A RPG, guide to making

My other tutorial on AoS's seemed to pan out ok, so I decided to make a new one on RPG's. I will cover a few grounds with this one: Terrain, Battles, Heroes and Units, Abilities, and Misc.

Terrain: The number one thing I find can make or break an RPG. Make sure the terrain is non-linear, and that there is plenty of room for what the characters will have to do. A large open space is more interesting than a small little passage. If it is going to involve a LOT of islands, or you just want to have the waterline looking more real, then start the map off with all deep water, and use the raise/lower tools to get them up to where you want. This produces an increadibly NICE water line, unlike those weird slope into some water ones. Make the area look how you want it as well. Add ruins if its an ancient or destroyed area, or add a buncha houses if it's a residential area. And don't be scared to use a different type of tile. Diversity is what makes everything great.

Battles: Millions of ways to do these. This can encompass a lot of factors. For the most part though, it's how a fight goes on. Most people use the warcraft basic battle engine, or also known as "place creeps, walk by, kill creeps." This works if thats what you want, but not everyone wants this basic idea. One way to do things is the "roaming creeps" idea, basicly just having them move in groups, and sometimes migrate to new areas. There is also a final fantasy style system where you move to an area and take turns attacking. This may work for you, but for most people this can get tedious to wait for 4 or 5 seconds to land another attack, and deal 1/8th damage. I suggest against this unless your prepared to fine tune it till your fingers bleed and your marrow falls out of your cracked finger bones.

Heroes and Units: You don't have to use heroes in an RPG. Just becuase they "level up" doesn't mean thats the only way to do it. Units can have psuedo level-ups, and in fact its possible to not have every unit give the same point value. Units have a field called "points" or something of the sort that can be edited to whatever you want. You can then make triggers that add this point amount to the hero's exp, or if your using units you can have it preform some other task, such as a psuedo level. And make sure that the units don't become abusively strong or something. You don't want to have your game ruined because once such and such a guy gets such and such he can kill anyone and theres no more point to play.

Abilities: Like in any game, balance is key. Just becuase a skill is "cool" and kills everything, doesn't mean its good. Most of the time killing everything is a way to tell imbalances. Most of the time, damage is NOT what you want. Status effects such as stun, slow, or some other thing tend to be more key to a game. They are insanely useful as well as a way to avoid the "this spell does damage, woooo" problem. Don't abuse spells either. Not every character needs "doom finger of mass destroying" or "uber healing of the gods x10". Also, be careful about who you give what abilities. Don't make one guy solid healing, or no one will pick him. Don't make another guy solid massive damage, or everyone will use him. You want them to have a choice, and it shouldn't be a "strong vs weak" choice. Most of all, they should make the game more fun.

Misc: Always ALWAYS come up with an interesting way to make the game proceed. Make use of the quest system, make use of gates and rocks and cinematics. Do everything you can to make it fun. Puzzles, secret items, or maybe even some humor can take your map from "ho-hum" to "AWESOME!"

If this isn't as good as my last one, I appologize. I just wanted to give out some ideas for RPG makers, since I am making an RPG of my own right now. If you want specifics on it, all I'm gonna say is that it will have you looking for keys. :)

Nice, basic, simple. I would add that one of the most important things, like in any map, is originality. Nothing beats a new concept. The units, heroes, attacks, skills, spells, creeps; that's all just the basics: you should build something new around this. (this is the last point in your tutorial, but I would make it the first.)

Oh, and I would appreciate the link to your previous tutorial.

its really nice, you covered all the basics..... also u forgot to add one thing "do not make another 'helms deep' or such RPGs, the idea itself is too much worn-out to be of any use (in other words, no matter how original and good you may be, most players will skip it because of the bad memories from previous helms deep RPGs)"
that's it :)

this was perfect as i was just about to make a thread of what i should do for my RPG i'm doing. heres what I'm doing and i need some ideas for terrain of a few left over islands and quest ideas.

Here it is:

so theres a huge map filled with a buncha islands, 8 or 10 islands, I have a few of the islands made just for creeping and that sort, 1 island is the main town island, 1 island is the end battle island. So I need ideas for terrain to put on the other islands, and ideas for quests. Quests / terrain for an island can be combined, but id rather have an island have a buncha quests, not just one.

The plot is this. The map is called The Beginning of the End, its basically, thers a huge monster controlling a machine making the world flood (why its all islands) and I need quests related to that, eventually leading up to killin that foo up with his big machine thing.