It can be a great advantage to create the game first. As the pieces of the game come into existence they may bring with them a story. Your imagination will always be at work as you see each game part introduce itself and rub shoulders with other game elements. The problem with doing a story first is that you tend to compromise good game play in order to meet a story agenda. This can be dangerous. The game play is most important.
It''s been done many ways. You need to ask yourself how you work best. For me, as I work on an interface for example, sometimes an empty unfilled space demands a feature and my mind starts to go to work. It''s a breathing in and out type of work. You dig down deep with the game elements, then step back and overview where it''s headed, then back down again.
I hope this has helped some.
is t possible to make a game and THEN make the story?
Author
yeah but wont the world become...messy, if you do something like that. It will start to not make sense to the users. I ask this because right now we''re thinking of just leaving the story for last, or just later on. After the characters and quests and monsters have already been created. We have the general idea of teh story: A girl and her uncle take shelter in a city and the uncle is accused of stealing and the girl quests around to free her uncle. That''s the basic gist of the story. Now with that in mind, how can one design the quests first?
I doubt it could be done well with an RPG, simply because of the level to which the story is ingrained into an RPG. You''d find yourself having to redesign aspects of the gameplay to fit the story (for example, spell X doesn''t work against creature Y because of something that happened in the story).
To OP. Yes, you could have game system before story. Even in RPG. Some games are done like that.
BTW RPG maker is somewhat simple example. Or some movies first is defined the outcome then is defined how they went to that.
BTW RPG maker is somewhat simple example. Or some movies first is defined the outcome then is defined how they went to that.
The engine and the story should be developed together. The engine relies on what the story needs, and the story needs to be limited to what the engine has (or rather, the limitations of the programmer). Your development teams need to work together.
I don't think you can place the quests before the story, but you can definitely make the world and characters first.
When making characters, there will be natrual conflicts (like the paladin order acting as various kings' guards vs the bad guys trying to kill all the kings and take their place), and from there you can create a histroy (assuming you didn't detail 'why' when designing characters) explaining why people are doing what they are doing and then the user can pick (or be assigned) as side and try to meet whatever goals his side has (such as protecting the kings, or killing them all). When trying to meet his goal, those opposed to it will surely make the task more difficult in various ways.
Just think about real life - as far as I know at least, there is no story of the world. There are people, places, events, etc and we create a story about those events by figuring out (or guessing) what happened and why things happened the way they did. There are, of course, different scales, such as (apparently)random chance, personal choice, group choice like rulers making choices for those they rule, etc.
[edited by - extrarius on January 20, 2004 1:48:08 PM]
When making characters, there will be natrual conflicts (like the paladin order acting as various kings' guards vs the bad guys trying to kill all the kings and take their place), and from there you can create a histroy (assuming you didn't detail 'why' when designing characters) explaining why people are doing what they are doing and then the user can pick (or be assigned) as side and try to meet whatever goals his side has (such as protecting the kings, or killing them all). When trying to meet his goal, those opposed to it will surely make the task more difficult in various ways.
Just think about real life - as far as I know at least, there is no story of the world. There are people, places, events, etc and we create a story about those events by figuring out (or guessing) what happened and why things happened the way they did. There are, of course, different scales, such as (apparently)random chance, personal choice, group choice like rulers making choices for those they rule, etc.
[edited by - extrarius on January 20, 2004 1:48:08 PM]
It''s possible. Most Universal roleplaying systems only look at the game rules, and then you build the world seperately. For example, GURPS, and the Hero System do this.
However, Universal systems do suffer from the problem that they are a "one-size fits all" kind of approach, so some of the subtleties of the game world may get lost. For example, if your game setting takes place in a medieval setting where knightly codes are important, if the universal system rules don''t incorporate some kind of rule to quantify this, then you lose the flavor of the "knightly code". I''m basing this example off of the game Pendragon, which is set in Arthurian times, and yet you can play a Christian knight, a Germanic knight, or a pagan. You have traits that define how "pious" you are according to your belief system. Much of the flavor of this game comes from these traits.
Another example is the game Sengoku, which is set in feudal era Japan. It has rules for Honor, face, and other elements which are necessary for detailing feudal era Japan. Yet another example is The Riddle of Steel, which contains "Spiritual Attributes" that you can use for in-game benefits. But these spiritual attributes are defined mostly by the player himself according to the culture and beliefs of the character.
So generally, I think it''s good to have the setting in mind and create the rule-system around what you want to model. However, the advantage to a Universal system is its genre-crossing capabilities, as well as needing to learn only one rules-set. It loses however some of the nuances and essence that come from finely drilling into the depths of a particular genre.
However, Universal systems do suffer from the problem that they are a "one-size fits all" kind of approach, so some of the subtleties of the game world may get lost. For example, if your game setting takes place in a medieval setting where knightly codes are important, if the universal system rules don''t incorporate some kind of rule to quantify this, then you lose the flavor of the "knightly code". I''m basing this example off of the game Pendragon, which is set in Arthurian times, and yet you can play a Christian knight, a Germanic knight, or a pagan. You have traits that define how "pious" you are according to your belief system. Much of the flavor of this game comes from these traits.
Another example is the game Sengoku, which is set in feudal era Japan. It has rules for Honor, face, and other elements which are necessary for detailing feudal era Japan. Yet another example is The Riddle of Steel, which contains "Spiritual Attributes" that you can use for in-game benefits. But these spiritual attributes are defined mostly by the player himself according to the culture and beliefs of the character.
So generally, I think it''s good to have the setting in mind and create the rule-system around what you want to model. However, the advantage to a Universal system is its genre-crossing capabilities, as well as needing to learn only one rules-set. It loses however some of the nuances and essence that come from finely drilling into the depths of a particular genre.
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