The Path to a Great RPG - Part IV
 (3).bmp) | submitted by Arix on Mon Nov 06, 2006 2:46 am
The Inventory |
Sorry again for the lateness. I know I normally update on Sunday arvo, but I had a brainfart and forgot entirely.
And we’re up to the fourth step. Halfway done already. If you’ve been here since step one, here’s what we should have covered so far –
1. Making a storyline.
2. Listing out the game.
3. Making a good intro.
And, if you can’t tell from the title of this step, today I’ll cover how to add in random chickens to your RPG. No RPG is complete without random chickens.
Types of items
There are many types of items in an RPG, each of which do something different. Here are the main types...
Weapons: The...weapons…that the characters can have. Swords, spears, arrows, guns, paper clips, dictionaries, whatever. If you can kill something with it, it’s a weapon.
Shields: Defensive items that the characters have.
Medicine: Healing items. They can heal anything. HP, mana, status, etc. etc. Alternatively, they can boost a stat such as maximum HP.
Books: Items that let a character learn a certain skill.
Pendant: Or accessory, jewel, crest, take your pick. They’re like weapons and shields in that they are equipped to a character, but they can do anything, not just boost attack or defence.
Story: An item that cannot be used normally, but is used to get past a certain puzzle. Things like keys to open a door, a letter to blackmail a character, a rubber-chicken-with-a-pulley-in-the-middle to allow Guybrush to cross the cable over to Meathook’s house.
Yeah, I’ve probably been playing too much Monkey Island.
What to do with each type
Weapons
In some RPGs, each character has a certain type of weapon they can equip that none others can use. In others, any weapon can be equipped to any character. It’s your choice what you do in this matter, but here’s a nice formula to make weapons.
Make about 8/12 weapons for each character (if you choose to have the first method) or about 15/20 all up (if you want the second). Make each one steadily increase the character’s attack power. For example, the first boosts it up by 2, the second by 5, the third by 7 and so on and so forth.
Once that is done, throw in some ‘special’ weapons. For instance...
Cursed: They increase power more than normal, or add some special effect like status change, but have some downside like self-damage.
Legendary: A one-of-a-kind weapon that does some super-awesome thing.
Elemental: Stronger against certain enemies, maybe afflicts some condition. Like a fire weapon could work better against ice monsters, and burn them or something.
Awesome: These do more than just increase attack power. Maybe they act as weapon and shield in one, up to you entirely.
And anything else you can think of. Let your imagination run wild. That really is the main aim here.
Weapons are most often obtained in RPGs by buying them at a shop. So how much should your weapon cost? First, remember the rule that says ‘the closer the shop is to the end of the game, the better stuff it has’. It’s a good rule, but sometimes it’s more fun to have the first shop in the game have the most powerful weapon among its weaker ones. Just so the player can come back later with enough money (or the super-rare item the shopkeeper will trade for it).
Anyway, back to cost, it depends on how easy it is to obtain money. If you get about 50 gold for defeating a weak monster, make the weaker weapons cost somewhere around 30 – 60. If you get 5 for defeating that monster, make them cost around 3 – 6. If you get 100, make it around 75 – 120. It’s all relative to how easy it is to obtain money. The easier it is to get money, the more expensive they should be. This same theory goes for another thing in RPGs as well - experience. The more experience you get for defeating a monster, the more experience it takes to grow a level.
Shields
Uh, let’s see...take the above section, change ‘attack’ to ‘defence’, and you’re there. Follow the same basic formula, apply the same basic techniques, and there’s not really a lot else to say.
Medicine
Now this is a bit bigger, due to the different types of medicine. Normally, there are about four – HP, mana, status, and revival. HP restores HP. Mana restores mana. Status heals ailments. And revival revives a fallen character. Pretty straightforward.
As for making them, try this formula. About 5 different HP medicines, each healing a steadily increasing amount. Then add one that heals 50%, and one that heals 100%. Do the same for mana. As for status, make one for each ailment. Finally, about three revival medicines – one that revives them to a set HP level (in most games it’s 1, but I personally find that extremely frustrating to revive a character only to have them die in a battle straight away), one that revives them to 50%, and one to 100%.
Again, use the same pricing formula – the easier to get, the more expensive to buy. Perhaps you may want to mix and match. A potion that heals both HP and mana. One that revives them to 50%, and increases maximum mana. A miracle cure, which heals all status ailments and fully heals HP and mana to 100%. And some that increase a stat like attack, defence, or max HP.
Books
Now, I generally don’t use books, so I can’t really say a lot about them. However, sometimes there is one special event I use them in.
What I do is hide a certain number of books around the world in remote locations that the player goes out of their way to find, or their curiosity leads them to it. To reward their curiosity, they are given a books or scroll or whatever that teaches them some uber-cool enemy-smashing mana-draining move. True, the concept is a little cliché, but what did I say about clichés way back on the first week? The book isn’t necessary to complete the game, but it’s very cool if they get it, and generally helps a lot.
Anywho, as I said, I can’t really say a lot more on books. Just stick to your own devices on this one, you’d be able to do better than I can. Maybe have some hermits hiding off somwhere who trade ultra-rare one-of-a-kind items for cool books and scrolls.
Pendants
Again, not a lot to say. Think of something cool, make a pendant for it, and go. Maybe a pendant that protects them from harmful terrain. That’d go well with the ‘hidden books' we discussed (hide one of them across a long stretch of harmful terrain). Maybe one that trades stat-for-stat, or in other words, boosts one stat while lowering another. Boosts all stats, but hurts them somehow. Lets them do something on the map that they couldn’t do otherwise. There’re infinite possibilities out there.
Story
Remember that list you wrote in step 2? Go back to it. Go back to the ‘puzzle solutions’ part. Look at the solutions, and any of them that require a certain item (like, maybe, a golden Buddha statue to bribe someone {I love that}), note it down. That’s a story item. Later on, I’ll write a separate tutorial, one that’s to related to these articles, about a cool little inventory system of my own creation for use in RPG Maker 2000/2003, that’s related to these items.
These are your story items. The player can’t throw them away, use them in battle, sell them, or anything. Instead, they use them to solve a puzzle and progress in the game. There is absolutely no formula for this whatsoever. It all depends on what puzzles you’ve created. Next week, I’ll go over puzzle logic to help you out there.
And that’s all for now. Join me next week when I tie up some loose ends. Until then, may you always think of some half-assed “may you, for some reason” ending for some reason.
