This posting is about a special kind of puzzles, namely conversation puzzles. For all the environment interaction puzzles you’d normally find in a dungeon, look here: Puzzles (I) Morrowind was one of the last major RPGs with a keyword-based dialogue system (A) Background (Skip to (B) if you don’t care.) Conversations with NPCs serve many  [ Read More ]

Designing puzzles is one of the hardest parts of RPG creation. We want them to be creative and unique, but not beyond all common sense; interesting and challenging, but not frustrating. And for the icing on the cake, they should fit into the game world as well as possible (nothing like having to navigate a  [ Read More ]

(Inspired by this thread.) Before thinking about ways to block off an area, we must first decide whether we want to implement such blockades at all. I’m not talking about locked doors here, but large-scale blockades which impede the journey into the next part of the game world until a certain requirement is reached. The opposite approach  [ Read More ]

Yes, this is a post about grinding. No, don’t just run away! I’m aware that this is not exactly the most popular game mechanic ever invented, but there’s more to it than meets the eye, and certainly more than the “Bring me 100 frog ears” treadmill that defines so much of the MMORPG genre. Note:  [ Read More ]

Hmmm. The immortal Sid Meier once declared that “a good game consists of a series of interesting decisions”. (I’m not certain he’s entirely right with this, as it excludes all games revolving around dexterity or reaction speed, but then this site is not about Super Mario anyway.) If we try to apply this adage to  [ Read More ]

Over the winter holidays, I finished “The Quest”, brought to my attention by the Legend of Erthia creator. While it only recently appeared on Steam, it actually has a long history as a mobile game, having been available in the iPhone app store since 2009. There are several very favorable reviews for the app out there; I  [ Read More ]

I must admit I never really thought about money in RPGs until I found the CRPG Addict and CRPGs Revisited sites and their rating category “Economy”. To summarize the Addict, a game would get a high “Economy” rating if there were lots of ways to make money and lots of ways to spend it. The  [ Read More ]

So it’s half a year later than I had originally planned, but late is better than never, right? My thoughts about how to handle wilderness journeys in (fantasy) CRPGs have become a document long enough that I placed it in the Library instead of just making a post. Hope you like it, feedback is very  [ Read More ]

I recently came across a posting on the Legend of Erthia Facebook page where the creator mentioned sarcophagi in the game which could only be opened with sufficient strength. Someone commented: “Cool, I’ll use that idea in my own game.” Well, as one of the objectives of this site is to give RPG creators just  [ Read More ]

                  (Warning: massive spoilers ahead.)       If you’ve been playing Pillars, you will (eventually?) recognize the above picture as a shot of the final battle in the game, which is pretty easy if you have two wizards casting Gaze of Adragan and somewhat challenging if  [ Read More ]