Veteran Game Writers' Recipe For a Great RPG

This article is part of a new initiative on IGN where we spend a whole month exploring topics we find interesting in the world of video games. June is Icons Month, where we’re profiling iconic video game industry figures, characters, series, and themes.

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Role-playing games are among the oldest in the gaming hobby as it’s known today,* dating back to the genre’s tabletop origins in the 1970s and its eventual evolution into modern blockbuster series like Mass Effect and The Witcher. And while there are more variations on the role-playing theme than ever, from JRPGs to sprawling third-person adventures and isometric collect-a-thons, so many of these splintered sub-genres all use similar gameplay and storytelling elements. It’s how they use these elements that makes each RPG unique, and how a game adapts and transforms them can make it truly stand out in a crowded space. Recently, we sat down with two veteran game writers – Chris Avellone (Fallout: New Vegas, Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic 2, and Divinity: Original Sin 2 among many others) and Emily Grace Buck (narrative designer on several Telltale adventures), who have now teamed up on The Waylanders (a classically-inspired RPG based on Celtic mythology) – to discuss the evolution of the genre and what, for them, are the magic ingredients that go into creating a great RPG. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/06/08/what-makes-a-great-rpg-from-the-guy-who-wrote-some-of-the-best"]

What’s Most Important?

“I think one of the biggest aspects of an RPG is fun,” says Buck, starting with a laugh at its obviousness. “Which sounds so silly to say, but when you think about some of the RPGs that have captivated people most over the years, their worldbuilding allows not just the kind of grim, dark feeling that we often think of, especially in fantasy RPGs, but moments of light that endear you to the characters, that connect you deeper to the world, that provide silly little Easter eggs that people look forward to finding when they're playing. “And you see that in a lot of video games,” she continues. “But I think RPGs – because they're so deeply personal – those types of small goofy bits really make them shine, especially if they're used fairly sparingly.” Avellone adds that it’s also important players see everything – from combat to character progression – tied into a game’s story and/or world. “I think a lot of video game narratives can suffer tremendously when it's apparent that the systems and the gameplay loop are not connected to the narrative – and vice versa – and that there was no attempt to do so,” he says. “I think that it robs a game’s story of a lot of the potential that it could have, and arguably what a game’s story should have.” [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=%E2%80%9CThat's%20magic%20right%20there%20%E2%80%93%20but%20that's%20really%20hard%20to%20do.%E2%80%9D"] “You can take all the typical RPG pillars,” Avellone says, referring to the classic combination of combat, exploration, and role-playing/decision-making that form the backbone of most RPGs. “But what is that in this world that they've set up? And then that ends up usually giving all those pillars unique flavor ... For example, if you were doing, like, a Tomb Raider RPG, a...world like that that has sort of some unique element. ‘How do I combine the feel and aesthetics of this world?’ And how does that translate in the combat system? How does that translate in the exploration aspect? Because the exploration aspects of a Tomb Raider RPG would be much different than exploration in Divinity. And that's where the interesting points come in, is finding that space where the aesthetics of the world and the lore can make themselves felt through all those pillars.” “You want all of the characters to go through a growth arc,” Buck adds, saying, “And that includes the player character. And if you're really doing it right, hopefully – maybe,” she laughs, “the player themselves is going through a bit of a growth arc from inhabiting the space of this game. And if you can get the combat, or other kinds of challenges, to line up with what you want someone to take away, that's magic right there – but that's really hard to do.” [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-best-modern-rpgs&captions=true"] Avellone says it’s important for designers – whether they be aspiring or seasoned industry professionals – to constantly take stock of a game or a world’s unique elements. To recognize when it’s time to not necessarily “think outside the box,” but rather explore a new box altogether. “I was going through a really difficult time where the box wasn't changing,” he says. “And because the box wasn't changing, the mechanics really weren't altering all that much. And then the settings weren't altering that much. And I could feel myself being in a rut and I'm like, ‘I don't think I'm growing. I don't think I'm developing’ … The box was always in place. If it had moved just a little bit, that would have been nice, but it just didn't.” Eventually, Avellone says, he got to a point where he decided, “‘I'm going to go find more boxes and I'm going to build towers out of these boxes. I want to see what an FPS is like, I want to see what an RTS is like. I want to see what VR is like. And I want to know how all these different genres tell stories, because I'm guessing there's plenty of stuff that these other genres have learned quite well that would apply to making a great RPG.’”

The Flow of Information

Another crucial element that can make (or break) an RPG adventure is how it provides players with the exposition and information they need to understand the story and their role in it.

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“What's painful,” Avellone says, “is when you spend five minutes looking at a character, and you haven't been given any options. They're just talking at you; your choices don't seem to matter. The best thing to do in that situation is have a deep talk with the writer,” he laughs, adding, “The second thing is to hire an editor.”

“The third thing,” he continues, refocusing, “is that you want to take that exposition and go, ‘I need the words to stop.’ Can you turn this into a quest where I'm going to encounter all the signposts of what you're talking about that I get to interact with it? Or, rather than having you give me a book that explains your philosophy, give me a quest that's sparked by this philosophy, or two factions fighting where you're stopping that fight (or helping one or the other) you're gonna get a good sense of what they're fighting about just because you're involved in that conflict… [There] are more interactive and game-ey ways to communicate the horribly long, long exposition.” “The more you can give the player ownership over discovering the backstory and setting of the world, the better,” says Buck. “Because even in RPGs, where you have some players who are going to want to be talked at a lot – that's something a lot of RPG players really like, they seek that out, they will talk to the same character 75 times to see if they have more things to say – but they still don't want to be monologued at that for 15 minutes about things that they don't have any control over.” [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=%E2%80%9CIf%20you%20have%20to%20force%20a%20twist%2C%20just%20don't%20do%20it.%E2%80%9D"]

“There are so many different ways to do that,” she says, “But sometimes it becomes what feels like unavoidable – and when it feels unavoidable, I tend to go back to my story and say, ‘Okay, if I'm having to do this kind of narrative dump for them to understand what's happening here, is this necessary? Does this story need this? Or,” she chuckles, “maybe that was bad narrative design on my part.”

Sometimes, they say, restructuring the flow of information not only solves problems, but helps prevent what Avellone considers a cardinal sin of writing an RPG: the unnecessary twist. “Sometimes I work with people that get obsessed with having a twist,” Avellone says. “They're just like, ‘I gotta have it, where's the twist? Where do we surprise the player?’ I'm sick of twists. If you have to force a twist, just don't do it.” He suggests, however, that there’s a relatively simple workaround for designers who (a) have a long campaign and (b) want a twist but aren’t sure how to implement it. “Rather than trying to add something additional onto your very long story instead why don't you chop it up, remove bits and then change the order of information. And you might actually have some surprising twists in there that you didn't realize because you already know the whole story. But the player doesn't – so think about it from the player's perspective.”

The Friends We Make Along the Way

Another key component to most RPGs is the inclusion of companion characters, members of your party who aren’t just helping hands in combat but also serve as guides to the various cultures of a game’s world and provide more player opportunities for emotional investment.

“I love party-based RPGs so much,” says Buck, “because it's a core group of people that the player gets to care about a lot. It is a character you spend a ton of time with, that maybe you play as. Sometimes it's really easy to reflect both  choices – and the choices they didn't make – back to them with those characters… It allows for a much more textured world without a whole lot of effort, really – especially if you can have characters who come from different races, different classes, different talents, different places. Ones who are recruitable or not, ones who are romances or not, you just learn so much about the world by being with those characters and spending those hundreds of hours with them.” [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=%E2%80%9CYou%20feel%20like%20you%2C%20personally%2C%20had%20responsibility%20in%20how%20they%20changed%20and%20how%20they%20grew.%E2%80%9D"] Of course, most RPG party members also serve a more tactical purpose than just offering new perspectives to the player. “The ‘systems’ aspect of it is equally as important as the narrative aspect,” says Avellone, “because nothing will make a player ditch a companion faster than if they're useless to the gameplay loop. If you're doing a combat game, and the party member – who might be the most interesting companion in the universe – is not a good fighter and keeps getting you killed, you're not going to journey with that person and your party for very long because they're just not helpful.” But that logic can also prove to be a bit of a double-edged sword, he explains. “We had some Fallout 2 companions whose big claim to fame – and this was a mistake – was that they're just big damage sponges, but they don't do anything actively interesting in combat. They're really boring, and they had no room for growth…. The nice thing is when you find that perfect blend where you can make those characters interesting and also include touchstones to the world.” “It's important to have people be useful,” says Buck. “Though a surprising number of players will – if a character is extremely compelling, especially if they're really funny – they will bring them along even if that person sucks in combat. But then, they're missing another part of the game, and they're actually handicapping themselves because they want to spend time with a character.” “And you can get around that by having a lot of time back at your hub with these characters, but if you're going to build out a character with the whole move set, they might as well be really, really useful.” She laughs, noting that Avellone’s point about a character’s growth potential didn’t just apply to stats and tactics, either. “You can have some characters who will grow in parallel with the player… and you feel like you, personally, had responsibility in how they changed and how they grew.” [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-best-video-game-characters-of-2019&captions=true"]

Cause & Effect

That reactivity – players being able to actively see the change they’re affecting in a game’s world – has constantly posed a challenge to developers. “The big challenge,” says Avellone, “is always, ‘What can your budget afford?’ And then the question becomes, ‘How do you get the most bang for your buck?’ And you have to figure out what your consequence delivery mechanisms are… You need some way of communicating that reactivity to the player. Telltale would do it with the popups, which was a very easy way to do it,” he says, referring to infamous notifications like Kenny will remember that. “And immediately you become engaged like, ‘Oh, something significant happened.’ But for games that don't do that, the question becomes, ‘Well, how do you communicate that?’ And then one of the best ways we found in most RPGs was your companions, because they're very likely to be around you for the entire game. So when you do things, you can get a lot of impact from having your companions react to it versus trying to showcase it elsewhere in the environment.” [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2015/05/22/the-witcher-3-guide-choice-and-consequences-velen"] Avellone and Buck are both quick to point out that it can be an issue of scope, as well as a constrained amount of resources. Overly ambitious (and potentially inexperienced) designers may overlook the important balance of branching narratives and player choice. It’s a “rookie mistake,” as Buck calls it, saying, “They want [story] branches everywhere. They've written so many branches, and a lot of them are based off of very small decisions that players might not even realize they're making… and then, when there's a consequence, they don't necessarily feel that they made that happen because it's not something that they were thinking about ahead of time.” “In some ways, obviously, being able to create more story branches is amazing,” Buck says. “And if tech continues to go the way it does and we can make things faster, that’s brilliant and beautiful, but at the same time keeping some of those ideas of focusing in on what's most important... It definitely feels better when you can tell that the game is paying attention to you and is tracking things that matter as opposed to putting a bunch of decisions in front of you that feel random.”

Looking Ahead

And those advancements in technology can allow for more reactive worlds as well as just an insanely complex story tree. “In the old days,” Avellone says with a laugh, “we would hesitate before saying things like, ‘Oh, we can't burn down that town,’ or ‘We can't erect a town here, we can't have a new settlement form up from all the people you help, because that's gonna cause too many disruptions in the terrain.’ And ‘We can't switch out huge swaths of territory like that, we can’t mix and match.’ But now,” he says with a smile, “that’s a little bit more of a question. Like, ‘We could do that, and here's how we could do it, the hardware is allowing us to do it.’ So I think it's going to allow for some more dramatic visual changes in the environment, which I think are great because that's one of the easiest ways to show the impact of your actions – as long as it doesn't feel scripted.” Of course, advancing the genre doesn’t just apply to the technical limitations or advancements, either. As development tools become more accessible to people and communities the world over, a breadth of diverse stories and experiences will become the backbone of many new RPGs. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2017/05/09/top-10-rpgs-of-all-time"] “Beyond mechanics,” Buck says, “I want to see even more RPGs that tell us stories about worlds that I'm not familiar with. So many of the RPGs that we see come out of similar fantasy places. It's familiar, it's easy for people to pick up, but – especially as things like D&D are becoming more popular and more mainstream – that bar of what we need to put in there to be ‘familiar’ is being constantly lowered. I'd love to see something completely different: more RPGs in space, more RPGs in parts of the world that aren't, you know, Eurocentric,” she laughs “I want to know what someone who has a completely different life experience than I do would write as an RPG. Maybe what somebody who's never played an RPG before would make. And we live in a world now where it's possible for games like that to start to get off the ground.” While it may be a while before we see RPGs that massively evolve as we enter this new console generation, we do have plenty of great examples hitting our monitors soon. From unique independent adventures like Solasta or The Waylanders (which now offers its alpha build in Early Access on Steam) to upcoming blockbusters like Baldur's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, it's never been a better time to be a roleplaying fan.

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*We’re not saying D&D was around before Chess or Mahjong.

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JR is a Senior Editor at IGN who can't get enough of a good RPG, and also urges you to donate to the ACLU or NAACPLDF if you're able.