RPG Building, Behind the Scenes (part 4)

Tension in your RPG story doesn’t necessarily mean that you need a clear villain. There are villains in the Solar Echoes universe, but they are not as immediately involved in the story as the interactions of the 7 different alien races are. Creating various cultures or factions in your game universe—each with their own motivations and abilities—can appeal to different players on many different levels. You want players to be excited about at least one of your character races, and so you need to think about the different types of mindsets that exist in the real world. Try to design your character races around these different viewpoints, and you will find that the story almost writes itself when these people are put within proximity of each other. Yet it is also important to keep in mind the necessity of commonality. If you make your character races too drastically different from each other, you’ll end up with everyone at war and that will create all kinds of boundaries within your larger story. Make sure that there is something that is shared among several different groups—a common ground of some kind. This can serve to bridge the gap between the differences, and will allow for groups of the different characters to form and work towards this common goal. You may still have conflict within the group, but a shared purpose will provide an excuse to bring them all together. As a result, your players will feel free to choose any character race that they identify with and yet still have a reason to partner with the diverse characters other players have chosen to use.