30 Rules Every RPG Should Follow

GamesRadar continues to churn out video game-related lists, this time covering the “30 rules every RPG should follow”. The list primarily pertains to JRPGs, but there are definitely some entries that apply to Western role-playing games too. A couple of morsels:

7. All the rumors are true

If you hear that there (might) be a bandit camp to the east, whip out your automap and label everything east (unexplored bandit camp.)

If you hear a rumor from the dithering old lady who’s spent the last 50 years in the hut next to your grandfather’s house about how the king might have a terrible illness and be secretly nearing death, just take her uninformed, loony word for it.

And anyone who so much as whispers anything about a prophecy, even if they heard it while drunk, underwater and out the beak of a 1,000 year-old duck, take their word as fact, and expect it to be fulfilled in the next 20-some hours of gameplay.

…

13. Encounter the main villain before you’re ready

Hopefully, the game won’t make you go through the formality of getting your butt handed to you on a platter, and you’ll just see a cutscene of it happening instead.

If you end up having to fight someone more than 20 levels higher than you, don’t worry about losing. There will be something that saves you before you’re annihilated; usually the power of true love, and sometimes it’s the true love of a recently deceased grandfather.