Role Playing Games (RPGs) drive me crazy. I love them, but seriously, they can be infuriating. I mean, let’s take a look at the go-to RPG story structure. You are nobody. You live a crummy, normal person life in a normal person town with normal friends and a normal culture. Then shit hits the fan, someone you know and possibly love is kidnapped, hurt, or put at risk of serious harm in the not-too-distant future. Then, you kiss normality goodbye and begin a quest to stop the rampage of destruction that is now plaguing your world and putting your lifestyle or normality at risk.
So, off you go, to save the world, acquiring skills and learning how to become the most epic warrior of all time so that you can confront evil head-on. Sometimes you band together with some other people, sometimes you go it alone. Who cares, you’re suddenly awesome, and you’re out with a pure heart to save the universe! But you don’t necessarily know that. You might think you’re just out to help a friend, or out to help your town or your community. But eventually, you always end up saving the world.
So why does this annoy me? It’s about the structure. A good RPG has anything from 50-500 hours of game play built into it. The main story is anything from 8-20 hours of this total. So what’s with the other 480 hours? Well, that’s the most important part of any RPG! That’s all the shit that you can do while saving the world when you don’t quite feel like saving the world. Someone lost a puppy. Go find it! Someone needs a haircut. Buy them scissors. Someone wants a mine full of zombies and walking skeletons cleared so he can steal the treasure that you’re going to go steal in the process of clearing the mine for him. Go clear the mine.
What makes this awesome? The whole time you’re out collecting bottles of water or catching fairies or chasing puppies, the evil power that is destroying the world is apparently sitting on his ass eating grapes and jerking off. He’s the laziest villain ever, because as you are rising to power, he’s just hanging out saying to himself “I’m going to wait to make my next step in global domination until someone comes to throw a wrench in the machine.” He has no drive, no ambition! He’s just hanging out waiting for you to roll up into his space and stab him in the back before he reaches global domination.
What I expect from a RPG and a villain is this: “Warrior, while you were out collecting some chickens for the farmer that let them all escape because he’s lazy and left the gate open, Super Villain X decided to kill the king and took over the kingdom. Way to waste time.”
That’s what I want in a RPG. Someone, go make that game so I can lose at it for collecting horse poo in a jar.
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