RPG's and Visual Novels (part 5)

The central character that you play in an RPG or a VN is really what sets apart the genres. The story of a VN is written about someone else—a character that already has pre-designed history, motives, and personality. So, while a VN is a story about someone else, an RPG is a story about you! In a way, it's actually a bit ironic, because the concept of an RPG—a “ROLE-Playing Game”--is that you play the role of someone else, which is what you're actually doing in a visual novel! This is similar in a JRPG, but in Western RPG's, you're either playing as yourself, or you're creating your own character as you go. VN's do allow that to some degree if they are the type of visual novel that allows you to make decisions as you play, which can sometimes shape the story into something entirely along the personalized path of a “new” character you've developed with those choices. Ultimately, my extensive experience with RPG's is informing the way I develop my VN. I am learning more about the genre by playing VN's and reading comments by VN fans, and I'm realizing that I need to keep the combat portion of the game small to keep the audience. That works out because the story I'm writing only calls for a small handful of combat scenes, and I may even design a mechanism to skip combat if that's your preference. The way I present combat may be somewhat of a hybrid of the two genres, but the way I present the protagonist is very much within the traditions of a visual novel.