Rant: Why Fantasy RPGs Suck

I've been taking to a friend the other day and the subject of Planescape: Torment awesomeness came up. My friend didn't play it. I gave him THE speech. He asked me if the game was easy to get into, which forced me to resurrect my first impressions of the game, which, in turn, is why you are reading this rant now. Enjoy.

Fantasy RPGs usually suck because the "fantasy" aspect isn't overly fantastic. In fact, it's generic and fucking bland. Let's say you bought a new fantasy RPG and installed it. What do you have there? A young guy/gal in a small place forced to get the fuck out and explore the very predictable world and save it. When you see a town, you know pretty much what to expect. It's not a place of wonder and strange customs, it's a place to get quests and buy/sell shit. You can easily replace a town with 3-4 NPCs standing in the middle of fucking nowhere offering quests and shopping. In fact that's probably would be more interesting than a generic and boring as fuck fantasy town #3471.

Now, compare it to Planescape: Torment. You wake up in a mortuary. Dead. Yes, DEAD. A gravity defying skull starts chatting with you.

WHAT! THE! FUCK!

That alone throws you off. Suddenly, you realize that you are definitely not in the motherfucking Kansas anymore. The rules are completely different and you have no idea what they are. Where are the familar elves and orcs? Why the ancient evil (TM) isn't stirring? Where is a kind lord of the realm to send you on a mission of great importance (to kill some poor fuckers)?

You open the door. OMG! Zombies are everywhere! Ok, I know where this is going. Where is my trusty weapon... WAITAMINUTE! The zombies are not attacking. You can kill them, of course, but you can also walk around studying them and even get some unusual items from them. You finally manage to leave the mortuary. You are in a city, and what a city it is. It's a city of doors, filled with portals that can take you anywhere, assuming you have a key. You see a bar, a familiar place in this strange land. The first thing you see is a floating, burning, yet still alive body - a lovely conversation piece of decor. Some ugly looking demons are having a drink; they greet you as an old friend. Great, that's just fucking great. Wait, it gets better though. The bartender casually informs you that he still has your eye - my WHAT? - and if you have the money, you can have it back. You buy the eye, mostly because it's so different from the usual selection of RPG goodies, wondering what the fuck you should do with it. An insane option to rip out your existing eyeball and shove in the, uh, new one, that was floating in a jar like a pickled egg a minute ago, presents itself. You do it and memories start pouring in. At this point you are absolutely lost. You, the player, are a stranger in a strange fucking land, and that's the fucking beauty of it.

Your quest? To find out who you are. *sigh* What, you guys ran out of demons to kill and worlds to save?

Let's compare it to the recently released NWN2:

A young guy/gal in search of adventure living a small village - check. The village is attacked by monsters killing everything in sight - check. The monsters are after you, because you are - you better sit down - the chosen one and special in every possible way - check. You leave your village and fight your way through to a large town filled with thieves who steal shit and guards who, well, guard shit - check. You accidentally run into your enemies in every major dungeon, spoiling their plans - check. Instead of throwing everything they've got at you, they continue to underestimate you, until you level all the way up to the MegaUberPrestigeFighter, the Destroyer of Worlds and Crusher of Hopes - check.

Don't know about you, but I can hardly handle all the excitement.

What I'm trying to say is predictable fantasy is the biggest flaw of the so-called fantasy games and books. Give us something different, put us in a strange place with strange rules. Discovering these rules, understanding laws, habits, and customs of these places and its denizens is an important aspect of gameplay that shouldn't be discarded.

Great post, I couldn't agree more, but wait - you have friends (at least one) and despite your top management work, family, the Codex* and AoD the time to talk to him? :shock:

* Edit: How could I forget the Codex...

I'm with you. In fact...

<b>Things you should be fucking well embarassed to be including in your upcoming RPG</b>

So, you've decided to make an RPG. Spot on, champion. That's the first step toward gaining a credible reputation at the RPG Codex. That's like having a magical die that automatically rolls natural 20s on everything. And you gotta believe the ladies love that sorta thing. You'll be beating them back with a stick - and scoring critical hits on every single one.

But don't start counting chickens yet. If you think those eggs will be fertilised by the collective ejaculation of the mainstream gaming media, then you're seriously fucked. Because quite frankly, your ideas suck. Each and every one. Even that one. Especially that one. To make it easy for you, here's something of a checklist. Award yourself a point for every one that applies to you, and add them up. Like strokes to a golfer, or age to a paedophile - The higher you score, the more you fail. Here we go:

<b>Direct Tolkien Derivatives</b> - You know, orcs and shit. Midgets with hairy feet. And don't think you can get around it by changing a minor detail or a name. Big, green, ugly humans with pointy ears that speak in broken english are still Orcs. There are only two ways you can be absolved of this thought crime. If you're working with an existing IP that already had that shit, you get a reprieve. For now. If you're using a cliche just to turn it on its ear in an <i>interesting and intelligent</i> manner (such as Arcanum's Middle Earth Post-Industrial Revolution setting) then you're all good, but beware, because you're walking a fine line.

<b>Platemail Bikinis</b> - Sure, I love the female form, and it's great fun to draw and animate. But that doesn't make me or you the next Vallejo, Royo, or anyone else who just happens to make their living drawing naked chicks fighting monsters. Honestly, grow the fuck up, and leave the cleavage to a warrior's mighty blade, or at least make it an optional choice so female roleplayers can play your game without having to awkwardly stare at a provocatively dressed avatar of the same sex everytime they play. In fact, any time you think about how awesome scantilly clad amazons are, <a href="http://www.sweetandbitter.com/inside/images/hasselhoff-thumb.jpg">check this out</a>. Very provocative indeed.

<b>And while we're at it...</b> - Female characters who exist solely for gratifying the male ego and taking the edge off an unwanted virginity. The love interest <i>sans</i> conflict is pretty dull, and is almost certainly being set up for a "rescue the princess" sub plot. Sycophants only satisfy a pretty narrow power trip, and should not be a major character, certainly not the leading lady.

<b>On the topic of sycophants...</b> - Characters who exist only as a test to the character's patience. I'm talking textbook Bioware shit here. The character that is scripted to force conversation with you, with the expectation that the player will simply get annoyed and kill them, but if they can endure the hundredth repetition, they get a reward. Horrible shit that is supposed to be amusing, but winds up being about as funny as Carrot Top. HA HA MOTHERFUCKERS!

<b>Disregard for coherence of setting</b> - Why does something exist? For the sake of the player, or the sake of the character? This one covers a lot of territory, so give yourself a point for every object/character/conversation/location that has no business being in the gameworld. I'm willing to grant amnesty to RPG-likes that don't actually have any need of plot, but for any game that purports to have a coherent narrative, you need to listen up. Tutorial NPCs that refer to metaconcepts such as the game interface? Get 'em out. NPC conversations that read like loading screen tips? Fuck 'em off. A dungeon within a stone's throw of the world's biggest settlement full of weakling critters with no justification other than "stuff 2 kil, hur". Lock yourself in it until you come to your fucking senses.

<b>A 4-year old's view on morality</b> - Overt goodness and evil? What a fucking waste. Given the concepts of good and evil are about as difficult to pin down as the question of which religion is right, (For the unenlightened, that would be Scientology) it's an effortlessly strong theme to explore through your game's narrative and the player's interactions. There's so much potential to be explored in a game's society that you'd be a fucking fool to waste the opportunity. Obviously, with this out the window, you also eliminate the "Big baddie reawakening, and only you can stop it!" plot shambles.

<b>Evil = Getting Paid to do Good</b> - Even worse than the above, a game that "allows" you to play as an evil character by forcing you to do the same shit the good guy does but asking for money in return is just plain lazy. Like George Michael says - "If you're gonna do it, do it right." Which makes George's views on fucking more enlightened than Bioware's design philosophy.

<b>One dimensional quests</b> - A single, simple solution just doesn't cut it. If you insist on FedEx, won't you at least think of the challenge? Make the item require some effort to obtain or find, preferably in ways more developed than "fight your way to it." Make recipient hard to find. Throw a twist. Whatever, just don't do it in a way that will frustrate your player. Make sure they understand that you're intentionally challenging them.

<b>Quest dispensers</b> - We touched on this earlier, but there is nothing worse than a static NPC devoid of personality that has one single defining feature - a missing item/loved one/etc, that they want you to find. Realistically, you can't give every NPC a unique personality, but I will kill the next motherfucker who says something like "Sorry, I can't talk to you right now, I'm feeling a little distraught. You see..." It's as shallow as girls who skip the small talk and get straight to the fucking, but probably the opposite in terms of entertainment value.

<b>Suicidal NPCs</b> - Is it reasonable to assume that the player character projects their power through non-verbal means? I think so. Generally the glowing magical weapons and inch-thick armour without so much as a scratch are good indicators. Unless your NPCs have a reason for suicidal zeal, back them the fuck off. A player can still choose to slaughter them if it fits their motive, but in your typical fantasy world where survival is a full time job, it's ridiculous for even the stupidest NPCs to offer themselves up as cannon fodder. And of course, this goes hand in hand with...

<b>Capital Punishment for all crime</b> - ...with the victim leading the charge. It's a pretty intolerant society that is willing to take up arms against a petty thief. This is one RPG element that is crying out for sophistication. But for fuck's sake, if your alternative to death is fines, at least make sure your economy isn't utterly broken. So of course...

<b>I'm rich! Rich I tells ya!</b> - It's fine to allow your player to <i>earn</i> their glorious wealth, but work the fuckers hard. If MMOGs can get economics right with thousands of players, then there's no fucking excuse whatsoever to fail in a single player RPG. It's fairly crucial, too. No doubt the game system probably has skills that rely on a balanced economy, and ways for a player with bucketloads of cash to get well ahead of the difficulty curve, so a fucked economy can ruin an entire game.

<b>Last of all</b> - Pseudo-edginess. Like lots of swearing, hostility and confronting behaviour in an effort to seem cool. As soon as you try to be cool, you're not. Idiots may play along through a sheer absence of individuality or will on their part, but you don't want them.

The End.

Yay!

The heroine of Kult was a titty babe, but she also menstruated as a story element. Does that cancel out??

Vault Dweller said:

... forced to get the fuck out and explore the ... middle of fucking nowhere offering...as fuck fantasy town #3471...

WHAT! THE! FUCK!

...motherfucking Kansas anymore. ...

... just fucking great. ... what the fuck you should do with it... in a strange fucking land, and that's the fucking beauty of it.

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Section8 said:

<b>Last of all</b> - Pseudo-edginess. Like lots of swearing, hostility and confronting behaviour in an effort to seem cool. As soon as you try to be cool, you're not. Idiots may play along through a sheer absence of individuality or will on their part, but you don't want them.

The End.

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Seriously, what you wrote is spot on, but a bit less "fucks" would have done the same job

Torment probably has the best beginning in any computer game made so far. And I completely agree with you:

Vault Dweller said:

What I'm trying to say is predictable fantasy is the biggest flaw of the so-called fantasy games and books. Give us something different, put us in a strange place with strange rules.

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The sad truth, however, is that one reason Oblivion sold much better than Morrowind, is the predictable fantasy setting. Yes - the to many players preferable predictable fantasy setting. Morrowind's more original setting was just a tad too weird to appeal to everybody.

It's one of life's great ironies that there is so little fantasy in fantasy.
Det är en av livets stora ironier att det finns så lite fantasi i fantasy. (Couldn't resist. It's more poignant in Swedish.)

Great post Section8, and VD, you hit the nail on the head.

That said Planescape was just a little too trippy for me. I'm sure it's a good story, but it's not the kind I would choose to read. And I admit I do like me some big titty babes.

This is the reason I dont enjoy reading high fantasy or sci-fi set thousands of years from our time. It is more difficult to scare or amaze the reader/player in such settings because everything that can happen is alreay happening. It is more frightening and immesrive if you can put yourself in to the place of the characters and wonder how you would react to the unusual situations.

NWN 2... I agree with the been-there-done-that beginning in a humble village. At least you could have been somekind of a doughter/son of a lord of the keep around which the village is settled.

Grandpa Gamer said:

The sad truth, however, is that one reason Oblivion sold much better than Morrowind, is the predictable fantasy setting. Yes - the to many players preferable predictable fantasy setting. Morrowind's more original setting was just a tad too weird to appeal to everybody.

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I disagree here. Oblivion sold better only because the market has inscreased and it was hyped as one of the first games for the 360. Naturally an older game like Morrowind released for consoles after the PC hype was done and over would gather less attention.

This is the point. If you develop a "next gen" with all of the RPG elements and PR whoring it *will* sell. Do you think the reviewers would whine that the game is too complex? Would word of mouth spread that there are too much to read for an average ADD kiddy? No, that would not matter. Nobody developed such a huge-ass RPG before and the marketing retardos only assume that its an instant failure. Just look at the strategy genre and a rather large number of games released every year!

Actually I don't think I do like exotic settings...

What I loathe is what has been built up as the archetype of fantasy for the masses. The kind of generic, half-assed, D&D world where they try to cram in as many different influences (badly) as possible to catch as many geek sub-groups as possible.

The abundance of that kind of setting is not the problem and I don't need novelty.

Middle Earth is interesting. Realms of Arkania is enriched by the Teutonic atmosphere. Conan and even Midkemia have a certain charm. Kryn is pretty cool. Why is there no Newhon RPG? The Land of Stephen Donaldson? The world of Ultima was cliche High Fantasy that I personally am not a fan of but it moved a lot of people.

These are all original and coherent worlds, that have their own aesthetic and are worth being told.

And if you don't have the imagination or the cash to buy an IP there are hundreds of historical settings just waiting to be used... Ancient Babylon, India, the Mayan civilization.

Bastardized, cut-n-paste settings written by teams cultureless hacks is the problem.

What I want to know is why the fuck are they still serving us Forgotten Realms in 2007? When will RPG fans rise up and say that enough is enough?

At least somebody says that NWN2 is as boring as a soap opera.

The other interesting thing is, that IWD1 is only 4/13 by Section8's measure – next best thing after Torment in Infinity.

This is why i come to the codex. I couldn't agree more, however, i can offer a counterpoint, especially since you brought up PST.

I'm not really sure what to call it, maybe "rule-set fatigue" but its just that sometimes when i'm playing a new game, i get frustrated with trying to figure out how it all works. No game is perfect and despite reading the manual and envisioning what kind of character i want to be and screwing around with character creation for hours, it never really works out right the first few tries. Half is just not understanding what's important and the other half is bad design.

I remember starting fallout over after playing for several hours when i realized that being a sneaky scientist was going to offer NOTHING valuable and that I better redo it and pick small weapons and speech instead. So i was offered something new, but it really turned out to be crap and almost force me to be traditional.

Or the reason why i never got very far in planescape -- i get my ass kicked CONSTANTLY. I have no idea why, I just dont know how to play the game yet and it goes from a learning experience to frustrating without ever spending any time in the "fun" plane.

anyway, i agree with VD and S8, but there are some benefits to familiarity.

I agree with most post here. I think probably devs just use the "standard fantasy rpg setting" because people are used to it. As hicksman posted, is much harder to figure out what to do playing a really unique RPG like PST, than for example a BG.
Probably is better to "play safe" for most fantasy rpg maker.
Anyway I think is still possible to be creative, even using fantasy settings.

This title is rather ill-suited for this rant. Maybe putting quotation marks aroun fntasy for emphasis. Because, at least the way I see things, Planescape was fantasy, just not generic.

Excellent ranting, both of you.

However, you failed to mention the likely cause: The shitty "pick up and play" mentality prevailent in gaming today.

Even though it's a pretty tired subject around here I think that the TES series would serve well as an example.

Take Morrowind. With all it's faults I think that the sense of "fantastic" was pretty much spot on in a bunch of areas. It might be one of the best realized worlds in CRPGs overall.

Even though there were elves and dwarves and a few orcs, they weren't your standard elves, dwarves and orcs. The elves were either annoying greedy little fucks, strangely ugly, stuck-up giants, or thuggish bigots with a tribal mentality. The dwarves were great artisans and scientists, which is a bit cliché, but there was no one home, and they still looked more like small stocky elves than bearded axe wielders. The orcs were a bit stupid, but a far cry from the standard horde, in fact, one of the more well spoken characters in the game was an orc (Umbra). Sure, the furries and lizardmen along with the obligatory norsemen and some of the other humans was a bit standard, but they were either too scarce, or just different enough not to ruin the overall feel.

However, for me, the main sense of wonderment lay in the architecture and the island in itself. Balmora, ok, it wasn't a gigantic "OMG strange" but still fairly removed from the standard euro-medieval setting. More like the clay architecture from ancient Egypt. From there the architecture just improved though. The giant shells of some strange extinct animal used as houses in Ald-ruhn (I sometimes wondered how the hell the leviathan whose husk now served as the main building would have looked). Even the huge buildings, aerial architecture, and underworks that made up Vivec gave a sense of wonderment. Also, even though elves are known for their tree houses, the twisted and gnarly, definetly not green, mushroom tree houses were *different*, and wonderfully designed and realized.

I could go on with a lot of stuff; skooma addicts, the pretty strange customs of the different kinds of dark elves, slavery, the empire vs. the ancient culture theme, the strange wildlife, etc. All in all it was definetely non-tolkinesque, and even though a lot from the real world and other fantasy settings, it was quite unique and adequately coherent.

So, why this tirade about Morrowind? People thought it was too strange. A lot of whining on the forums about the strangeness of the setting, and I would be surprised if the same wasn't brought up by the morons who made up the focus groups for Oblivion. And we all know what that brought us.

The general moron doesn't want a strange game that it actually takes some imagination to understand and gives you the "fantastic". They want a game that treads known ground without deviating too much from the norm. They want a game that they immediately can "pick up and play" and feel familiar with.

The sad fact is, fantastic fantasy and wonderment doesn't generally sell as well as the same tired old rehash.

I find myself agreeing with pratically all the points that VD and Section8 have made so eloquently. Without contradicting any of them, may I nonetheless offer a devil's advocate's argument in favour of more traditional (albeit non-clicheed) fantasy settings (I'm quite happy to keep elves and great big foozles in platemail bikinis out of the game, thank you...)? A traditional fantasy setting will feel as familiar to the player as it should to the character, who has supposedly spent his or her life in that world. If you drop the PC into an exotic world, you have to explain the gap between the knowledge that the character is supposed to have of his surroundings, and the lack thereof on the part of the player. This often tends to lead to either a "Stranger in a Strange Land" scenario (that is one thing that Morrowind actually pulled off decently), or the amnesia one, which is itself a tired old clichee. Or you could build in a narrator, exposing the prior knowledge of the character to the player (probably easier to do in text-based games; the "Who are you again?" options that sometimes pop up in conversations tend to feel a little stilted to me). Any other ideas for bridging this knowledge gap? Or do you feel that the exploration aspect outweighs the need for the player to have the same familiarity with the game world as the character?

dagorkan said:

...
What I want to know is why the fuck are they still serving us Forgotten Realms in 2007? When will RPG fans rise up and say that enough is enough?

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Brand recognition.

Also FR is not that bad per say, what you have is a unhealthy focus on a particular section and "save the world" plots that cheaps it ... I got out of it for my own reasons years ago but I still recognize its strengths and why people play in it.

Any other ideas for bridging this knowledge gap?

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How about an actually useful manual with a few pages introducing the world? They did it in the days of yore, so it's not exactly a brave new concept...

Great, should go to the Monkey Thread.

cultureless hacks

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That's part of it, however there is also that there isn't much of a reason to come up with anything new. It's not just that such ideas can be difficult to come up with, it's just that there isn't a reason to. For a lot of people, this generic fantasy stuff is what the Fantasy genre IS.

I would love to see more interesting settings. Planescape, despite being based on the Earth/Fire/Wind/Water cliché that has been done absolutely to death it still went beyond that and built up a much greater structure. I think that is the problem, people will take the cliché and just leave it at that.

I think sometimes that I've seen more creativity in level design for a lot of FPSes than I have in the entirety of design for most RPGs that I've played.

I wished I hadn't read this thread.
When playing next Fantasy RPG I will remember - and I know for sure, that I will remember - this thread and I'll find the game boring.
Nevertheless, VD is right. *sigh*

Good posts VD, S8, and dagorkan also - there definitely is a place for more familiar settings, when it's coherent and makes sense, as well as the more fantastic. Focus groups and consumer targetting are true evils of this world!

Also, i'm not too sure that an original setting is worth all the effort required to develop, especially from a business standpoint. You can still make a great game without spending all that time developing Lore, culture and new races and animals.

Of all the forgotten realms games that have come, there is a wide range of ratings from really bad to really good. They all were pretty much the same in terms of settings, but the players seemed to react more to the level of interactivity that the Infinity Engine games provided over the gold box games.

not to say that it wouldn't be cool to read a book or two in BG2...