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How To Write an RPG Journal – Part I: The Basics

This is the first in a series of posts that attempt to deconstruct the humble computer RPG journal. Other posts in the series are:

RPGs. Role Playing Games. Games where the emphasis is on role-playing and story, choosing what missions to complete and how you complete them.

By their very essence, computer RPGs are complex. You can have five or more different tasks to juggle at the same time and for each task you can choose to do them a different way in order to achieve a different outcome. Gee, what would be useful to keep track of this? Why, a journal of course. How convenient that the game developers provided one for me. Now I don’t need to write everything down and lose it because the game will keep track of all the details, right?

Wrong.

So many times, I have seen journals that just don’t keep track of enough information. Or even worse, they update and you lose half the information you were relying on. So, over the next week or so, I am going to write the definitive How To guide for RPG journals. Some of it will be obvious to a lot of you, but trust me. I have played games that miss out even the most basic features. So, here we go…

The Absolute Basics

To start with, every journal needs the following information:

What quests have I found?
I like to wander around and talk to everyone in a room before I actually do anything. I’m not gonna remember all those trailheads.

What quests have I started?
Hey, it’s entirely possible to hear about a quest and do nothing about it. Or accidentally do part of a quest without realising. Personally, I like to keep trailheads apart from ongoing quests but that’s optional.

What quests have I finished?
It’s not good enough to simply delete a quest from the log once it’s finished, a la Guild Wars. In fact, it’s downright silly. Save games get lost. People play through twice to take the alternative path. I know I finished Guild Wars’ ‘Althea’s Ashes’ but was it with this character or another? I can’t remember. I have a life. (Contrary to what Boris Johnson would have you believe, but who takes him seriously anyway? Side note: check out the comment over there by Aranpreet Bhangal, a 14-year old who puts Boris and most commenters to shame most eloquently. One to watch, that kid.)

Back to the topic at hand – journals in cRPGs. They’re bloody useful when done well and an incredible liability when done poorly. Ideally you want to tie them into the map and inventory to help players keep things straight. Deus Ex 2 had a great premise of being able to choose who to follow but the clunky journal system made it almost impossible to keep track of what the heck was going on. I played the game for maybe 7 hours at the most before I had to stop. I had no idea which faction I was helping. I had maps and photos of all sorts of locations that I didn’t remember. By then, I just didn’t care enough to play on.

In the later posts I’ll talk about how to avoid problems like that by focusing on the details.