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

Yo. Today I feel like talking about NPCs.

I’ve played a lot of amateur RPGs and nearly all of them feature the same copy-paste “welcome to this town” NPCs. Lazy game developers will treat NPCs like scenery—like they’re just a part of the map and not living characters. The strange part is that people know that these kind of NPCs are boring and lame, but they rarely take the time to flesh them out. Hopefully this article can help you come up with some great NPC ideas. Continue reading

What is the most important part of a story? If you said “the characters” then congratulations—you’re right!

At the heart of every story, in every medium (a book, movie, tv series, a game, or anything else with a story), are the characters. The characters are how we identify the story, how we interact with it, and most importantly the characters DRIVE the story. In fact, I am of the school of thought that the CHARACTERS ARE THE STORY. Continue reading

It’s time for me to talk about one of my favorite things: story structure! And i’m not being sarcastic, either—I was all about creative writing in college and I always got a huge hardon for story structure. the cool thing about it is that it’s everywhere! Every book you read, every movie you watch, every play you see on the stage—no matter how different these stories are, they all have one thing that HOLDS IT TOGETHER, and that’s a solid structure. Continue reading