Richard Cobbet on RPG Writing

Richard Cobbett of Rock, Paper, Shotgun, known for his RPG Scrollbars column, worked on writing The Long Journey Home, an RPG with roguelike elements, for Deadalic Studio West. Now, he uses his insights into video game writing to talk shop. If you, for some reason, imagined this process as something involving burgundy robes, smoking pipes, and old-timey typewriters, Richard Cobbett is here to shatter this illusion. Expect lots and lots of spreadsheets, counter-intuitive proprietary tools, and getting intimately familiar with Excel.

Here’s an excerpt:

[…]The Long Journey Home is the story of a ragtag crew (four out of ten characters – your choice) shot to the other side of the galaxy as part of humanity’s first jump drive test. Your job is to get them home, through a procedurally generated universe full of hostile worlds and amusing aliens. There are stories and mysteries to uncover, but mostly the focus is on freedom, and giving you the kind of power that you’d have if you were actually in that situation. For instance, if you take on a FedEx quest, there’s nothing stopping you opening the box and stealing what was in it. Or agreeing to escort someone home, only to turn around and sell them to slavers instead. Each time you play, we want you to find different things and learn more about the races and how the universe ticks. On the flip-side though, much of what works in other RPGs had to be rethought and reworked around our specific ‘get home’ goal. Interesting quests? Yes, but respecting that forward momentum has to be key.

This actually proved pretty challenging, as every quest had to feel like something that a) was worth the crew’s time, despite their desperation to get back to Earth above all else and so not necessarily giving a shit if some planet comes down with Shivering Rot or whatever, b) something that the aliens would actually entrust these random visitors with, and c) something that was worth the player’s time to do. And of course, d) something that fit one of our core goals of bringing a bit more personality to space than players are used to. We really wanted this to feel like a living universe where you were experiencing an at once terrible and breathtaking situation along with your crew, and one you can believe is ticking along around you. For example, most of the time when you finish or fail an important quest, the original quest-giver will show up again in person to handle everything, rather than using some kind of galaxy-wide internet or just flashing up a FISSION MAILED message and moving on.

Spoiler alert. This means a lot of writing.

As Alec covered last week in his Supporter post, games are basically spreadsheets with controller support. If you want to write games, you have to be prepared to Excel. If it’s not Excel or Google Docs, then you’re probably going to be working with some proprietary tool that… well, imagine a car, only without luxuries like doors, a roof or seats. Luckily, this isn’t quite a universal rule, but… yeah. There’s a reason why most teams don’t release their internal tools to the public, and those that do wrap them in more warnings than a thin cardboard box containing fresh plutonium rods.