General News - Interview with Mark and Vince

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CSH Picone interviews Mark Yohalem and Vince D. Weller about RPG game design using details on upcoming games like Fallen Gods and The New World.

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Mark Yohalem (Writer from Wormwood Studios)

Vince D. Weller (Writer / Designer from Iron Tower Studio)

03 February 2018

I have a special treat for you all today. Joining me is Mark Yohalem, writer for Wormwood Studios, and Vince, writer and designer for Iron Tower Studio, to give their views on some of the finer points on modern RPG game design. Using details from upcoming games Fallen Gods, The New World, and Iron Tower's as-yet-untitled Inquisition game as points of reference, we discuss/argue inventory, skill, and combat systems, puzzle design and the lessons that RPGs can learn from adventure games, witchcraft, sanity points, metagaming, inconsequential death, and the save-load dilemma.

Please note the following abbreviations:

AoD - Age of Decadence

TNW - The New World

PS:T - Planescape: Torment

MOTB - Mask of the Betrayer

D:OS - Divinity: Original Sin

DM/GM - Dungeon Master / Game Master

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CSH: Inventory management is typically an afterthought in RPGs, but it's still something that must be considered, and there's no "norm." Some are weight-based, some are space-based, and some are unlimited. The main issue appears to be trying to balance realism against convenience, and it is often perceived that micromanaging an inventory can only detract from an RPG's real focus - the story.

Mark, what inventory management system will we be seeing in Fallen Gods? What are some of your other ideas for inventory management, or what might you implement in future games?

Mark: My usual approach - maybe a lawyer's approach - is to take a roundabout approach to a question that calls for a straightforward factual question. That approach feels particularly necessary here.

While there are a lot of things that I could describe as the "inciting event" or "prime motive" that led me to want to make Fallen Gods, one was a sense of dissatisfaction with itemisation and character-building in RPGs. I had long felt that RPG itemisation tended to devalue items; I think I had first written about this in connection with jRPGs because Suikoden took the rare (and in my opinion laudable) step of having the player upgrade rather than replace the characters' weapons. If you look at mythology, folklore, fantasy novels, comics - or any adventure stories, really - a characters' items are themselves part of the story. Indiana Jones isn't always swapping out hats and whips. Indeed, it is particularly the case that a hero's weapon (whether heirloom lightsaber, phoenix-feather wand, cavalry pistol, vibranium shield, whatever) defines the character and functions as a watershed in the plot. Arthur upgrades swords twice (first with the sword from the stone and then Excalibur), and each of those tells you something about Arthur and changes the plot's course. This is also true of weapons in most games other than RPGs - consider the crowbar in Half Life, the shotgun in Doom, the spread-fire gun in Contra, the Master Sword in Zelda, etc.

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