How to scaffold a game in RPG Maker

I'm so glad you've decided to join us on this merry adventure this month. The place to start when you begin making any RPG is to create a scaffolding for you to hang content on. You can't paint the walls of a house without first putting up the drywall. It's the same with an RPG. If you are really excited about the story or the battle system or the character art and you start there, neglecting the bones of your game, then chances are you'll burn out with something that isn't actually playable. Therefore, the first thing we need to do is make our game playable from start to finish.

The Structure of an RPG

Isn't it a lot of work to make an RPG playable from start to finish? Not at all! It's actually very easy. We're going to make a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) before we do anything else. We arent' going to concern ourselves with battles or map design or anything else. So what is the bare minimum that you need for an RPG? Let's think about it.

Pick your favorite JRPG and think about it. They all follow the same basic pattern:

First you find yourself in a town or a dungeon. This is the beginning of the story. Where we introduce characters and get excited about the journey we're about to go on. We'll call this the "Opening".

Next, you'll find yourself in a place to catch your breath, gather yourself, retreat to if you run into trouble. It might not be a town per se, but it's a safe place where you aren't in danger. We'll call this a "Town" because areas like this usually end up being towns.

Then, you'll need to leave that town to go be challenged by something. Monsters, new game mechanics, etc. These are "dungeons" through and through. They may not be a proper dungeon under a castle, but that's what we're going to call them for convenience.

Then you'll repeat this cycle, moving from Town to Dungeon to Town to Dungeon and so on until finally you reach the "Ending" where the conflict is resolved and the heroes go off to their rest at the finale of the story.

These are the bones of any RPG and they look like this:

Creating Your Maps

I'm going to start up RPG Maker and create a new project. I'll be using RPG Maker MV for the pictures, but I'll try to shout out differences to XP or VX Ace where I can. Don't feel like you need to do this yourself right now, but when you do start your own project I would recommend starting your own project this way.

Creating a new project is easy!

Ah, a new project! Endless possibilities.

If you look down in the lower left corner you'll see a small list with one entry in it called New Map. This is our list of maps in the game. To add more maps, we need to right click on the name of our project and select "New" or press the "Enter" button. 

Adding a new map is easy.
The only things we care a lot about right now will be the Name and the Tileset options.

You can rename a map by right clicking and selecting the "Edit" option and then changing the name of the map. I'm going to add and rename maps until my project looks like the one below. These are all the maps we'll need to play our game from start to finish.

These are all you need to have a complete game. Really!

Add the Opening

First, let's open the "Opening" map by double clicking on it. Pick a spot in the map and right click and over over "Set Starting Position" and then choose "Player". This is how the game determines where the player starts the game at after selecting "New Game".

Events are their own large topic for another time, but for now you need to know that they're how our game is glued together. Events are how you make things happen in the game. I'm setting up a simple event that displays a text box that says "This is the opening" and sends us to the next area. In the photo below, I've added some map features to help remind me where the exit is.

Adding the Town

Next, I'll go into the "Town 1" map and set that up. I'm going to include an NPC (he's implemented with an event) and when you talk to him, he'll give you a key. I don't need much on the map to make the bones of our game here, but I've included a bit of a path from one side of the screen to the other and a door to use the key on. If you try to open the door without the key I'll show a little message that says the door is locked, but if you have the key then it will open. We'll look at how to set this up exactly in a later article. For now, it's enough to know that when you open the door it takes you to the dungeon.

Adding the Dungeon

With the town taken care of I'm ready to set up the dungeon. Now normally there's a whole lot of thought and consideration that goes into this, but for now the important part is that there is an end to the dungeon and we can get to that end. Therefore, I'm going to set an NPC down on the map (I'm not even picking a new character, I'm reusing the same old man from Town!) and make it so that when you talk to him he says "Blargh! I'm dead!" and then the game takes you to the Ending map.

Add the Ending

Finally, I'm at the ending. This would be where all the resolution happens but I'm going to set this up to be more or less like the opening. A message appears that says "Ending" and then the game takes you back to the title screen.

Our game is now complete from start to finish. It isn't much, at all, true. However, the game has a beginning, middle, and an end. It has one "puzzle" even! This is not interesting, fun, or compelling, but it is a complete game. You could sit down and play it from start to finish. I didn't customize the characters, the art, the music, or the game systems. This is about as barebones as it can get. To prove it is complete though, you can watch my thrilling playthrough in the youtube embed below.

What Comes Next?

Now that I have the bones of my project I can pick an area of the game to improve and start fleshing it out. Some ideas might need their own bones made (like, if I wanted to make a crafting system or a mini-game or whatever) but each one falls somewhere into the flow of the game that I've already made. In the coming articles we'll explain some of the things we glossed over here and show how to expand upon them. How do you design a map? What exactly is an event and how does it work?

Stay tuned.