big draw for people, and without it the game threatens to become very boring.
While some games use our own as a template, perhaps a greater number use entirely fictional worlds (albeit grounded in the rules of ours) as their backdrop. In these worlds, the creator often forgets to provide any actual draw; sure there are orcs and goblins and magic, so they have a critical change from our world, but they aren't that much different then worlds that have been created long before they were. What sets them apart? Sometimes (often) it is actually nothing, or small changes that are more subtle to the end-user than the creator intended them to be.
Without a critical change from our world, a created world tends to lose a lot of meaning and acts solely as a stage for the story to play out on. And, although people sometimes comment about how nice the set design is, worthwhile stories always outlast their theatres.
The world isn't just terrain, of course. The people and living cities that crop up on the surface or underground (or even in the air!) are just as important as the rocks and trees. Nobody remembers FF6's intro because there was a cave and then you fought some Leafers once you got to the world map (OK, some people do), people remember it because of Tritoch, who presented the player with an immediately critical change from its predecessors. Espers? Magical beings that have an incredible indirect effect (and, as the game progresses, a direct one) on everything in the world? Sounds like a good change (and a damn good hook for the story) to me.
Series' tend to be set on the same (or very similar) worlds, and then it is up to the events that unfold to refine the world they take place on. The Mana games are a good example of this; they all have the Mana Tree and most have Mana Sprites, but how/who/why they/can use them changes. But in one-off games, the critical change offers an immediate hook into the world. In novels, this isn't as important, because they have their stories to do the legwork for them (and to rope readers in). But in video games (especially RPGs), the story is sometimes very slow to start (as the creator attempts to keep the greater plot a secret) and so this immediately immersion into the world (rather than the plot) is sometimes crucial for people to be interested in getting to the bit in your story they actually care about.
I have my critical change plotted out; it all has to do with one of the moons of my world and how it effects every element of the planet below (including the story)! What do you guys use? If it's a secret (or something), feel free to try to brainstorm a new one. I'd like to see what everyone is planning to "rope" the player in with. And, if you don't have one yet, maybe you can use this as a good opportunity to bounce idea around and come up with one! I prefer to play in a world that offers me something past "it's like our world, but with magic!", so if you have any good ideas you're dying to share, now'd be a good time.
Location, Location, Location 4/23
A lot of people seem to add locations to their world maps willy-nilly as they progress through their storylines. While this can be alright for extremely linear games with little user-determined exploration, it tends to end up being a major hindrance as the game world develops. While it can be extremely convenient to have the starting town next to a forest which is next to a mountain which is next to an ancient temple which is next to a quaint town (and so on, you get the picture), if there is no real reason other than the storyline's need, that location tends to fall by the wayside later one.
Planning the placement of cities and geographical locations beforehand can really increase their potency. I don't mean you should plan their locations based on socio-economical factors extrapolated from fictional census data or anything, I just mean you shouldn't always have cities separated by precisely two wilderness locations. Placing cities you know you'll use (or need) later is a good way to get your brain working at create problems for the player (or the player character) to solve. Detours are usually fun, if handled right, and offer a great time for insight into the story. I always use FF6 for examples, so here is another one: Look at the phantom forest section. It was entirely superfluous to the main story, and yet it was forced upon the player. It did, however, provide a sincere break from the usual gameplay and some really incredible locales; who doesn't remember exactly what the train looks like? It also added a significant chunk of character development for Cyan and Shadow (if you still had him).
The entire post-Ultros section was, in essence, one big detour. In an effort to get a few miles downstream the party ended up scattered across the world, and they ended up getting a large number of extra characters to join them and tonnes of backstory was filled. I'm sort of getting off topic here, so let me clarify why I brought this up in the first place: The common scheme of city-forest-city-forest-city-forest is a weak one, and you have to put though into adding each and every area. How many times did you visit that dinky little cave between Figaro and South Figaro? It was only a couple maps long, yet it played a pivotal part in the story.
If you place destinations in inconvenient places, you force yourself to come up with interesting solutions. Players appreciate this. I don't like walking through a simple forest and having something happen that forces me to go on some ridiculously circuitous route, but if the destination is far away then I expect an adventure along the way. Like, say, a haunted pirate ship or a frigging castle that sinks into the sand.
The more thought you put into the placement of your locations, the more easily you can later add unplanned side-dungeons and interesting tie-ins to your game's world. Every location should be able to play against it's neighbours. Secret tunnels and clever doubling back can make old locations fun again. If there is one thing I hate in RPGs, it is when a city is completely cut off from the world in terms of gameplay; you set out on a journey from your village and literally never need to return.
I'm sort of rambling now. I am brain tired! To reiterate what I said: Always put thought into you locations, paying special notice to how they interact with their neighbours and how they can be used to make the whole world feel like a cohesive entity instead of a straight line of barely related places.
One trick I use is to incorporate political posturing into the process for each location's placement, because if one nation is at war with another the possibilities for conflict (and therefore resolution, which is the point of any game) increase immensely. Do you guys have any tricks to make your game's locations feel like they are tied together, or are you alright just laying them out in a line and hope the player never reminisces about that port town you blew through an hour ago without so much as seeing a boat?
The Critical Element 4/13
Every game needs a world. Even games that take place entirely in one room need a world; some backdrop against which the events are set. Even games set on Earth have to create their own world; not from scratch like some do, but there has to be some critical difference between our world and the game's that let the events unfold in-game. Maybe it has a seedy underworld of crime or a nether-dimension of spooky beasts, or maybe some enemy power won some critical battle. At any rate, there is some great change that enables all changes to follow it. Sometimes the game covers the change, sometimes the change comes before the game's story picks up, or sometimes the change is never even directly mentioned, but it's always there (with the possible exception of non-fiction, which is a pretty rare thing to see in games).
This change is what makes the world interesting, or more interesting than our own. People who are interested in certain aspects of history often want to relive that history in different ways; this (for me, anyways) is because you know how the actual events played out, and so you start looking at what if? scenarios. It provides a big draw for people, and without it the game threatens to become very boring.
While some games use our own as a template, perhaps a greater number use entirely fictional worlds (albeit grounded in the rules of ours) as their backdrop. In these worlds, the creator often forgets to provide any actual draw; sure there are orcs and goblins and magic, so they have a critical change from our world, but they aren't that much different then worlds that have been created long before they were. What sets them apart? Sometimes (often) it is actually nothing, or small changes that are more subtle to the end-user than the creator intended them to be.
Without a critical change from our world, a created world tends to lose a lot of meaning and acts solely as a stage for the story to play out on. And, although people sometimes comment about how nice the set design is, worthwhile stories always outlast their theatres.
The world isn't just terrain, of course. The people and living cities that crop up on the surface or underground (or even in the air!) are just as important as the rocks and trees. Nobody remembers FF6's intro because there was a cave and then you fought some Leafers once you got to the world map (OK, some people do), people remember it because of Tritoch, who presented the player with an immediately critical change from its predecessors. Espers? Magical beings that have an incredible indirect effect (and, as the game progresses, a direct one) on everything in the world? Sounds like a good change (and a damn good hook for the story) to me.
Series' tend to be set on the same (or very similar) worlds, and then it is up to the events that unfold to refine the world they take place on. The Mana games are a good example of this; they all have the Mana Tree and most have Mana Sprites, but how/who/why they/can use them changes. But in one-off games, the critical change offers an immediate hook into the world. In novels, this isn't as important, because they have their stories to do the legwork for them (and to rope readers in). But in video games (especially RPGs), the story is sometimes very slow to start (as the creator attempts to keep the greater plot a secret) and so this immediately immersion into the world (rather than the plot) is sometimes crucial for people to be interested in getting to the bit in your story they actually care about.
I have my critical change plotted out; it all has to do with one of the moons of my world and how it effects every element of the planet below (including the story)! What do you guys use? If it's a secret (or something), feel free to try to brainstorm a new one. I'd like to see what everyone is planning to "rope" the player in with. And, if you don't have one yet, maybe you can use this as a good opportunity to bounce idea around and come up with one! I prefer to play in a world that offers me something past "it's like our world, but with magic!", so if you have any good ideas you're dying to share, now'd be a good time.
Location, Location, Location 4/23
A lot of people seem to add locations to their world maps willy-nilly as they progress through their storylines. While this can be alright for extremely linear games with little user-determined exploration, it tends to end up being a major hindrance as the game world develops. While it can be extremely convenient to have the starting town next to a forest which is next to a mountain which is next to an ancient temple which is next to a quaint town (and so on, you get the picture), if there is no real reason other than the storyline's need, that location tends to fall by the wayside later one.
Planning the placement of cities and geographical locations beforehand can really increase their potency. I don't mean you should plan their locations based on socio-economical factors extrapolated from fictional census data or anything, I just mean you shouldn't always have cities separated by precisely two wilderness locations. Placing cities you know you'll use (or need) later is a good way to get your brain working at create problems for the player (or the player character) to solve. Detours are usually fun, if handled right, and offer a great time for insight into the story. I always use FF6 for examples, so here is another one: Look at the phantom forest section. It was entirely superfluous to the main story, and yet it was forced upon the player. It did, however, provide a sincere break from the usual gameplay and some really incredible locales; who doesn't remember exactly what the train looks like? It also added a significant chunk of character development for Cyan and Shadow (if you still had him).
The entire post-Ultros section was, in essence, one big detour. In an effort to get a few miles downstream the party ended up scattered across the world, and they ended up getting a large number of extra characters to join them and tonnes of backstory was filled. I'm sort of getting off topic here, so let me clarify why I brought this up in the first place: The common scheme of city-forest-city-forest-city-forest is a weak one, and you have to put though into adding each and every area. How many times did you visit that dinky little cave between Figaro and South Figaro? It was only a couple maps long, yet it played a pivotal part in the story.
If you place destinations in inconvenient places, you force yourself to come up with interesting solutions. Players appreciate this. I don't like walking through a simple forest and having something happen that forces me to go on some ridiculously circuitous route, but if the destination is far away then I expect an adventure along the way. Like, say, a haunted pirate ship or a frigging castle that sinks into the sand.
The more thought you put into the placement of your locations, the more easily you can later add unplanned side-dungeons and interesting tie-ins to your game's world. Every location should be able to play against it's neighbours. Secret tunnels and clever doubling back can make old locations fun again. If there is one thing I hate in RPGs, it is when a city is completely cut off from the world in terms of gameplay; you set out on a journey from your village and literally never need to return.
I'm sort of rambling now. I am brain tired! To reiterate what I said: Always put thought into you locations, paying special notice to how they interact with their neighbours and how they can be used to make the whole world feel like a cohesive entity instead of a straight line of barely related places.
One trick I use is to incorporate political posturing into the process for each location's placement, because if one nation is at war with another the possibilities for conflict (and therefore resolution, which is the point of any game) increase immensely. Do you guys have any tricks to make your game's locations feel like they are tied together, or are you alright just laying them out in a line and hope the player never reminisces about that port town you blew through an hour ago without so much as seeing a boat?
