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.