Yeah, approximately 2/3 of Gamedev's posters are in the US so a lot of us were in turkey comas or on the highway or at the house of parents who live in the stone age with no wifi, lol.

Well if you had thanksgiving, i hope you had a good one.

I think, if you want the core element of your game to be the story, you need to find a core story concept before you worry too much about the details of what exact features should or shouldn't be in your hybrid blend of gameplay. What is your game going to be about? Is there a mystery beneath the surface of the world or explaining the initial surprising events of the story and subsequent discoveries of new abilities and goals that become available to attempt throughout the game? Is there a buildungsroman dynamic where an initially young, poor, uneducated, or etc. person gains skills, wealth, possessions, and social standing including romance? Those are usually the two things I start with. Some games go more for fighting a great evil, getting revenge, retrieving something that has been stolen, escaping imminent danger from persistent bad guys, etc.

Yeah i'm actually thinking of my story at this very moment in time. i do have a post in here somewhere of one of my ideas:

EDIT: (I want it to be related to a modern political theme but in fantasy setting. which is why banishment sounded good. Like how Mass effect and Final Fantasy XII use this setting, i want to bring it more forward, for example. Imagine earth was merged into fantasy? you know?)

Taking my concept in mind, i went over it with a few friends interested in the concept and they told me of doing a ''banishment'' or ''redemption'' story. Where you have lost respect of the community and so you are banished from there, but at the end they need you back or something. most of the characters you meet hate you because of what you have done. And so you go on with these characters trying to understand each other as a group etc. Which i felt went with my modern theme and party attachment core element. but what do you think? i figure it sounds a little superhero-esqe

Yeah I had a great holiday - got to see both my mom and dad play Wii games, that was funny. Got some of my favorite kind of pie too :D (pecan).

Anyway, dirty politics isn't really my cup of tea, nor is anything that can be described with the word "modern" in any way, but I tried to make some helpful comments. :)

Try not to think too much in terms of restrictive concepts of games that you have played in the past. That tends to lead to retreads of older games. Plenty of people (myself among them) love both Skyrim and Final Fantasy games. That doesn't mean I wanna play a game that just takes certain parts of both games and mashes them together.

Think first of the story you want to tell. If people can't buy into the story, chances are even decent gameplay won't be enough to keep someone interested for long. Think of the motivations for why we want to care about certain characters and loathe others, and the events that mold a character from a piece of clay to the person we cheer for, cry for, or seethe at. Good examples in media of this are Walter White in Breaking Bad and Spartacus in the TV Series that ended recently. You start with someone that you don't have much emotional connection to and the process of breaking them down and building them up is paced but methodical and without waste. Probably why both are excellent TV shows.

Now think about gameplay elements that you find fun. Don't think about what genre they fit into, but what makes those elements fun and why you'd want to play that game. If you don't find your own gameplay fun, no one else is likely to either. Don't be afraid to experiment, but don't go out of your way to complicate things or make it seem too much like work. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Final Fantasy fan, but random battles that at times happen almost in lightning fast succession are meant to artificially lengthen the game and have no place in a modern RPG, no matter whether it's a "JRPG" or a western RPG.

Third, don't be lazy. Be willing to spend time tweaking game systems to get them right. Be willing to toss out concepts that you like but that don't add to the enjoyment of a game. And be willing to give your characters a really hard time. All powerful characters that always win and never suffer hardship are not going to become those characters like the ones I mentioned who people live and die by.

p.s.- when constructing the story itself, try hard to stay away from old cliches. "The chosen one," "the young girl gifted in magic," and "the old wizened wizard" are so stale in terms of rpgs that most people will instantly shy away from games that go there nowadays. Be ready to tell stories that are not expected.

Try not to think too much in terms of restrictive concepts of games that you have played in the past. That tends to lead to retreads of older games. Plenty of people (myself among them) love both Skyrim and Final Fantasy games. That doesn't mean I wanna play a game that just takes certain parts of both games and mashes them together.

Which means i should stray away from my concept all together and come back with something else because further and further down the line i'm finding it hard to even enjoy my game MYSELF right now, so i see what you mean.

Think first of the story you want to tell. If people can't buy into the story, chances are even decent gameplay won't be enough to keep someone interested for long. Think of the motivations for why we want to care about certain characters and loathe others, and the events that mold a character from a piece of clay to the person we cheer for, cry for, or seethe at. Good examples in media of this are Walter White in Breaking Bad and Spartacus in the TV Series that ended recently. You start with someone that you don't have much emotional connection to and the process of breaking them down and building them up is paced but methodical and without waste. Probably why both are excellent TV shows.

I've actually been having this in mind. keeping my motivation on '' what makes characters so loved? hated? '' and such. But character's are easy to create if i work on them. But a story is harder and i'm actually thinking about a story first before adapting it, but it's hard of course.

Now think about gameplay elements that you find fun. Don't think about what genre they fit into, but what makes those elements fun and why you'd want to play that game. If you don't find your own gameplay fun, no one else is likely to either. Don't be afraid to experiment, but don't go out of your way to complicate things or make it seem too much like work. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Final Fantasy fan, but random battles that at times happen almost in lightning fast succession are meant to artificially lengthen the game and have no place in a modern RPG, no matter whether it's a "JRPG" or a western RPG.

I've kept this in mind too. I've been trying to hard to make my game original but it's becoming more complicated than original in which most Silent hill stories become when trying to be original. (even though SH isn't RPG lol)

Third, don't be lazy. Be willing to spend time tweaking game systems to get them right. Be willing to toss out concepts that you like but that don't add to the enjoyment of a game. And be willing to give your characters a really hard time. All powerful characters that always win and never suffer hardship are not going to become those characters like the ones I mentioned who people live and die by.

I've been taught tons about creating characters. Most people feel emotional attachment simply because it relates to real people. Making a character so O.P is epic to some but ridiculous to others, i'm the ''others''. Like how i can relate to Gohan because he's a family oriented person while Goku doesn't appeal to me, even though he's epic and all he's ridiculously O.P (again dragonball z isn't a known RPG but a fighting game lol i need to stop making references to other genres but it makes sense right?)

p.s.- when constructing the story itself, try hard to stay away from old cliches. "The chosen one," "the young girl gifted in magic," and "the old wizened wizard" are so stale in terms of rpgs that most people will instantly shy away from games that go there nowadays. Be ready to tell stories that are not expected.

That's the rule i'm going by all through my game! AVOID AS MANY CLICHES AS POSSIBLE MUAHAHAHA

EDIT: thanks for the reply though, i felt this really helped me in terms of story. Other replies were in terms of gameplay which also helped to a certain extent.

Designing a story is hard - it might make sense to start with whichever part is easiest for you personally (for me I tend to start with a relationship I want to develop between a pair or triad of characters, plus a sci-fi or fantasy worldbuilding idea, but different writers find different points of entry the easiest). Once you have something, you can use it as a building block to help you tackle areas of story design that come less easily to you,

As for cliches and tropes, it's not that writers should completely avoid them, but instead be aware of which ones you really love, and why they really resonate with you and others; then reinvent them so they keep that core people love but are also a fresh and interesting twist. Dragons for example - dragons have been done a zillion times, but there are people who love them and there is room to do new and interesting things with them. Maybe the main character is the dragon, instead of a human. Maybe the dragons are dragon-like aliens who walk on their hind legs and drive motorcycles. Maybe the dragons are spaceships in a symbiotic relationship with a humanoid race which lives inside them. Maybe the humanoid race and the dragon ships are actually the same race but some of them go through extreme physical transformations to become able to perform their careers. And there are plenty of other fresh things one could do with dragon-like beings. Creativity happens when you can look at an existing idea, separate the pattern from the details, and remix it so you either put new details in the pattern or change the pattern to show the details in a new way.

In brief I'll just add that I don't think there is a single serious RPG project out there (finished or not) that tries to fit in either RPG or JRPG category by including and excluding things. All the RPG games are actually very different from each other in so many other ways just adding the J for some according to some arbitrary rule seems pointless.

Everybody tries to think outside the box and gameplay features, graphics style, plot complexity, characters just come as they come when they do. As designers people try to be innovative but the public just categorizes these games between rpg/jrpg/something else no matter what you do.

So what you are doing is no more or less than so many people have done before you and what the game industry does. You try to analyze the good bits in many successful titles and combine them in a new way.

Remember not to design too ambitious project because with Pokemon, Final Fantasy and Skyrim you are "name dropping" quickly more than any one project could handle.

Remember not to design too ambitious project because with Pokemon, Final Fantasy and Skyrim you are "name dropping" quickly more than any one project could handle.

Well... It's completely appropriate when one first starts brainstorming to list games that you are inspired by, or want to use as a common starting point for discussion with other people who are also familiar with those games. It's if you try to include all the features of three AAA games that an indie project can't handle that. Or if you try to market a game by saying it's better than or identical to a specific AAA game, that's generally also bad for an indie project.

Also, not absolutely everyone tries to innovate - there are a few projects where their main goal is to imitate. But yeah mainly as designers we all want to make an original mix of our favorite features from games we've played. It's not actually necessary to have any really new features, though some designs do have one or two.

Another thing which would greatly help the sense of unity is to create several large scale events which occur in the world and are somehow tied to the overarching story line. These large scale events would occur no matter what path you're on, but the path you've chosen will effect how you interact with those events. For example, imagine that at a fixed point in the timeline there's an army which attacks a city. Depending on your current branching path, you may find yourself in a number of positions. Perhaps you're at the front lines of this attacking arming, or maybe you've enlisted in the militia of the city and are defending it. Or maybe you just happen to be strolling through the city at the time of attack. Or perhaps you're in a distant land altogether and you only hear word of the attack. Or maybe you've found a way to prevent the attack before it even happens, such as by helping form a truce of some kind.

Sorry about dragging out an old point from the thread, but I'm late to the discussion:

For the longest time, I've had this concept of making a "real time" RPG where the player interacts with the world as it plays out its natural cycle. I most certainly agree that it would be a Herculean sized task to write out all the possibilities, but not impossible. The timeline story system I came up with I call "Nexus" as every major event is a Nexus Point of change in the world's history where the future storylines diverge. (A decisive battle, weather or not a scientist succeeds in detonating his superweapon, maybe if Hitler didn't get elected, etc...) The player can directly affect the outcomes of Nexus Events through direct intervention (Leading the Attack), or indirectly by affecting variables that influence the outcome of a Nexus Event (not healing the potential future NPC War Hero a week before so he died, also not getting the shipment of magical talismans in time to the front). Win or lose, the story continues along the available Nexus Event Paths to an eventual conclusion at the end of the timeline.

Of course, I haven't ever done anything with this system besides daydream about it. But judging from the discussion in this thread, the idea's time has come. I'm eager to see what anyone can make of it. If I ever get my motivation up to make an RPG, I'd certainly like to make one with a Nexus Event driven storyline.

Another thing which would greatly help the sense of unity is to create several large scale events which occur in the world and are somehow tied to the overarching story line. These large scale events would occur no matter what path you're on, but the path you've chosen will effect how you interact with those events. For example, imagine that at a fixed point in the timeline there's an army which attacks a city. Depending on your current branching path, you may find yourself in a number of positions. Perhaps you're at the front lines of this attacking arming, or maybe you've enlisted in the militia of the city and are defending it. Or maybe you just happen to be strolling through the city at the time of attack. Or perhaps you're in a distant land altogether and you only hear word of the attack. Or maybe you've found a way to prevent the attack before it even happens, such as by helping form a truce of some kind.

Sorry about dragging out an old point from the thread, but I'm late to the discussion:

For the longest time, I've had this concept of making a "real time" RPG where the player interacts with the world as it plays out its natural cycle. I most certainly agree that it would be a Herculean sized task to write out all the possibilities, but not impossible. The timeline story system I came up with I call "Nexus" as every major event is a Nexus Point of change in the world's history where the future storylines diverge. (A decisive battle, weather or not a scientist succeeds in detonating his superweapon, maybe if Hitler didn't get elected, etc...) The player can directly affect the outcomes of Nexus Events through direct intervention (Leading the Attack), or indirectly by affecting variables that influence the outcome of a Nexus Event (not healing the potential future NPC War Hero a week before so he died, also not getting the shipment of magical talismans in time to the front). Win or lose, the story continues along the available Nexus Event Paths to an eventual conclusion at the end of the timeline.

Of course, I haven't ever done anything with this system besides daydream about it. But judging from the discussion in this thread, the idea's time has come. I'm eager to see what anyone can make of it. If I ever get my motivation up to make an RPG, I'd certainly like to make one with a Nexus Event driven storyline.

That actually sounds like an interesting idea. Of course, I've taken a break from this post to actually start practicing gameplay ideas and concept i have in mind. You're not late to this discussion, it's still open haha. I'd like to see what other people's thought's are still as i'm still committed into creating something even though i've been told so many times that it'd be a massive task. I'm starting small and figuring out different concepts right now within a small rpg story i'm creating at this moment.

P.S: I don't want this post to become old!

Since what you are looking to is innovate the RPG genre from what I'm getting, but you don't know exactly how,here is a small advice from me:

Examine the source material.

All RPG video games and sub-genres evolved from a single concept,which we could call the Mother. (of RPGs)

Basically,both Western and Japanese game developers came up with what they thought was the closest transfer of pen and paper RPGs to the Video Games medium.

Before the video games we call RPGs come to fruition,there were the pen and paper RPGs,like DnD.

The video games that we today call RPGs like Skyrim and Final Fantasy,had games like DnD as their basis and foundation to build upon.

If you'd really like to do something original,start from point zero: Learn what the source material is,and how it is played. What its main experience is supposed to be. How it works. What is the very definition of the genre.

This way,you will get an idea of the DNA from which all other RPG sub-genres evolved. You will have a solid foundation,to build upon.

Getting to play DnD can seem a little overwhelming at first,but perhaps you might also like it! :)