How do you individualize your RPGs?

[Moosetroop11]

My rpgs have never been too serious or meant for public playing, But I've always worked out the stroy as I've gone on... I find once I've thought up all the characters and story and world and history like some people do, the fun bit's over and I'm spending three years jumping through hoops. Better to give yourself a surprise every now and then and take the rpg somewhere else.

For that reason I tend to start work with an action-y sort of event introducing a couple of characters and go back and do the intro later.

One thing I always do first is make all the magic like five times as powerful as default so it's actually worth using MP. That spices up battles immediately. I try and favour magic and skills as much as possible and make quite a few monsters that have strong defence against attack. Also I make the bonus for using a super effective element vs a monster huge.

When I get stuck, I make a new character :p This is generally a bad thing, especially since I'm working on the third in a trilogy at the moment and over the course of the games far more characters have been introduced than have died. I counter that by running multiple plot lines along each other sometimes as characters take their own paths... but I would recommend having far less characters than me and developing them more. I'm definately guilty of not practicing what I preach.

 

Originally posted by Dragonblaze
star ocean till the end of time did something like this (through the third part had a gay twist)

That twist was so gay it was stupid gay. I was really enjoying the game up till then too >.>

[Zerlina]

Usually I carry around a notebook and create lore, history, characters, character traits, write down possible conflicts and story ideas. After that, I play around with rm2k3, and usually create several versions of maps and characters.

[Linkforce]

My head is a swirling torrent of ideas and concepts.  Whenever I get an idea, it gets stuck in my head, and when I get to that part in my game, it comes back.  It's a building process.

[Vlad Shadeu]

My games focus on not going through the story line.
like, the sort of boss you should fight as a level 5 character, when you are playing around with these level one monsters before it. training is one of the most important steps. but there is goodies everywhere. stare into a bookshelf, magic sword falls out (i actually did this in one RPG attempt) extras and bonuses are everywhere. Bonus characters and extra choices do exist. exploring and taking time away to train becomes a reward on its own. keep fighting, that monster will probably drop a spell scroll. that sort of thing.