The art of the mini RPG

[coyotecraft]

Had this conversation with someone a week ago. They were making a short RPG for a game jam. But what they ended up doing was abandoning the RPG elements all together and stuffed the narrative between a fetch quest and some dialogue branches. They felt like the scope of their story didn't justify the rigamaroo of character progression and dungeon exploration, because it'd be over in 20mins tops. What's the point of leveling up or having stats that barely change?
I could relate to this problem, having given it a lot of thought in the past. But for the first time I was on the outside looking in and realized I had solutions.

First, if combat has no part in the narrative, that's fine. You can still have an rpg without fighting. You just need a character sheet and variables. All these dialogue branches could have a dice roll or alignment system attached to it. I've been playing text rpgs, and bodily changes are superficial, like losing an eye. Lower perceptions could lower agility or intelligence points. But there are consequences to becoming a werewolf or some otherkin. As some npcs might refuse to deal with you.

As for dungeons, instead of leveling up think about accumulating points. Points or items. Something the player will exchange. Maybe it's a drop item, or just gold. In context to a short-rpg, a limited wave of monsters or bandits is fine too. The player's character isn't going to grow much so progression will feel on-the-rails, so again use dice rolls for chance. Avoid battles with a distraction or instant knock out. Or at the very least separate large groups. Animals are low intelligence, and humans can unlock doors. Those are the kinds of stats you give the player to work with that aren't tied to numbers. You can use food as bait, beer to alter outcomes. But I think a fundamental difference between an adventure game and an rpg is that in and adventure game you are manipulating the environment, in an RPG you manipulate your character. It can seem like an arbitrary difference, especially in a short game, where it's the same amount of actions to get a key as it is to aquire lock picking skills to open a door, but it is a difference.

 

[Xhukari]

Ooof, yeah, if they had to make the RPG elements themselves, I can see why they wouldn't be worth it in that context. I don't get why we're presuming the game is slow though - we could always go the other way and dial it up to 11; either by having those small stat changes result in a big difference, or big jumps in stats. Kinda like, you start with tough fights with Slimes, level up, and you're one-shotting slimes but getting tough fights with kobolds, etc, etc.

And going off that idea of statistical changes from decisions / consequences, you could make a small RPG be like a smorgasbord of small, tight-knit decisions. Like if you decide to drink at the bar, instead of doing your quest, you'll become tipsy (-Perception, +Toughness/Armour) but now a bunch of events have changed (e.g., you missed the Highwayman encounter at the bridge, and instead when you go there, there's a young girl crying over the corpse of her father, etc). That way the small RPG gains a bunch of replayability, and could be say, a game you do a playthrough of whilst sat on the toilet.

I feel, the shorter the RPG, the more narrative/story has to give way to using mechanics / gameplay to show parts of the story, instead of telling about it in dialogue, or what have you.