我已经玩了很多RPG创造者的游戏，并看到有些游戏有效运行而有些游戏却不能正常运行。我还看到有很多人反复在犯同样大错误。在一些我觉得较出色的项目中我也注意到了一些常见的特征，所以在此我想与你们分享这些理念。

1.热爱你的角色

在我们当前所处的时代中，媒体是诞生自没有灵魂的生产线上，它的方方面面都是为了能够吸引更多目标用户的注意。我们总是能够看到一些同样的角色在面前行走着。恬淡寡欲的人总是没有朋友，也不会告诉别人自己有何想法。神秘的女孩手上把握着世界的命运。长得非常好看的男人总是带有邪恶的动机。那种非常自信的女孩总是众人讨厌的对象。

在这个复制与粘帖的世界中，每当看到一款带有创造性火花或机枪，而非过度商业化的废话时，我们总是会眼前一亮。

而传达这种火花的最佳方式之一便是通过你的角色。即使你的游戏不是故事性太强的游戏，即使你的角色从未说过一句话，你也可以传达出开发者是否真的喜欢自己的角色。这是我为什么更喜欢有关“我第一款RTP冒险”游戏编写，而不是资深创造者那更受欢迎的游戏剧本，或者那些具有高超技术技巧的出色作者所写下的内容。你可以判断这些人是在何时真正喜欢着自己所编写的角色。他们将带有魅力，智慧，灵魂，且更加真实，更加立体，并更加活灵活现。你也可以判断何时作者只是在经历某种情感，何时他们并未真正关注于这些内容，或者何时他们只是在为一张脸编写说话内容。如果你并未沉浸在游戏编写中，你的用户可能也不会沉浸于你所编写的角色里。

了解你的角色。真正了解他们。花些时间去考虑你的角色。你是否喜欢他们？如果你对自己的角色不感兴趣，你是否认为别人会对他们感兴趣？

可能并不会。

问自己一些问题：

–对于我之外的别人，这个角色的个性是否会让他们觉得平淡无奇？

–这一角色是否会做一些我感兴趣，带有智慧或魅力的事？

–角色的个性是否能够通过他们的行动和对话，或通过一些有关他们个人特征的传记或独白进行传达？

–比起一些数据和描述，这些角色对我来说是否更有意义？

2.谨慎使用每个单词

你可能听过这么一句话，“如果5个词可行就不要使用10个，如果3个词可行就不要使用5个。”尽管作为一种格式上的选择，我们可以忽视其中的一些内容（一些角色比其他角色更啰嗦），但是这里的真正要点在于“不要浪费读者的时间。”你必须保持读者或玩家沉浸在情节的发展中，这便意味着你需要精心设置言语和过场动画。考虑你正在些什么，这一场景需要向玩家传达什么。确保你所说的真正具有意义且有吸引力。没有什么比让玩家经历一个冗长且无聊的过程动画，同时还有个人在那边唠叨着玩家并不想知道或者不理解的内容更糟糕的了。让我们来看个例子。

谁知道这些人是谁？

当你们在恐怖的场景中向后扭转，可能会意识到这些人是《Xenogears》中的Gazel Ministry。他们是一群无所不知敌人，观看着世界上所发生的一切。他们也可能是任何游戏中最糟糕的角色。他们是彻底无趣的，不能为情节的发展做出任何贡献，说着一些无用且含糊的话，他们将反复地打断你的游戏。以下是他们其中的一个对话：

Gazel–Blue 3：一个自私的信条。我怀疑他的信仰。

Gazel–Red 2：我们不需要一个盲信者组织。

Gazel–Blue 2：我们将追寻他们想要的，这是他们的本质。

Gazel–Red 3：但是，太多是不是当地，必须有所作为。训斥是必要的。

Gazel–Red 1：他们是可消费的群组。这时候我们什么都不能做。

Gazel–Blue 4：是的，除了了解到他们继续存在外。

Gazel–Blue 1：他们已经做完了我们所要求的。现在，我们正在处理每个负责的区域。

Gazel–Blue 3：Stein负责应对Aquty。

Gazel–Red 2：记住需要一个“适宜的解决方法”。

Gazel–Red 1：此外，Krelian更过度。这只是一个分子机器。为什么他要如此重视它？

Gazel–Blue 2：“人类”和“机器”，这对我们来说都是一样的。

Gazel–Blue 1：是的，他们都是一样的。

我们可以注意他们的“拒绝”是如何在谈论到“某些内容”时使用“专有名词”让我们“不能”理解他们在说些什么。这是他们曾经所做的。所以让他们谈论五分钟的目的到底是什么，如果不是想要揭示某些内容的情况下？这里并不存在任何目的。Gazel Ministry不会为游戏情节添加任何内容，也不会揭示任何信息。你甚至不能区分他们！他们为什么要出现于游戏中？因为他们是游戏世界历史中的关键任务，所以有必要将其硬塞到情节中。但如此我的游戏体验却会因为他们的存在而遭殃。他们的场景很无聊且晦涩，每当看到他们出现在屏幕上我都要快速地转动眼球。他们大抵就不应该出现在游戏中吧。

你的玩家正在玩游戏。如果你将打断他们的游戏过程，那你最好能够告诉他们一些有意义的内容。如果一个场景传达给他们的是无意义的信息，并且对游戏故事的发展没有任何帮助，那么这一场景就应该进行修改或彻底删除掉。

你应该问自己一些问题：

是否应该添加这一场景到情节中？

这一场景的添加是否有助于任何角色或故事的发展？

这一场景是否会具有喜剧性的调剂？

玩家是否能够根据适当的背景去理解其中所讨论的内容？

这一场景是否模糊不清或未提供有效的信息？

这一场景是否会继续呈现出一些玩家并不感兴趣的内容？

这一场景是否比实际需要持续更长时间？

3.发挥你的优势。缩小你的劣势

人们总是觉得有必要遵循一些经典的类型公式。所有的RPG都需要全面的英雄故事。它们必须具有许多战斗，史诗般的地牢，令人费解的谜题以及惊人的图像。

有可能其中一个或多个内容是你并不擅长创造的。

我发现在很多游戏中，人们显然未投入于地牢设计中，即在游戏中设置了长而糟糕的地牢，因为他们觉得有必要延长游戏时间，或满足人们对于RPG游戏就需要有很多地牢的期许。他们在游戏中添加了数百个随机遭遇战，但却并未真正去思考这些内容，因为他们认为这就是RPG应该做的，这样对吗？

只是因为RPG都这么做并不意味着你就必须在自己的RPG上执行这些理念。很多人是出于不同原因创造RPG。重点是专注于你想要呈现于游戏中的部分，同时缩小你不想花太多时间的元素。

如果你进入了RPG公司，你便能够获得机会，因为你想要完全地传达有趣的RPG故事。但是如果你只想着故事传达而忽视地牢设计，战斗机只以及其它游戏元素，你便只能创造出一款没有吸引力的作品。如果你不在乎地牢设计，但是让玩家痛苦地穿越于你未付出多少努力而只是出于常规所设计的20个地牢，那么玩家便不可能真正享受游戏的乐趣。如果你知道自己不善于做某事，那就不要让玩家花太多时间于这部分内容中。

再次地，问题回到了不要浪费玩家的时间。如果你并非投入太多想法于战斗设计中，那就避免每三步就出现一次随机遭遇战。如果你不喜欢创造地牢并且也证明这些内容没什么意义，那就不要创造太多地牢也不要让它们频繁出现。如果你不是一个出色的作家，请避免提供太多不可略过的乏味过场动画。

也许结果是你不想要创造一款RPG。人们总是期待着RPG拥有上述的的一些元素，但这可能并不是你真正想要做的。你可能想要创造一款带有临时对话的益智游戏。或者你想要创造不会妨碍情节的地牢爬行者。你必须记得，不管怎样，玩家都需要清楚他们现在在做什么。你不能牺牲逻辑。

通过减少你不擅长的游戏元素，并增加你所擅长的内容，你便可以从中体上创造出更强大的游戏。

你应该问自己的一些问题：

–这么做是否对游戏有帮助，或者只是在浪费玩家的时间？

–我们是否需要投入更多努力于游戏中的这一部分从而让其变得更有价值？

–我是否真的想要这么做或者只是出于惯例？

4.保持集中

据说所有的RPG都会随着时间的发展变得一样。回首看过的风景，有时候我们真的很难抵制这种情况。有时候，看到这种情况会觉得难过。我便看过许多有趣但却狭隘的情节，即关于一个角色为了专注于杀死God这种无趣，较为普通的目标而努力着。比起角色在之前所做的任何事，杀死God显得更加无趣。

不要害怕拒绝这些惯例。并不是所有冲突都需要具有宇宙般的规模。人类间的冲突会比人类与邪恶势力间的冲突更加有趣。有关残暴的君王和敢于反抗他的勇士的故事如果变成是，君王并未真正释放一个带有邪恶动机的恶魔王，并且这一恶魔王将杀死君王并夺走他的王位会更加有趣。只有一群冲突中的角色，并带有少量的地点和事件的故事会比伴随着无所不能的对手而随意扩展疆土冲突优秀得多。

但还有一些其它元素会导致情节失去集中。也许你已经创造了一个巨大的世界并需要玩家知道其中的一切？这好像被称为“托尔金综合征”，即角色的困境和发展都被当成是作者/创造者呈现世界乐趣的次要选择。创造世界可能很有趣，关于一个有趣且发展良好的背景有很多可以传达的内容，但是你的玩家可能会缺少足够的环境去欣赏你那杰出的细微差别。为了继续发展，你需要专注于玩家真正需要对于这个世界所获得的了解。他们可能不需要知道几年前一些战争的每个细节，特别是当所谓的战争对于当前情节没有任何影响的时候。如果你想要这么做的话，你也可以添加这一点背景故事作为选择的补充材料，但千万不要将其硬塞在玩家面前。

保持情节的集中与简单。不要被迫偏离故事的中心元素。因为你创造了一个完整的世界并不意味着你必须使用它的每一部分，或者世界的撒旦就需要成为最后的恶棍。

你应该问自己的一些问题：

–玩家是否真的出于某些原因需要知道这些？

–这一情节是否会完全改变环境和故事范围？

–如果会，那是基于更有趣的方向还是较一般的方向？

5.玩别人的游戏

这点非常重要。除非玩玩别人的游戏并看看他们是怎么做的，否则便不会知道RPG制作者或像你这样的业余制作者能够做些什么。如果你只是告诉自己别人的游戏不值得自己去浪费时间，你便会因此流失大量灵感。玩别人的游戏不仅能够帮助你学到他们的突出之处，也能让你从他们的失败中吸取经验教训。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

FIVE STRATEGIES FOR BETTER GAME-MAKING

I have played quite a few RPG Maker games. I have seen some of what works and some of what doesn’t work. I have seen a lot of people making the same mistakes over and over. But I’ve seen a few common traits in what I think are some of the better projects, and I’d like to share those ideas with all of you.

This is Solitayre’s Five Strategies For Better Game-making.

1. Love your characters

We live in a day and age where media is produced in soulless production lines, every facet of it engineered to appeal to the highest number of demographics possible. We have seen the same handful of tired characters paraded in front of us over and over again. The stoic, badass loner who has no friends and tells no one his feelings. The mysterious girl who holds the fate of the world in her hands. The extraordinarily pretty man with generically evil motives. That one really perky girl who everyone hates (you know the one.)

In this world of copy and paste, it is refreshing to see that a game actually has some kind of creative spark, or passion, instead of being overly-commercialized drivel created for profit, without any second thought.

One of the best ways to convey that spark is through your characters. Even if your game is not a story-heavy one, even if your character never says a word, you can usually tell if a developer really loves their characters or not. This is why I like the writing in a lot of “My First RTP Adventure” games than I do in some much more acclaimed titles by more experienced makers, or even people who are better writers on a technical level. You can tell when someone really likes the characters they’re writing for. They’ll have charm, wit, they’ll have a soul, they’ll feel more realistic, more three-dimensional, more alive. You can also tell when a writer is just going through the motions, when they don’t really care, when they’re just writing words with a face set attached. If you’re not engaged in writing a character, your audience probably isn’t going to be engaged by this character either.

Know your characters. Really know them. Spend some time thinking about your characters. Do you like any of them? If your characters aren’t interesting to you, do you think they’ll be interesting to anyone else?

Probably not.

Questions to ask yourself:

-Is this character’s personality obvious to anyone who isn’t me, the writer?

-Does this character ever do anything I find interesting, witty, or charming?

-Is the character’s personality conveyed through their actions and dialogue, or through some biography or monologue about their personal traits?

-Are these characters more to me than a block of stats and a description?

2 Make every word count.

You’ve probably heard this adage before. “Don’t use ten words when five will do, don’t use five when three will do.” While some of this can be ignored as a stylistic choice (some characters are wordier or more verbose than others) the real point of this saying is “don’t waste your reader’s time.” You must keep your reader/player engaged in what is going on in the plot, and that means being judicious with your words and cutscenes. Take into account what you’re writing, what this scene tells the player. Make sure what you’re saying here is actually going to be engaging or meaningful in some way. There is nothing worse for a player than having to sit through a really long, boring, irrelevant cutscene where someone is prattling about something the player doesn’t know or understand anything about. But don’t take my word for it, let’s look at an example.

Who knows who these guys are?

Those of you who wrenched backwards in abject horror probably recognized these guys as the Gazel Ministry of Xenogears. They were a group of all-knowing talking heads who were watching everything that was happening in the world. They are also very likely the worst characters to ever appear in any game. They are completely uninteresting, add nothing to the plot, talk in uselessly vague, cryptic nonsense, and they’ll keep interrupting your game over and over and over. Here’s an example of one of their conversations:

Gazel – Blue 3: A selfish creed. I question his faith.

Gazel – Red 2: We have no need for an organization of fanatics.

Gazel – Blue 2: We will seek what they will, it’s their nature.

Gazel – Red 3: But, too much is undue, something must be done. A reprimand is necessary.

Gazel – Red 1: They are an expendable group. There is nothing we can do at this point.

Gazel – Blue 4: Yes, there is nothing more to gain from their continued existence.

Gazel – Blue 1: They’ve already done what we’ve required.
Currently, we’re in the process of ‘dealing’ with each area responsible.

Gazel – Blue 3: Stein is in charge of dealing with Aquty.

Gazel – Red 2: Bear in mind the need for a ‘fitting solution’.

Gazel – Red 1: Moreover, Krelian is rather exorbitant. It’s only a molecular machine. Why is he placing such importance on it?

Gazel – Blue 2: ‘Humans’ and ‘machines’, it’s all the same to us.

Gazel – Blue 1: Yes, they are all the same

{Image and Transcript taken from a Let’s Play by a fellow called Karnegal}

Notice how their “refusal” to use “proper nouns” when talking about “things,” makes it “impossible” to understand what they’re talking about here. This is all they ever do. So what was the purpose of having them talk for five minutes if they were going to make it a very deliberate and concerted effort to not reveal anything? Well, there isn’t one. The Gazel Ministry adds nothing to the game, never reveals anything, and never has any real relevance to the plot. You can’t even distinguish one from another! Why were they in the game? Because they were key figures in the game world’s history and it became necessary to shoehorn them into the plot somehow. But my experience in the game suffered for their presence. Their scenes were boring and vague and I rolled my eyes every time I saw them come on screen. They probably shouldn’t have been in the game at all.

Your player is playing a game. If you’re going to interrupt their playing the game, it better be to tell them something. If a scene tells them nothing and adds nothing to the story, that scene should either be significantly revised or excised entirely.

Questions to ask yourself:

-Does this scene add to the plot at all?

-Does this scene add to the development of any characters, or the setting?

-Does this scene provide comic relief?

-Does the player have the proper context to understand what is being discussed?

-Is this scene uselessly vague or provide nearly no information?

-Does this scene ramble on about a lot of things the player probably isn’t interested in?

-Is this scene longer than it probably needs to be?

(Note: Please do not leave a comment telling me how the Gazel Ministry have a fascinating history as the ancestors of all mankind, spanning the 10,000 years of the Xenogears universe, and how they were key players in many events in the game’s backstory. I don’t care.)

3. Play up your strengths. Minimize your weaknesses.

People feel obligated to follow the classic genre formula. All RPGs need to have sweeping tales of heroism. They must all have lots and lots of battles. Long, epic dungeons. Mind-bending puzzles. Breath-taking graphics.

And chances are there is one or more of these things you’re probably not very good at making.

I see a lot of games where people who obviously aren’t invested in their dungeon design throwing gauntlets of long, poorly made dungeons into their game because they felt obligated to make their game longer, or to fulfill some expectation that there were going to be a lot of dungeons in the game because it is an RPG. They fill the game with hundreds of random encounters that they put little real thought into because that’s what RPGs do, right?

Just because RPGs do those things doesn’t mean it is necessarily a good idea for you to do those things in your RPG. Lots of people make RPGs for a lot of different reasons. The idea is to focus on the part of the game you want to present while minimizing elements that you aren’t going to spend much time on.

Chances are if you got into the RPG business, it’s because you wanted to tell your totally awesome RPG story. Well, okay. But if you tell your story but phone in your dungeon design, combat mechanics, and other elements of the game, you’re going to be left with an unappealing overall product. If you don’t care about dungeon design but make your player slog through twenty dungeons that you obviously put no real effort into but included out of obligation, chances are your player isn’t going to enjoy that part of your game. If you know you’re bad at doing something, don’t make your player spend all their time in that part of the game.

Again, this comes back to not wasting your player’s time. If your battles are all filler you put no thought into, don’t make random encounters happen every 3 steps. If you don’t like making dungeons and there’s nothing to do in any of them, don’t make them massive and don’t make them frequent. If you aren’t a good writer, don’t have reams of unskippable, bland cutscenes.

It may turn out you really don’t even want to make an RPG. RPGs are generally expected to have some element of all of the above things, but that might not be what you actually want to make. You might want to make a puzzle game with occasional dialogue, or a visual novel where dialogue is all there is. Or you might want to make a dungeon crawler with very little in the way of plot. It’s important to remember, however, that player’s need direction in what they’re doing. Don’t sacrifice logic.

By playing down the aspects of a game you aren’t as good at, and emphasizing the ones that you are good at, you can make your game much stronger as a whole.

Questions to ask yourself :

-Is this adding anything to the game or is it just there to waste the player’s time?

-Am I going to put enough work into this part of the game to make it worthwhile?

-Do I really even want to make this part or am I doing it out of obligation?

4. Stay focused.

It’s been said that all RPGs are becoming the same game over time. Looking over the landscape, sometimes it’s hard to deny this. And sometimes it’s painful to watch it happen. I have watched many interesting, insular plots about one character and their personal struggles be derailed in order to focus on much less interesting, more generic and mainstream ones about killing God. Chances are killing God is going to be a lot less interesting than whatever the characters were doing before.

Don’t be afraid to defy these conventions. Not every single conflict needs to be cosmic in scale. The conflicts between humans tend to be a lot more interesting than conflicts between humans and incarnated evil. A story about a tyrannical king and the brave men and women who rebel against him is probably going to be a lot more interesting if it turns out the King isn’t actually plotting to release a demon lord with generically evil motives who will kill said king on the spot and take over his role as villain. A story with only one group of characters in conflicts, with fewer locations and events, is likely to be far superior to some arbitrary escalation to a world-spanning conflict with a nigh-omnipotent demigod antagonist.

You might call this the “Final Fantasy Syndrome” since this problem is so prevalent in their games. Near the end you can always count on some never mentioned superbeing to fall from the sky to present a final challenge. But these final villains are never as interesting as the primary antagonists. Zemus isn’t nearly as interesting as Golbez. Ultimecia is far less interesting than Edea. Which villains do everyone like better? Kefka and Sephiroth, because these two are presented as central antagonists and remain so throughout the game. But I personally thought stopping Sephiroth’s plot to genocide the planet was a lot less compelling than the party’s conflict with Shinra earlier in the game.

But there are other ways to lose focus, too. Maybe you’ve built this huge world and demand that your player know absolutely everything about it? This might be called the “Tolkien Syndrome” where the plight and development of the characters take a backseat to the author/creator showing off how cool their world is. World-building can be a lot of fun, and there’s a lot to be said about a legitimately interesting and well-developed setting, but chances are your player doesn’t have enough context to appreciate all your brilliant nuances. Focus on what your player actually needs to know about this world in order to proceed. They probably don’t need to know every detail about some giant war fought a gazillion years ago, especially if said war has absolutely no bearing on anything currently happening in the plot. If you want, feel free to include such backstory in the game as optional supplementary material, but never shove it in the player’s face if they don’t need to know it to proceed.

Keep your plot focused and simple. Don’t feel compelled to stray from the central elements in the story. Just because you created an entire world doesn’t mean you have to use every part of it or that the world’s Satan-figure needs to be the final villain.

Questions to ask yourself:

-Does the player really need to know this for any reason?

-Will this plot twist completely change the context and scope of the storyline?

-If so, does it take it in a more interesting direction, or a more generic one?

5. Play other peoples’ games.

This is very important. Chances are you’ll have no idea what RPG Maker or an amateur maker like yourself is really capable of unless you play other peoples’ games and see what they have managed to do. If you just tell yourself that no one else’s games are worth your time, you’re missing out on an enormous amount of inspiration. You can not only learn from what they did right, but from what they did wrong. (source:rpgmaker)