Why I’m creating an RPG.

Before I jump straight into an actual example, here’s a little bit about why I’m making an old-school console-style RPG. I was a kid in the 1980s and a teenager in the 1990s (which makes me old) and my first console RPG was Dragon Warrior for the NES. That was my first foray into console and computer RPGs, and although Dragon Warrior would probably seem simplistic and dated if I played it again now, I have fond memories of sitting in my parents’ living room for hours on end, looking for Erdrick’s shield, sword and armor so I could beat the crap out of the evil Dragonlord.

From there, the next milestone RPG for me was Final Fantasy. Yes, the first one in the series, not FF2 for the Super NES or anything after that. It was AWESOME by comparison to Dragon Warrior. I made party configuration after party configuration, and even though I played that game for at least a couple of months, I eventually moved on to other RPGs.

The next RPG I really enjoyed was Final Fantasy 2, and it was one of the first console RPGs that I remember having a pretty intricate story. Although the dialogue seems terrible to me now, it really immersed me in that world and made me care about the characters in the game (and there were a lot of them now).

Since then, I’ve played probably about a hundred different console RPGs on various systems, from the NES and Super NES to the Playstation and PC. I own a Nintendo DS and continue to play new games that remind me of those original console RPGs I started playing almost 20 years ago.

So, now that I’ve found RPG Maker VX, I’m having a great time designing, and building, my own RPG. Why? I’m a world-builder and storyteller at heart. I’ve written my own prose fiction, taken screenwriting and novel writing classes and have also written a script for a graphic novel series for a class at UCLA. I started playing tabletop RPGs when I was a teenager (it was Ad&D 1st edition in 5th grade) and became interested in creating my own worlds to set stories in. Because of my interest in interactive entertainment (I started playing video games when I was 4), I can combine all of these elements, storytelling, world building and gaming, into a single project using RPG Maker VX. Hence, I’m making my own game.

I’ll post screen captures of my progress on the game in future posts, and also write up my thoughts on the design process and my approach to design.

For now, I’ll move on to examples and the basics of using RPG Maker VX. I should have a completed example up shortly, specifically about creating Events in the game, so check back here from time to time. I’ll do my best to update this blog twice a week, at the very least. For really long posts, it might mean I continually update the post and eventually finish it. Anyway, keep on reading, and I hope you enjoy my future posts.