Dungeons! Any RPG would be incomplete without them. The dungeons in your game are where the majority of the gameplay will take place—your dungeons are the meat of your game. You can expect your players to spend a lot of time—and a lot of thought—in your dungeons, so it’s important to make them stand out.

What is a dungeon? A dungeon is an area of the game that provides danger and challenge for the player. Typically, RPGs are split up into two types of areas: towns and dungeons. Towns are places where the player can relax and heal; where he can comfortably explore and upgrade his characters: towns are typically the resting places between dungeons. But just like town areas don’t need to be towns—a dungeon doesn’t have to be a temple or a cave—any setting you can imagine can be a dungeon area—as long as it provides the potential for danger. These area definitions are based on gameplay function.

So let’s get creative with our dungeons. Continue reading

Pretty much every RPG makes use of battle encounters as its primary gameplay mechanic. In some RPGs, battles are the only real gameplay in the whole game—I’ve seen lots of games where the whole purpose of walking around on some maps is to just go from one battle to another. Most of the time, your characters’ skills, stats, items, etc are all based around their uses in battle. The battle system is the core of nearly every RPG, but it seems like lots of RPG designers put relatively little thought into the battles themselves.

There are lots of ways to handle RPG battles; not just the battle system itself, but even elements of the game that surround and connect to them. This article is going to cover some aspects of battle systems that deserve more thought than RPG designers may realize. Continue reading

Most RPG Maker games take place within a fantasy world. Building these fantasy worlds can be one of the most fun and engaging parts of the RPG creation process! Drawing maps, creating cities, empires, and even unique races of people; developing your own fantasy setting is an integral part of creating your RPG. But if you want your setting to be believable, there needs to be a lot more going on underneath the fun stuff.

I want to look at some aspects of fantasy worldbuilding that are easy to overlook. In order to draw your player into your world, the world needs to be able to function in a realistic way. I’m not talking about geography or magic, but the culture of the inhabitants of your world. The economy of your world might not play a role in your story, but trade and commerce make up the glue that holds the world together—and it affects every aspect of culture in ways that you might not immediately realize. Continue reading

It’s been a while since I’ve written a straightforward article about RPG Design; today I want to talk about something that is crucial in most RPGs. When done right, skills can be a lot of fun (for the player and the developer!), but when done wrong they can make an otherwise-good battle system become boring fast. Continue reading