RPG Design: Telling The Monster’s Story

Tales of the Rampant Coyote’s latest RPG design piece focuses on Paizo’s upcoming Pathfinder Chronicles: Dungeon Denizens Revisited and the unusual creatures that the book attempts to shed some light onto. The article then moves to the realism of monsters in cRPGs:

This is just as true in computer RPGs as the dice-and-paper variety, if not more so. Oftentimes, especially in some kinds of action-RPGs that rely on a pretty constant flow of monster hordes to keep the player active, there’s not much rhyme, reason, or rationale behind the appearance of enemies beyond trying to make them sound reasonable in the environment. If it’s a volcanic cave with lava, we might find fire monsters. Wow. There’s game-logic for you. Can’t we do better?

Naturally, games that rely upon combat as a major aspect of gameplay – which includes pretty much every RPG I’ve ever played – aren’t going to be able to devote this kind of attention to every single enemy. This is boss-monster level stuff… but too often even the “boss monsters” are merely an obstacle in the story, too, and don’t have much of a story themselves. But maybe they should. Just because their purpose in the main plot and game mechanics is to be the main challenge in aquiring the fourth broken chunk of the Legendary Dutch Oven of Zog the Merciless doesn’t mean there can’t be more to the story than “They were hired by Zog’s Ghost to protect the broken chunk.”

As always, it is attention to detail that sets apart an RPG above the herd in my mind. And that detail doesn’t just mean incredible polygon counts and awesome shader effects, nor does it mean wading through hours of expository dialog voiced by some D-list actor. I still maintain that the best storytelling in games comes from the stories the players tell themselves while they are playing.