FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION

Progression

RPGs almost always tell a story, characterized as a long quest in pursuit of some important goal. The quest is broken down into a number of episodes that progress in a linear sequence, each with its own subquest and major challenge at the end. These end-of-episode challenges (almost always combat with a powerful enemy) are analogous to the boss characters at the ends of levels in action games. The story maps onto exploration—a journey, in other words—and each episode takes the player to a new location. Unlike in linear games such as rail-shooters or side - scrollers, it's often possible to go back to a previously visited location, though there may no longer be anything worthwhile to do there. A few games take the party back to a previously visited location for a new episode; when they do this, it's often markedly different in order to give the player new things to do. In Planescape: Torment, the town of Curst is destroyed while the party is away.

In order to progress from one episode to the next, the player's party has to have enough strength to overcome whatever major challenge lies at the end of the cur­rent episode. This won't be possible right away (even if the player knows where the challenge is), so the activities during the chapter help the characters to grow strong enough.

Because the story of the game is intimately bound up with the game world itself, the section "The Game World and Story" later in this chapter addresses storytelling in CRPGs.

In addition to the quests that lie along the main storyline, there are also optional side quests that are unrelated to the main ones. These are not thrust upon the player but must be sought out. Visible or audible cues inform the player that one of the NPCs in the game has a problem that the party can help solve; if the party goes up and talks to her, the player learns of the side quest and can choose to accept or reject it. Normally there's no penalty for refusing one apart from the missed oppor­tunity to have another adventure and earn some more experience. Players can usually abandon a side quest without penalty as well.

Side quests seldom carry over from episode to episode. (If a quest does so, it's usu­ally related to the main story rather than being a side quest.) Figure 15.2 illustrates the general progression of a CRPG.