PATTEN: Don’t treat your monsters like garbage

Garbage cans want me dead.

This is how it typically happens: I’m strolling through a corridor, minding my own business and an irate trash receptacle appears from around a corner, ready to fight to the death.

Why does it hate me so much? I don’t recall ever giving it moldy leftovers. Maybe I don’t recycle as much as I should.

Perhaps it’s just angry at the world for its appearance. I suppose having rainbow stripes, always wearing lumpy shoes and being more squat than my typical inanimate brethren would put me in the dumps too.

The “Giant Garbage Can” in the old DOS game “Moraff’s Dungeons of the Unforgiven” typifies a problem with RPGs and story-based video games in general: Who are the monsters?

They must have some strong convictions to doing nothing else (that we know of) but patrolling and hunting. I suppose the “easy” ones in a game’s early levels must be especially motivated as their deaths are nearly inevitable. And if the game respawns the not-so-special beasts, things are even worse – these low-levels are immortal beings stuck in a loop of life and death!

I know for many games such lines of thought are over-the-top ridiculous. It’s just a game, so kill the dumb monster!

On the other hand, if you have created a believable world, complete with interesting magic/technology, it would be a shame if the player plowed through the faceless inhabitants without a second thought.

In fact, you should consider monsters the central part of worldbuilding. All the other elements in the game, from the weather to the magic to the user interface, should revolve around what is a traditional RPG’s main interaction: dealing with enemies.

“Dungeons of the Unforgiven” is the first RPG I can remember playing. My brothers and I would take turns exploring the shadows, daring each other to go deeper to more perilous passages. We had a lot of adventures seeking out bosses, running from monsters that were twice our level and (when we were lucky) finding a ladder to safer floors. During our fights and flights, we viewed the monsters as objects that got in our way and endangered our gameplay, much as I viewed the S-shaped tetrominoes in “Tetris.”

Here’s the setup for “Unforgiven”:

At the top of the dungeon is the town, where you do the boring stuff of the game, such as buying supplies, staying at an inn to level up and getting healed. No monsters are in the town.

Descend to the level below, and you’ll find some easy monsters. Below that, they are a little harder and so on. The levels are grouped into sections that feature different groups of baddies. There’s a deadly female warrior section, an elementals section, etc. Some monsters, however, wander all sections, such as the Giant Garbage Can (even monsters don’t like to litter, I guess) and the Flask of Disease. On every section is a boss who’s a shadowy (depicted as partially transparent) version of one of the native monsters.

The game is turned based, and although it looks like “Doom” (which also came out in 1993) at first glance, it does not have animation (not necessarily a bad thing).

Although Steven Moraff is credited as the sole author, it almost appears “Unforgiven” was designed by two people.

Moraff Version 1 made section monsters at least appear decent. And the game’s graphics are not to be taken lightly – much appears 3D and it works with just about any PC graphics mode of 1993! Good Moraff even made an intriguing backstory for the world, suggesting it’s not Earth (called “Eart” by the inhabitants), but might be a craft of some kind. (As far as I know, you never discover anything about the world beyond the text dump you find in the help menu.)

The other Moraff made whatever monsters appeared in his head: “There isn’t enough variety! I need more monsters – ones that wander all over the dungeon. I want to ship as soon as possible so … hey, that wastebasket next to my desk looks mean. In fact, I should start adding human features to all sorts of everyday objects! Flasks! Balls! Syringes!”

The result isn’t a horrible game – it certainly gave the Patten brothers some tense moments – but it’s undercooked.

Another example of what not to in your game: Although different monsters live in the dungeon, they all attack the same — “The Lesdedian Warrior (or the Flying Spectra, or the Shadow Demon Queen …) does (whatever number it dinged you) points.” Wouldn’t the Stone Elemental’s way of attacking be different from the Werebat’s? A little extra color would have gone a long way here.

So when you design your monsters, keep the following in mind:

• Quantity of monsters is important, but don’t lose focus on quality. You don’t want to (literally in this case) display trash.
• Aside from boss characters, you probably aren’t going to delve into any backstories or personalities of individual monsters. But you can give them group quirks within the context of the game, at least. For instance, the text of the Wind Elemental’s attack could be something like, “The Wind Elemental sword of thunder beats upon you for 8 points.” If this were shown graphically, you might see a little animation unique to the Wind Elementals.
• Base your monsters on themes. This is where “Dungeons of the Unforgiven” shines with its monster-specific sections (though you don’t have to locate them as strictly as that).
• Let us know how your game’s villains fit in the world. When Edward Syringehands attacks me, I deserve an explanation!
• Have a monster occasionally break the apparent rules. In this game, confining the section monsters to their levels of the dungeon is a hard-and-fast constraint. Let’s say I’m playing a reasonably powerful character, and since I’m low on health, I’m making my way to the town. I’m in the upper, “easy” levels … and I stumble onto a Vulture of Death, which should be several sections down! Suddenly the game got much more interesting! Little surprises are what make games fun, and monsters are good vehicles for them. (Just make sure the player knows the surprise is not a bug and you’re not cheating. You could give clues about the possible broken “rule” early in the game.)

As I said in last week’s column on magic, people play games to experience struggle. Monsters are opposition personified here, so why not put a little extra effort into them?

Shabby monsters are unforgivable.

Next week: Let’s put this all together!

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