   RPG: Being upfront and honest about repetition
Let's say that your game world calls for multiple similar environments-- I'll use cities for example. In reality, these environments vary only in limited ways. Everything else is repetition. So how to correctly manage expectations when you have THE SENSE of a lot of possibility spaces?Consider an RPG environment where the topic is the settling of a new planet. As you play the game new settlements pop up and push back the dangerous wilderness. These settlements vary in terms of services offered, prices charged and missions / rewards due to the faction that controls them and how advanced the settlement is.But while there's variation to a certain point I can't see the environments being wildly different. They're basically fallback points that service the player's forays into the unknown, and it's likely that they'll have the feel of modern, strip-mall infested Western towns of today. After awhile every place looks like every other place.So is there any way to be upfront and honest about this? If the game environment grows from one town to ten then twenty-five and beyond, how to control the player's expectations of what this means? Should I put this in the game narrative (maybe as a comment about conformity?)Or is it better to kill this theme and just focus on unique environments? My assumption is that the wilderness is what's supposed to hold the thrill of finding new and unique places.   
  When a frontier town is made one has to ask what purpose does it serve to the greater society it is a part of. These towns do usually one of two things, either harvest a resource or refine a resource. These towns aren't founded because some people were bored and said "Hey let's go build a town here"(well some are but those usually don't last too long). Now there is a third potential reason why frontier town is made, its citizens are outcasts from society. These towns generally are not near any major resource but are in areas to generally support life, so things like water sources and farming land are usually nearby. Now for what's going to determine the look and feel of these towns and their people is going to be the type of wilderness itself. People are naturally affected by the area they live in. It has an impact on the buildings as they'll use close by building materials and types of defenses depending on what predators live in the area, both animal and other people. The layout of the town may be affected by the wilderness as well especially by the resource gathered or refined there. This might have less of an impact on an outcast town as they tend to base it more on proximity to fellow townspeople(if they're generally nice people the houses and structures would be close together, for not so nice people, much further apart, comparing a European village with an old U.S. western town would give you a good idea). The wilderness type is going to affect the people greatly, well watered and easy food growing towns with little predators generally have more open people. Towns similar but with many more predators usually create hardy people where a person's individual strength gives them stature in the town. Remember, survivability in an area is going to be a key determinant in how the people act and think. Certain known predators in the area even can become a source of the town culture. Some may have their warriors prove their worth by hunting a certain predator when they are young. Others may have some form of tradition that's supposed to lessen the effect of a certain predator in their towns. Some towns will even form customs and long standing traditions based on what they harvest or refine. All of these really can make towns unique from one another. For a visitor just passing by in a region these towns will look very much alike. However if they are staying in the area for a long length of time they will pick up on such things as these and will really be able to establish a difference from Bobsville and Billsburg.   ;Quote:Consider an RPG environment where the topic is the settling of a new planet. As you play the game new settlements pop up and push back the dangerous wilderness. These settlements vary in terms of services offered, prices charged and missions / rewards due to the faction that controls them and how advanced the settlement is.In this situation, where it sounds like people will have flat-pack type cities that would most likely all be made in exactly the same way, with exactly the same layouts with the same materials, the thing that is going to make each city unique is the people within it. Need to have some unique story lines within these towns to make them feel different from one another.Quote:But while there's variation to a certain point I can't see the environments being wildly different. They're basically fallback points that service the player's forays into the unknown, and it's likely that they'll have the feel of modern, strip-mall infested Western towns of today. After awhile every place looks like every other place.In the situation you mentioned, yes that would basically be what they are for. All depends on what you want in your game. If you want to have exploration/excitement/whatever, inside the cities, you can do that as well.Quote:So is there any way to be upfront and honest about this? If the game environment grows from one town to ten then twenty-five and beyond, how to control the player's expectations of what this means? Should I put this in the game narrative (maybe as a comment about conformity?)If you're talking about all the "settlements" looking the same, with the same layout, you can definately inform your players of that, as long as it's believable and interesting. Just like how all Roman forts were built in exactly the same way with the same layout right across Europe. To help with efficiency, make relocation of troops easier, etc.Quote:Or is it better to kill this theme and just focus on unique environments? My assumption is that the wilderness is what's supposed to hold the thrill of finding new and unique places.Depends on what you want in your game. You can still have settlements that look exactly the same, but feel very different. Maybe one of the settlements has transformed into some sort of weird cult with that makes human sacrifes. Maybe another is full of hippies that are all vegetarians and worship squirrels. Another could be having problems with violence after dark and has a curfew punishable by death and be heading in a "big brother" direction. One town might be besieged by scary alien things. Yet another could have some sort of internal political conflict, rebels want to overthrow the leader, or whatever. Millions of things could make them different from one another whilst still having the same design and layout.   ;  Since this is a spacey futuristic type RPG, you could have a company that mass produces these settlements. In such a case, it wouldn't be surprising to find most settlements look exactly the same (since the pioneers basically bought a kit and plopped it down where they wanted their colony).Of course some of the colonies might have "customized" (vandalized? performed unauthorized modifications that void the warranty?) their colony, either for aesthetic reasons or because of something in the environment that required a change from the standard model.   ;  In all cases here I would say it is simply best to concentrate on world building. Figure out why they are building where they are building and what influences what they are like and everything about them.   