http://web.archive.org/web/20060615225843/gamingw.net/articles/666

o snap an admin has been bested by a normal member somebody should get demoted and promoted lol

Btw it is a nice article but i think the best was Atari's RPG Maker tutorial.

o snap an admin has been bested by a normal member somebody should get demoted and promoted lol

Btw it is a nice article but i think the best was Atari's RPG Maker tutorial.

get it now

feels good to view that ancient page

feels good to view that ancient page

I shed a single tear. Feels good to look at the days we were naive and still loved freaking RM2K.

Here's the full version of the article with pictures (because the link Alec posted doesn't have them).

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This article pertains mainly to the RPG setting, but it can be applied to the development of other game genres.

Villains and monsters roam the RPG world, and are usually at the centre of the game’s conflict. They are an integral part of the story, and many are often remembered by the player long after the game is finished. Thus, their creation and development in a design aspect is highly crucial to the overall success of the game.

In this article, we’ll discuss the function that evil plays in design - in both villains and monsters. The villain will be discussed both physically and more importantly, psychologically, as will the monsters. Motivation will be emphasized along with character action. Finally, the outcome or result of a villains exploits will be considered.

Let’s get to it.

The Purpose of Evil:
A happy, joyful, conflict-less world is a generally boring one. Without any conflict, your heroes would typically be drab and oh so dull. Conflict provides excitement, spontaneity, and is used as a plot device – something that villains provide in good measure.

The heroes, or protagonists, are the stars of the game. However, villains, or antagonists, who are opponents to the protagonists, should be sharing the spotlight. Antagonists and protagonists are basically the same, except that they are inverses of each other in many aspects. There is a tendency in the amateur game making community to neglect the villains, or to view them as lesser, secondary characters. Once you’ve adopted this viewpoint the effectiveness and purpose of your villain(s) is diminished. They are extremely important, and should be treated in the same fashion as your main character throughout the design process.

Defining Terms:
Before I continue with this article, let me clarify what I mean when I refer to villains and monsters.

Villain: A character in direct opposition with the protagonist(s). Comes in many degrees of villainy. I classify villains in three main degrees. I will use both a ficticious and a commercial game example (Final Fantasy IX) of showing you the three archetypes.

*NOTE: ‘Monsters’ can also be villains, such as a goblin that is in direct opposition to the protagonist, and humans can also act as monsters. Villains don’t always refer to humanoids; I just want to make that clear. Also, my descriptions for villains are not all inclusive. There are many unique villains that don’t fit into my classifications. The table is just supposed to be a starting point for you to get ideas from.

Since villains are dynamic characters, they can change from being a major villain to a minor one, and vice versa. This potential can lead to unexpected plot twists, and is a good means of character (or rather, villain) development.

Physical Attributes:Appearance is important because it determines the player’s and heroes’ first impression of a villain or monster.

Monster Appearance:
Since monsters are not very important to the story, most often the only thing that will stand out among each of them is their individual appearance. This appearance is directly related to the monster’s environment and abilities.

Monsters live in environments that are suited for them. You should only encounter aquatic-based monsters in water environments, not someplace like a desert. This is obviously common sense, but occasionally you come across games that neglect this, and as a result you get some bizarre encounters that make no sense logically.

Abilities and techniques also factor into appearance. If a monster has an attack that shoots needles for example, then something on his body needs to reflect this fact. He either needs a tail, arm, or some other appendage that is spiked, or something else that shows that he uses spikes. Most monster abilities should not come as a complete surprise to the player. The player should not question the monster’s abilities, calling them unrealistic, illogical or invalid. For example, a tree monster should not be able to use a fire breath attack.

Villain Appearance:


From observation, I’ve noticed that most villains wear black nowadays. This is fine, but we’ve all seen it a countless number of times. Why not try some warmer colours? They would contrast greatly with the darkened personality of the villain and create a sense of irony. Sephiroth (Final Fantasy VII) is an example of this, although in this instance I'm not talking about his clothes but rather his white hair. White evokes purity and peace, something that he perceives himself to be in abundance of at points in the game, but in reality his actions reinforce the complete opposite.

Psychological Attributes:
We’ll now tackle the immense task of explaining the behaviour of both monsters and villains.

Monster Behaviour:
Monster behaviour is rather simple in an RPG sense, since they are perceived as mostly behaving on instinct. They don’t need a detailed explanation on why they are attacking the protagonist(s).

Generally, the reason why a monster attacks is:

• The protagonist has invaded the territory of the monster, and the monster, being threatened by this, lunges himself at the hero(es). (Threat factor)
  
• The monster is protecting something, such as his/her children. (Protection factor)
  
• The monster is hungry and sees the protagonist as his next meal. (Self-gain factor)
  

Usually, it’s one of those three reasons. Now, most RPGs don’t exactly go out of their way to tell you why the monsters are where they are, and why they are attacking. That’s neglectful. Monsters shouldn’t be 2-dimensional obstacles that require the player to hit the space bar for a few seconds to defeat and then continue on with the story.

I guess as RPG players, we have gotten used to monsters being flat obstacles, but that shouldn’t stop you, as a designer, from improving upon this. Here’s an idea: give every monster in your game a background, or reason as to why they are where they are, and what they are doing. If you find that this is an impossible task, that you likely are using too many monsters, all for the purpose of lengthening your game. (A cheap tactic that is often found in many professional games unfortunately).

Some ideas on explaining monster behaviour:

• Have non-playable characters (NPCs) talk about monsters and their experiences with them. This serves two purposes: It makes your generally lifeless NPCs appear more lifelike, and gives the monsters a reason for existing or doing whatever they do.
• Have certain monsters make noises, growl, or even speak during battle - anything that gives the player an indication of what the monster is feeling or doing. For example, have a monster group of two chicks and their mother, and have the mother protect her children. Make her only protect her children, and should any character attack her children, then she will become fierce and more powerful. It’s a simple method, and it really makes battles more dynamic.
• Make monsters not only interact with the party, but with other monsters. For example, an encounter of ants will have the ants working together as a collective to accomplish a common goal – not their own selfish goals. This makes the battles more interesting, and demonstrates the monsters’ behaviours and instincts.

Villain Behaviour:
Behaviour is one of the most important things concerning a villain or any other character for that matter. Behaviour needs to be explained or motivated by some factor. It cannot be spontaneous, unless you have a mentally insane villain (but that can be overdone.)

Let me start off by saying that no villain is 100% evil. Pure evil rarely exists, and pure evil in a character makes them boring. (The same holds true for a protagonist who is purely good.) Every character in your game will be somewhere in-between being pure good and pure evil. Villains are obviously closer to the evil end and protagonists are closer to the good end. However, since characters are dynamic, they should continually fluctuate in this spectrum.

A protagonist should make mistakes, or perform actions that are evil in nature, and so should the antagonist in the opposite manner. The antagonist could perform good deeds, and show glimpses of righteousness. A villain is a human after all, and we too perform tasks that are good and sometimes actions that are bad, because it is in our nature to do so. We each also have our own set of morals and ethics. Antagonists also have ethics, even if they may be skewed. They may exhibit signs of honour, integrity, show ambition, etc.

A villain, like every other character in your game, should have both physical and emotional strengths and weaknesses. No character should be happy all the time, or sad all the time, or angst-filled all the time, unless of course a mental disorder causes this. (Mental disorders can be used to explain anything, but you shouldn't rely on this fact and simply make your villain crazy to simplify your writing of his behaviour. Many players will feel that this is lazy writing on your part since you don't need to consider motivation in justifying a character's actions.)

A villain’s process of thought and behaviour should be directly attributed to the past actions that occurred to them. Two items that factor into behaviour are illustrated in the following image.


Were we born a certain way, or were we taught to act by our parents upbringing of us? While this is a highly debated topic and there is no clear answer (it’s said to be somewhere in between), this is not very important to us in the game development setting. What is important is to acknowledge that both can be used to explain something in the game, with Nature favouring the explanation of monster behaviour, and Nurture favouring the explanation of most humanoid behaviour.

In most cases, the circumstances under which the villain was raised is important to us: what environment they grew up in, what they experienced in childhood, how they were treated by others, etc. (not their genetic information).

A past event that scarred the life of a character can cause him to begin showing signs of a villain. An abusive father, or ridicule from others can change how a character will behave when they grow up. Anything in the past can mould the mind of a character and influence what kind of person they will become.




Villain Actions:
There are many reasons why a villain acts the way they do as we have already discussed. But what are the basic actions that a villain performs because of those motives? I’ll outline a number of rudimentary ideas to get you started thinking about this.

• Revenge: The villain seeks revenge against a certain person, people, religion, organization, etc. (Demonstrates: anger, jealous, envy.)
  
• Racism: The villain has been brought up believing that a certain race of people are inferior, evil, or cause malediction to befall those who do good. Thus, he lashes out at any member of that race and performs acts of violence upon them. (Demonstrates: hate, anger, pride.)
  
• Rivalry: The villain is aware of the protagonist, and is in direct competition with him. He is almost equal to the protagonist, and seeks to be better than him. (Demonstrates: competitive spirit, pride, arrogance.)
  
• Personal Gain: The villain is doing everything for his own personal gain. Whether it is for money, love, or power, his actions are purely selfish. (Demonstrates: selfishness, egoism, insensitivity.)
  
• Perception: The villain's perceptions are skewed in that he believes that he is doing the right thing. Perhaps he believes that he is saving the world by enslaving everyone and “protecting” them from themselves and corruption. (Demonstrates: naïveté, incomprehension, devotion, honor.)
  

There are many more categories that can define a villain and his actions. A villain doesn’t have to be acting based on one category either – he can have multiple motives, and his motives can (and should) change through time.

Outcomes for Evil:
There are basically three outcomes for a villain.

1) He is defeated by being placed in an area of confinement (prison), killed by the protagonist(s), or losses the means to achieve his goal.
2) He succeeds in his goal.
3) He stops being a villain either because he stops believing in his motives, or the protagonist(s) causes a redemption to occur either directly or indirectly.

Most RPGs end in the villain being defeated in death, but some allow the villain to redeem himself. A minor villain is more likely to be redeemed because they may be acting on false information, and once that information is proved false they are likely to become good. A major villain has a low chance of redemption, but if he is acting primarily because of his own perception that his actions will have a positive effect, he has a greater chance of being redeemed.

A small number of games have the villain succeed by vanquishing the protagonist(s). This is usually an end-game plot-twist, and can have either a positive or negative effect on the player. He will be negatively affected if he truly believed that the protagonists had the means to win and deserved to succeed. However, sometimes a player will become more attached to the villain and respect his actions. He may even want the villain to succeed if the designer plays his cards right. The villain succeeding in this case may bring satisfaction to the player, but if it does, then the designer neglected the heroes’ developments as characters. It’s a fine line, and difficult to balance properly.

Conclusion:
Well, I hoped that I have given you something to think about from this article. To summarize, villains are as important as protagonists in their development, motive, and actions. Monsters, while not as significant, still need reasons for being where they are and should show signs of instinct. Clothing and appearance is important, because it is the first impression that the player and protagonists get about the villain/monsters.