It's said that when we truly love someone, we love them not in spite of their flaws, but because of them, and this is also true for RPGs. As far as genre preferences go, I enjoy jumping around from platform to platform with a giant gun as much as the next guy, and being able to find guns and pipe bombs just lying around for the taking is great.
But sometimes I want the simple satisfaction of picking a warhammer off a fresh demon corpse. I want to upgrade my weapons, imbue my armor with poison resistance and drink a potion with my buddies. However, it's a vicious cycle. When I really get into an RPG, it's not a casual relationship. It's one of those crazy, obsessive flings that has an expiration date on it from day one. And like any doomed romance, if one spends too much time in it, one cannot help but notice some recurring elements that tend to get old after a while. Here are some time-honored storytelling cliches that RPG fans tolerate again and again in order to get that level up fix. Just pick 3-4 of these, add a villain and some monsters, and you've got yourself a game.
Lead Characters
To start off with, you're going to need a protagonist or two. Now, you'll want these to be young people, of course. And whoever they are, they need to be really pretty, even the male characters. Protagonists should look as much like Russian supermodels as possible. It also helps if they are shouldering some kind of serious burden, like living with a curse or having to help take care of a sick family member. If the family member you select is a parent or sibling, there's your main quest right there. You can save your mom and/or little brother, but only if you travel to the lost continent of Blargveria to harvest the tears of a Hoarkbeast under the light of the three full moons! Take this pathetic sword which you can replace in a few levels and this empty bag for looting of dead monsters, and get moving already.
Orphans
Need a more sympathetic protagonist? There's not a worthier, more tragic candidate than The Orphan. Armed with street smarts and shrewdness, The Orphan is still young enough to not have had all ambition beaten out of him or her by the harsh reality of life, but old enough to develop a love interest during the course of the game. The Orphan must also be impoverished. This will set up the desire to get more loot and take more side quests, but also serves as a plot device. The Orphan's low socio-economic status must be contrasted early on in the game with some sort of ruling class that will invariably produce The Villain.
The Orphan might be homeless, but it's also just as good if he or she has an elderly pal who functions as a de facto guardian and is perhaps employed as a shopkeep or some other service profession. If the Orphan has siblings, they will usually be younger, and one of them will be kidnapped. Introducing a protagonist as "alone in this world" is almost the strongest RPG character medicine there is. The only thing that could possibly be stronger is …
(drumroll, please)
Killing Off A Loved One
Sometimes it's just not enough to have an already orphaned character. Although that is tragic, the motivation of someone to succeed in order to make their long-dead parents proud is just not the same as a berzerker, rage-fueled oath of revenge. If we witness the protagonist's reaction to the death, or even the death itself, the idea is that we'll be that much more involved in the game's plot. And although it gets tiresome after a while, and tends to be slanted towards female victims (not just in videogames, but in movies, books and comics, to the point that "Deadpool" author Gail Simone coined the phrase "Women in Refrigerator Syndrome" as a means of describing the plot device, named after an issue of Green Lantern in which you can pretty much guess what happens), but killing off someone who's important to the lead character is viewed by many writers as a highly effective means of getting a player invested in a story.
Anyway, this has started to come off as a lack of creativity, but there's probably always going to be some part of us that wants to get out there and avenge the murder of his or her kid/sibling/parent/spouse. Plus, it can often mean that you obtain some kind of magical accessory from your loved one's corpse. A memento mori and 20% fire resistance. Nice. But surely you would give it up for one more day with whoever just got killed, right? Naturally. Now buckle down and exact some revenge, hero!
Paladins and Strippers
Fighters of any kind are nothing without protective gear, especially in a melee situation, so the right duds are crucial to the success of your game design. RPG couture, if it existed outside the realm of cosplay would have to be one of the most engineering-heavy disciplines in the world. If these guys were on any planet remotely resembling Earth, even the brawniest barbarian would have trouble fighting and moving in full suit of cast iron plate mail, unless that armor is actually a cleverly disguised mecha suit. Likewise, even the strongest of halter tops and the perkiest of bosoms could probably not work together to stay aloft in the way they're usually depicted, unless there is some kind of invisible armored cantilever system.
In addition to mobility issues, there are usually a lot of trinkets and embellishments that, while sometimes nice to look at, would actually be a serious problem in combat. All those belts and straps might look cool, but anyone that's been caught in a fight while wearing Juggalo pants knows that they're also just an easy hand-hold for enemies. Likewise with that iron bangle: unless metals work differently in other universes, that sucker would turn red hot and cost you an arm the second you took any fire damage.
Gravity Does Not Apply to Hair
I don't know how they manage it, what with all the trekking through hostile environments and fighting stuff all the time, but RPG characters always have unbelievable hair. In reality, if you have the kind of long, flowing hair that the ladies often sport (and also Sephiroth), you need to wash and brush that mane fairly often, or it's going to turn into one big, smelly dreadlock. And dunking your head in the nearest enchanted lake isn't going to cut it unless it's some powerful magic. You're going to need conditioner, and probably a hair dryer.
On the flip side, characters with shorter hair always manage to keep it in a perfect shape. Yes, I know this is just how polygon rendering. Hair is notoriously complicated. But it's also really amusing to think about what a game would be like if hair were depicted realistically. Showing the progression of a coif losing its spiky shape over time as it becomes weighed down with grease and monster blood would probably merit its own separate health meter for the amount of work that would go into it. Gross! I'm not sure why more characters don't just wear hats, to be honest. It's got to be easier to deal with for programmers.
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Gravity Also Does Not Apply to Weapons
Seriously, have you seen some of the nonsense that these people carry around? Some of these swords are nearly as big as the characters that wield them, and unless you're Pyramid Head, this is just not feasible.
However, Cloud Strife's Buster Sword set the bar pretty high for ridiculous weaponry, and though blades have been scaled back a bit in recent years, they are still fairly impossible, especially given that most of the people that are fighting with these things are underfed teenagers with no parents (see above). If you really want to own this one, though, make the weapon also transform into some kind of colorful mount or vehicle. Nothing but nothing is more useful in battle than a claymore that turns into an angry chartreuse rhino that will speed up your travel time and do your bidding.
Additional Details to Consider
These are the basics for constructing a story, based on hours and hours of field research (and by "field research", I mean 3 generations of Playstation consoles and more coffee than is probably legal in most places). However, the devil is often in the details, so don't forget to add some flourishes here and there. After all, it's the little things that make it special! Try throwing a few of these into the mix for just the right amount of idiosyncrasy:
– Is your lead character a girl? No swords allowed! That woman needs something special, like a bow or a whip. Or like, a giant barbed hula hoop. But no swords. Also, in accordance with above items, do consider killing her off at some point as a plot device.
-Chances are, if you don't have some kind of Healer or Medic in your character class system, you're going to rely pretty heavily on restoratives, which are usually either potions or fruit. However, the alternative, if you're in one of those games where there's a home base, is just to find some quaint bed and breakfast in which to take a nap. When you wake up, all your party will be fine and dandy once more, even if you were poisoned, blind, and on the verge of death. If only this trick worked for my malaria in "Far Cry 2".
-Don't forget to add a character to your party that's not white and/or blond. Note: Taking someone who otherwise looks like a white person, but throwing some kind of cute-but-weird extra ears on their head and then calling them an alien totally counts. Plus, if the character is female, you can even write her as more of a bad girl, since she doesn't need to be all innocent in order to score a boyfriend during the course of the game. Also, if you need to kill someone off, you can flip a coin between the alien lady and the female lead, as this will take your story in one of two divergent directions and possibly get critics to say things like "subtle, refined tragedy" or "engaging, brutal plot twist".
-If you can't think up a good way to introduce your game's weird fantasy culture in a way that doesn't seem contrived, just put everyone on a spaceship, and have each level be a different planet. That way, any weird stuff you want to toss in will seem completely reasonable. Anytime the plot calls for an explanation of something bizarre, simply have whichever party member is assigned to the role of "Older, cynical dude with a secret heart of gold who will probably bite it 3/4 of the way through the game" look at the weird thing and blurt out "What the hell is that?". Then have either a local NPC or a female party member demurely state that the weird thing is native to this planet and/or traditional. If you plan to kill the female character off as well (or as an alternative to the Cynic), you can have her make a biting comment that is a thinly veiled attempt at flirting.
-Finally, don't be afraid to experiment with anachronism. This means "Shit that's in the wrong time". Is your setting medieval? Throw in some ray guns! Put a girl in pants! Give people hyper-intelligent cyborg zebras to ride around on instead of horses or chocobos. And you can't do chocobos, anyway. In fact, all giant rideable birds are pretty much right out, so better think of something weirder, and whatever it is, give it absolutely crazy armor.
And remember, if all else fails, put some gear shapes in your user interface. People will say it's steampunk and it will sell like crazy. This works for people on eBay, Etsy, and the rest of the internet pretty much all the time.
Hopefully by now, you've got the semi-creative but not-too-out-there brain juices flowing and are ready to get to the writing. These are not obligatory, of course, merely part of a formula that's been proven successful many times. When mixed together in the correct ratio, these combine in a Voltron-like manner to form the perfect cocktail of melodrama, dragons and boobs. And it is these things which form the foundation upon which all truly great RPGs are built.
