Another contributor, Aj Banda which I've meet from Bloggers.com recommends this Top10 list.
Here's Aj Banda's 10 (Ten) Usual things on an RPG
1 - Healing and Save Station
(e.g. Inn, camp, hospital, healing center, rest point, fountain)
Every RPG starts, with an adventure, and an adventure would be useless once you are defeated. That is the purpose of the healing and save stations. Oftenly named as an Inn and mostly found on every town. Most healing stations have save stations too, but definitely not all save stations have healing spot. Those save stations are mostly found inside the dungeon just before you trigger an importatnt scene.
2 - Healing, restoration and boost up items
(e.g Potion, Healing leaf, healing water, Power up, Phoenix, Revive, Restore, Panacea, Nectar, Union Plume, etc)
Since you cannot heal at all time, you need something portable to aid you. that is where the items take place.
Healing Items - as the names suggest, this restores your Life points
Restoration Items - this either revives the unconcious heroes or cures them from odd status like poison
Boost up Items - this items gives your heroes some boost up to their status, either tepmporarily or permanently
3 - Status Points
Characterize by the following:
a) HP (Health Points) - oftenly use and usually signify by a heart symbol. This serves as the life points of the character. Draining it to zero will trigger the game to end aka GAME OVER
b) MP (Magic Points/ Manna Points) - Oftely used together with HP and is usually used by magicians. This serves as the measurement whther a certain caharacter is still capable of casting a specific action like magic or a special attack
c) EP (Energy Points) - Something similar to MP but usually used for physical attacks or activities.(Well, most of the time)
d) RP (Rune points) - Similar to MP and/or EP
e) DME (Dematerialize energy)- similar to HP, as far as I know, only one game uses this kind of points which is the "Valkyrie Series". Well logically, they cannot use health points because their dead.
f) LP (Life points) - similar to HP
g) AP (Arts Point/ Ablity points) - Similar to EP
Other common status points are the following:
a) Attack Points - determines how strong the character physically
b) Intelligence - determines how strong the character in performing skills or magic. Also known as special attack
c) Defense - determines how much a character withstand a physical attack
d) Special Defense - determines how much caharqacter can withstand a special attack
e) Speed - determines the evasion rate or whether who hits first on a turn based battle
4 - Magic
Either one of the characters is a magician or at least one of them can perform magic, I'm pretty sure that there would always be something magical about the story. And when I say Magic, I don't mean like those that can cast fireballs but instead those that are not common on the real world.
5 - Sceneries
On making a game, one thing is always being checked, the Graphics! Whether the game is one of those old type games that has a poor graphics, there would always be a part where a very beautiful scenery would be shown. An example would be the big old tree at the back of Genkaku's house of suikoden 2.
6 - An Elder and/or A child
I don't know why, but this is very noticeable on every RPG, there would always be a child or an elder that would sometimes be a part of the story. You would mostly find an
Elder on the Village or I cryingf child on the way. (If they're not crying, they would be running or playing)
7 - Sword
Similar to magic, either one of the character is a swordsman(mostly the main one) or someone from the Evil forces would definitly used a sword. Or at least you can see it from somewhere in the game as a decoration.
8 - Armor and accessories
To boost up the characters status, they would be needing this stuffs. These are oftenly found on dungeons hanging around on treasure chests or dropped by enemies. Mostly they can be bought on an item/weapon shop on every town
9 - Map
It is something worth keeping on every RPG to avoid being lost.
10 - Guide
This is a very important part at the beginning of the game but mostly neglected specifically by the experience one. This helps you to coping up with the game specially for their special features.
- Reference/Source: Ajibanda.blogspot.com by Aj Banda
About Beneath the Tree A collection of algorithm, code and other programming methods. Includes programmers' point of view, interests and game reviews.About Aj Banda, the author
I'm Aj but some calls me aji. I'm a web programmer and a blogger. I used my blogs to share my knowledge to the world but most of the time it serves as a reference of my previous algorithms and source codes.
