Aug 24 2008
Doing the Research: Designing Areas and Instances
I am a gigantic fan of seamless, realistic worlds. In the old days of multi-user dungeons (MUDs), players would always start in a central city, and devs simply tacked on cool areas onto it. There really was very little rhyme or reason when it came to world and area design. “That’s cool!” became the standard of which new areas got implemented and “This seems like a good spot!” was the mantra for where the area got added.
Things are a bit different now in worlds where roleplaying is required. While most players can admirably suspend disbelief and take the world as its given, roleplaying becomes far more easy when the world is as believable as possible as well as basically correct when it comes to details. The average roleplayer playing a text game does a fair amount of reading, and they possess a good deal of information on various topics. When a detail runs contrary to what they know to be true, players are jarred out of their state of suspended disbelief, and they have a “WHAT?” moment. So, designing areas and instances in a roleplaying game requires at least rudimentary research in whatever type of area I’m building unless it is purely fantastical.
