Roguelike Games

Some RPGs, such as the open-source NetHack and Blizzard’s original Diablo, feature a game world that is constantly changing, so that no matter how many times it is played, the dungeons are never the same. These games are called roguelike, because they borrow from the mechanics of the 1980 computer game Rogue. NetHack is a very small game, in fact, so it contains almost no story. But the character upgrades, quests, combat tactics, and mazelike exploration elements of the game are remarkable for its size and keep gamers amused. When Diablo’s creators decided to have their dungeon maps randomly generate each time the player enters them, the game’s entertainment value and overall achievement owed a lot to that choice.

A Non-Linear Game World

RPG worlds are rarely linear, as opposed to the typical linear game worlds of first-person shooters and side-scrolling platform games. A linear game world is one where the player starts at point A and struggles to get to point B, where a new area is opened up and the player must now attempt to get from point B to point C, and so on. In a non-linear game world, such as RPGs boast, the player can and often will return to previously explored areas multiple times, discovering something new each time. In the game Planescape: Torment, from the now-defunct company Black Isle Studios, the town of Curst is destroyed while the player is away.

Designing a Fun Game Setting

What kind of world the player characters explore depends on the nature of the game. Most fantasy RPGs are quasi-medieval, meaning that they use the more interesting bits and pieces from Europe’s Middle Ages, Baroque, and Renaissance ages for reference but are not entirely accurate depictions of Earth’s past. These games are resplendent with castles, princesses, and soldiers. Some RPGs are steampunk in nature, meaning that—although the game appears faintly historic, it contains fancy technology that is purely imaginary; think of the biomechanical spider tank seen in the movie Wild Wild West, starring Will Smith. Technology in a steampunk universe does not have to have any real scientific basis and can even be said to be powered by magic crystal energy. A few RPGs are modern but steeped in fantasy, like the urban zombie panic games that have become popular recently. And still others take place in a galaxy far, far away, which is almost as fantastic as the medieval ones, except the elves are replaced with aliens, and the steampunk technology is replaced with futuristic technology, like spaceships and laser swords. Regardless of what time period or place RPGs occur in, the writers and artists almost always take artistic license with them, making the locales appear more bizarre or alien than the humdrum Earth we occupy. One reason they do this is for entertainment value. People like to be swept away. Role-playing games, after all, are a form of escape. And what better way to escape than to escape the ordinary world we all live in? In this fashion, games are comparable to theme park rides or exotic tourist destinations—and game designers are closely akin to tour guides.

Game World: A Trip to Never-land

Exploring the game world is an important aspect of an RPG. Players will travel quite extensively throughout the game world, finding objects they need, talking to non-player characters (NPCs), facing terrifying monsters, and avoiding traps. This world, therefore, has to be interesting, complex, and multifaceted. It also must be big enough to encourage exploration but small enough so the player doesn’t get lost in it.

Talk and Trade with Other Characters

Other characters managed by the computer and not the player are called nonplayer characters, or NPCs. This includes enemies and monsters the hero must vanquish, but it can also include characters that make up part of the backdrop and contribute to the player’s journey in small though significant ways. Speak To Me Most RPGs handle conversations between the player and these characters via a dialog tree mechanism. The player selects an NPC in the game world to speak to. A window opens, presenting a list of possible things the avatar can say to the NPC. Most of the time, the options are limited to three or four choices, to keep it simple. The player chooses one, and depending on what option she picked, the NPC replies. Usually all of this conversation is done in text, although many newer RPGs feature audio recordings, too. Asking the right questions or saying the right things elicits useful information from the NPC and sometimes gains experience points for the player. Conversation can further the game story, open up new quests, or lead to other discoveries. Of course, not every NPC wants to stick around and chat. Some of them are little better than window-dressing, helping make the game world look more populated, and their conversations are slim to non-existent. Others don’t want to talk; they want to sell you something! Show Me Your Wares Most RPGs allow players to buy and sell goods with friendly merchant NPCs. The game world often has blacksmiths, apothecaries, farmers, and so on, who run businesses that offer to buy or sell goods and services. The shop interface is similar to the conversation interface mentioned above, with a list or set of images of all the available items on sale. The player can choose to purchase new items or sell an item he already owns to get more money. Items purchased go directly into the hero’s inventory.

Gaining Experience

Although characterization is developed and grows through storytelling, RPGs demonstrate personal growth through the acquisition of experience. Almost every RPG has some version of experience point allocation. The player gains experience for beating challenges and whacking enemies in the game, and she can then spend the experience to increase her character’s attributes or to purchase new abilities. This reward boosts the character’s usefulness in upcoming challenges the player might face. Let’s say Gina’s character Grog the Barbarian just decimated a crew of ten vile goblins. Grog receives 18 experience points for his reward. Gina can either use part of those experience points to raise Grog’s strength attribute to 14, or she can purchase a marksman skill, which will allow Grog to shoot bows and arrows. She decides she’d like Grog to have a ranged attack, so she buys the marksman skill. This decision has immediate ramifications in the way Gina will play through future combat situations. Experience becomes a form of scorekeeping in RPGs, therefore, and amassing a certain sum of experience will cause the character’s level to go up, an act called “leveling up.” RPGs that feature character levels will start the player’s character at level one and go up based on how well the player plays the game and gets involved in the storyline. Some of the finer RPGs today use a training system for experience, such as the system developed for Lionhead Studio’s Fable series. In a training system, the game’s internal programming reacts to the actions players select most frequently and increases the player character’s attributes accordingly. This means that if a player character uses a sword for a long while, the character will automatically become more proficient with the sword. If the player, instead, decides to cast a lot of magic spells, she’ll become better at spell-casting.

The Importance of Avatars

Creator of the romance game Dinner Date, Jeroen D. Stout, released a paper detailing what he sees as a symbiosis between gamer and player avatar. Symbiosis is a concept where two or more entities form a habitual relationship where they each gain something from each other. Sharks are often followed around by tiny fish called remora, which eat the sharks’ leftovers. This is one instance of symbiosis.


In Stout’s paper, he states that human consciousness is not a single organism but something brought about by the collection of related thought patterns working together. And when a person uses a tool, such as a hammer, that tool becomes an extension of the person’s self. A builder swinging his hammer is one identity; a builder who puts his hammer down and decides to sit down to watch a show on the television at home is another person. The hammer forms a symbiosis with the builder when the builder is using it, in other words.


This extension of self is played out every day in the clothes we choose to wear and the belongings we carry around with us. When a person sits down to play a video game, especially an RPG, the player character becomes an extension of that person. When the player pushes a button or mashes a key, and the avatar jumps on the screen, the player doesn’t say, “My character jumped,” they say “I jumped.”


This sense of immersion in a video game through the use of a central figure, the player avatar, is as important to the game’s creator as it is to the player, because the creator can then motivate the player by threatening the avatar. Call it emotional extortion if you will, but the core conflict behind most games depends on it.


One interesting aspect in RPGs about this “extension of self” is that the player avatar doesn’t even have to be human. Lots of gamers prefer playing characters of their own specie, but the majority couldn’t care less. It’s the same mental reasoning we have for why kids love Disney shows and cry when the characters in those shows get hurt, even when those characters are animals. In fact, several RPGs offer gamers the choice of being human-animal hybrids, because many of their gamers are fond of that option.

Character Class and Attributes

Besides movement controls, most of the player actions in an RPG are performed indirectly by the player characters. This means that the player selects an action to undertake and the character performs it accordingly. The success or failure of the action is determined by the character’s numeric attributes. Video games have internal programming that simulates the die-rolling that generates random results in tabletop RPGs. Some attributes in character creation are purely cosmetic, while others give the player benefits to certain actions. Attributes can also depend on a character’s class. Class is similar to a character’s occupation, and different classes have opposing strengths and weaknesses. The most common classes in fantasy RPGs include fighters, rogues, magic-users, and clerics, with sideline classes including rangers, monks, druids, and dual-classed characters, such as fighters who also cast spells. Fighters generally underline combat-ready attributes, such as strength and dexterity, because they need to be tough and show prowess in a fight. Magic-users have to be smart, because they read spell books and comprehend complex magical algorithms, so they stress more powerful intelligence and wisdom. Rogues capitalize on quickness, stealth, and subterfuge, often in the form of attributes such as dexterity and charisma, because they have to be good at getting into places where they’re not supposed to be and equally good at getting out again. And so on. Making a great fantasy RPG character is a bit like baking a cake. Each one will be different, because each contains a different mixture of ingredients.

Characters: So-And-So Has Joined Your Party!

Usually, in a fantasy RPG, players control one or a small number of characters. These characters are often referred to as a party, not because they like to enjoy themselves but because they work together to affect a general end.


The player’s party explores the game world, solves puzzles, gets involved in tactical combat, and generally achieves victory by accomplishing quests. The characters are often designed or customized by the player, making them unique to the player, and grow in power and ability over time spent in the game.


If winning the game is contingent on the survival of a single character, that character effectively becomes the player’s avatar, or in-game representative. Even RPGs that have a party of characters will usually begin with a single character, the player’s avatar, and new characters will join the party as the narrative unfurls.

Elements of Fantasy RPGs

You could say that almost every game has an element of role-play to it, because you are either being someone you’re not or doing something you don’t ordinarily do.


For example, in the board game Monopoly, players are big-spending millionaires trying to buy up property in order to own a monopoly on the town. And just about every video game that is a third-person shooter or platform game possesses a tiny onscreen avatar the player can control, making the player character a virtual extension of the player.

But a true fantasy RPG has much more to it than this. A true fantasy RPG must:


1. Give the player a persona, or player avatar, to control. This character can often be customized and grows over the course of the game.

2. Have a large fantastic game world for the player to explore, fight monsters, and scavenge for goodies in.

3. Have a long, winding, and branching storyline that entertains as well as serves the purpose of the game play. This storyline is told through little nuggets and quests the player undertakes.

4. Give the player items and an inventory to manage and the ability to perfect strategy in simulated combat situations. Combat can be action-oriented or turn-based.

The following are ways RPGs stand out from every other video game.

Why RPGs?

Now that you understand how an RPG is defined, you might be wondering, why only look at making RPGs?


Admittedly, you can’t design a game that will delight everybody, because not everybody likes the same things. Some gamers only want to play sports games. Some only like first-person shooters, preferably military combat simulations. Others like RPGs. Since there are a great majority of gamers who like RPGs, it seems like a safe bet to make games for that audience.


RPGs are excellent games to construct for your first time, too, especially if you are new to game design and just want to get your feet wet. For a truly cross-disciplinary genre, you can look no further than an RPG. Whether you want to write game stories, make game artwork, program intricate game mechanics, or just play around with game craft, the RPG is the one genre that requires equal amounts of everything.


In RPG Maker for Teens, you will learn about making up stories and writing both quests and NPC dialogues. You will learn how to draw faces, maps, and backgrounds. You will learn how to code tricky game controls. And you will make a fun little game you can play through and share with your friends. With the information you learn, you can make loads of other RPGs, each time refining the rules and changing the scope of your game experience. RPGs are a great start for any wannabe game designer to cut his teeth on.


You can’t know what an RPG entails without experiencing it firsthand for yourself. There’s just something about going on a dungeon crawl or dashing along on a fetch quest for villagers. You’d never know the real sensation if you hadn’t played an RPG before yourself. So if you haven’t, you might undertake this mission: Find a fantasy RPG somewhere on the retail market and play it.


Since you’re reading this book, you have shown a curiosity about RPGs, and there’s a pretty big likelihood you’ve played them before and found them to your taste. You might even think RPGs are the coolest game genre, and I’m preaching to the choir.

Even so, let’s see what separates RPGs from other video games.

Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs

MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) became the first online multiplayer RPG in 1980. MUD was originally designed by Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle in homage to the Dungeon game, a variant of the text-adventure Zork. Later, similar online fantasy games were called MUDs, named after the original game. MUDs feature a mostly text-based interface, similar to an online chat group, but with moderators who act like Dungeon Masters.


Many of today’s massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), including World of Warcraft  and Second Life, trace their lineage back to MUDs.


The vast majority of MMORPGs are based on traditional fantasy themes, often occurring in a game universe comparable to that of Dungeons & Dragons. They also have some degree of tools built around players communicating with and working together with other players, including teamwork (going on dungeon raids together) and trading (sharing resources with one another).


The standards for MMORPGs today consist of a persistent fantasy world maintained by the game’s publisher. This persistent world continues to grow and evolve even when players are not plugged in (called being “offline”). Players subscribe so they can play in this persistent world.


In 2008, Western consumers spent $1.6 billion on MMORPGs subscriptions. To keep players plugged in and paying to play, MMORPG developers and publishers have to come up with new and unique tricks to hook their audience, including innovative and rare downloadable content and expansion packs. Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft (WOW) holds over 62% of all MMORPG subscribers to date and even made the Guinness World Record for the most popular MMORPG by subscribers. WOW exemplifies the best in MMORPGs.


Because of the amount of revenue capable in MMORPG subscriptions, video games that should not be or have never been multiplayer or online are quickly becoming so, leading to a whole new trend in game developing.

Computer RPGs

The electronic medium in computer RPGs removes the necessity of having a Dungeon Master. Instead of one player having to “take charge” of managing the game world and all that’s in it, the computer programming does the job for you. The computer also manages the rules and randomization. Though they are still there, these game tools are nearly intangible in a computer RPG, yet many of the thematic RPG elements of tabletop RPGs are visibly prevalent in computer RPGs.


In a computer RPG, a player controls one or several adventuring party members fulfilling one or many quests. The electronic medium has progressed from simple text-based adventures, where all the story and player decisions had to be made in the form of text (such as instructions given like “Use KEY on DOOR”), like in the historically acclaimed game Zork, to rich immersive 3D graphics you see today.


Computer RPGs can be as simple and straightforward as pick-your-path game books, with a branching storyline and obvious decisions the player must make, or more open-ended and complex, with a huge fantasy world ripe for exploration and multiple side-quests the player can undertake any time she wants to.


Even though I refer to them as computer RPGs, contemporary electronic RPGs are found in many video game media, including consoles, handhelds, and mobile phones. They are programmed on a computer first and then ported to the appropriate output platform.

Pick-Your-Path Game Books

Another variation of RPG, one that developed shortly after tabletop RPGs became more mainstream, is the pick-your-path game book.


These game books, such as the Choose Your Own Adventure and Fighting Fantasy books, are targeted toward a single player: the book’s reader. Many of the books even include a character sheet the player must use to keep up with the character she pretends to be while reading the book. As the player reads the book, the pages are not read in sequential order but in branching paths, meaning that as the player nears the end of each section, she is given a choice to make, and that choice can determine the progress of the story.


One of my favorite game book series was Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf, the first eight books of which were originally illustrated by Gary Chalk. In the Lone Wolf series, the story centers on the fantasy world Magnamund, where forces of good and evil war for control of the planet. The player takes on the role of the protagonist, Lone Wolf, who is the last living member of a caste of warrior monks known as the Kai Lords. As Lone Wolf, the reader makes choices at regular intervals that decide the course, and eventually the outcome, of the story. If the player makes the wrong choices, Lone Wolf can die. It is therefore up to the reader to keep Lone Wolf alive and victorious in his questing.


Although out-of-print today, the Lone Wolf series has been distributed online through permission given by Joe Dever by a fan-based organization called Project Aon. If you would like to take a peek at the Lone Wolf series, just to find out more about game books, then you can do so online at www.ProjectAon.org.

A typical excerpt from a pick-your-path game book is as follows.


You dive under the fallen log just in time, as with a hue and cry you hear the goblins bound from the jungle forest to your left. You attempt to wedge yourself in tighter under the log, as goblins riding on warthogs leap the fallen log and jog further down the forested path back the way you came.


After the last warthog-riding goblin trundles off into the distance, the dust cloud from the cloven hooves fading behind them, you pull yourself out from under the fallen log, bits of spongy bark clinging to your sweaty skin. You shake off the dirt and debris and then peer back down the path, wondering to yourself where the goblins were coming from. Could they have come from that smudge-dark tower you glimpsed over the forest canopy hours ago? Or do they have a cave they normally
reside in just ahead?


However, you also wonder where the goblins are heading in such a hurry. You passed a small farm not too far back, where you saw chimney smoke climbing over the canopy. Could the farmer and his family be in trouble? Is the farm the goblins’ target for disaster? Or is there more afoot here?


Do you want to run back toward the farm, after the goblins, to see what is going on there? If so, turn to page 183.


Do you want to strike off through the woods in search of the dark tower you saw earlier? If so, turn to the next page.


Or would you rather follow the path and wait and see if you come across the goblin’s home? If so, turn to page 212.

Tabletop RPGs

RPGs can be played with sheer imagination. Or the players can use rulebooks, dice, and character sheets. Games using such paraphernalia are called tabletop RPGs.


A war-gamer named Gary Gygax invented tabletop RPGs in the 1970s. The earliest tabletop RPG was called Dungeons & Dragons, and it featured fantasy lands and playable characters like magic-users, warriors, and thieves. Dungeons & Dragons appeared briefly in the 1982 Steven Spielberg film E.T. the Extraterrestrial and paved the path for further tabletop RPGs that came after. So, even though there are lots of other popular tabletop RPGs available, when we examine tabletop RPGs, we’ll reference the way Dungeons & Dragons operates.


In tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, one player, titled the Dungeon Master, creates the fictional world by drawing maps on paper and placing landmarks and objects on those maps. The Dungeon Master conveys the fictional world to the other players by describing it as vividly as he can. He also controls any character not controlled by the players, including the monsters they must eliminate and the townsfolk they might ask for clues or help. The Dungeon Master makes up the challenges and obstacles the players must overcome. The players overcome them through creative cooperation and fully utilizing their imaginary characters’ skills.


Besides the Dungeon Master, each of the other players creates a character to play or picks a ready-to-play character. Like the protagonists of a novel or the heroes in a movie, these player characters are central to the story the Dungeon Master evokes. The Dungeon Master’s story is an adventure story and can be as simple as a dungeon crawl, rooting through catacombs looking for treasure while hacking up monsters, or as complex as a murder mystery. These adventures stage the proving ground for the heroes to perform their valiant or wicked deeds.


There’s an element of rule and randomization that the rulebooks and dice serve in Dungeons & Dragons (Figure 1.4). For instance, if a monster is going to attack the player character, the rules say that the monster must roll one 20-sided die (1d20) versus the player character’s Armor Class (AC). The die roll provides a random element, just like in gambling, so that no two moves are ever quite the same. The rule provides the framework for the action, so that the Dungeon Master can resolve the make-believe with mathematics.


A tabletop RPG would be nearly identical to a fast interpretative stage play if it weren’t for the rulebooks and dice. In fact, people who play tabletop RPGs can often get “into the role” just as much as a drama student in a Shakespeare play. But most tabletop RPGs do not involve stunts or moving about. Instead, players sit comfortably and say out loud what their characters are doing. They let the rules and dice interpret the actions for them.


If you think that tabletop RPGs are too old-school or nerdy, you should do a YouTube search for “Vin Diesel on Dungeons & Dragons,” as there are several video interviews with action star Vin Diesel about playing one of his favorite games growing up. Diesel sees tabletop RPGs as a “training ground for our imagination and an opportunity to explore our own identities.”


What follows is a typical script excerpt taken from a night playing Dungeons & Dragons.


Dungeon Master (DM): You enter the dark and foreboding crypt of Nurall. The sounds of skittering rats and dripping slime echo back at you from the pale granite walls. The space is roughly thirty feet by thirty feet, with a single torch lighting the space from a stone column rising up in the center of the crypt. Along the walls you see carved niches that appear to be filled with rotten coffins and moldering bones. There are roughly eight of these niches, four to both sides, and an iron-bound oak door set in the wall at the other end of the crypt. A circular iron grate hole rests in the lowest part of the paved floor. What do you do?


Thief: I immediately go to the right-side wall and search the niches to see if I can find any treasure in amongst the rags of the dead. Do I find any?


DM (after a quick die roll): You find ancient pocket lint and three shiny gold coins. That’s it.


Warrior: Do I still have my torch? I thought I dropped it in our exit from the stairwell earlier.


DM: Your torch is lying guttering at the darkest recesses of the stairwell, where you dropped it.


Warrior: Is the torch in this room secured to the column, or can I pry it up and take it with me?

DM: You could attempt to pry it out of the sconce.

Warrior: Good, that’s what I’ll do.


DM: Just as you start prying it up, you hear a click noise coming behind the stones that make up the column. There’s a gurgle and screech under your feet, and suddenly you see something shiny and black start to ooze out of the floor grate.

Warrior: That’s not good!


Sorceress: I attempt to use Discern Intent on the ooze. Is it malign or evil in any way?

DM: Yes, it’s definitely malignant.

Thief: Let’s get out of here! I run to the door and check it for traps.


DM: That will take you until next turn. Meanwhile, the ooze is filling the room. It hasn’t reached you, yet, but it soon will.


Warrior (to the Sorceress): Don’t you have a spell or something that could plug up the grate? He said it was a circular grate hole. It can’t be very big. Is it?

DM: The grate is approximately a foot in diameter.


Sorceress: Would casting Web on it do anything? The Web spell’s good and sticky. Would it slow it down, at least until Thief there gets the door open?

DM: You can try.

Sorceress: Okay. I cast Web on the grate hole, then. What happens?

The Role-Playing Game (RPG)

A role-playing game (hereby referred to as RPG), by broad definition, is any pretend game where the players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. So if you’ve ever played Cops & Robbers or any other make-believe game with some of your friends, then you’ve played an RPG before.

RPGs evolved from early psychotherapy exercises. It is clinically thought to be psychologically beneficial to people to pretend they are someone else, to see things from a different perspective from time to time.

An RPG involves the participant’s willingness to imagine. Visualize a therapist telling you, “Close your eyes and imagine that you are lying on your back in the middle of a summer meadow. You can hear song birds chirping in the tree boughs above your head and water trickling in a nearby creek. Clumps of clouds scuttle across the crystalline blue sky.” If you can picture all that, then you are participating in an RPG. You’ve placed yourself in an imaginary world simply by means of your mind’s inner theater.