Monday 15 April 2019

Collectibles in Games

My daughter watches adverts, and like any other child who watches adverts, she sees toys and jingles and things get lodged in her head. She knows Lelly Kelly shoes, Unicorn Poop (sadly real) and loads more. She sees me and my wife collecting the odd Funko Pop and she wants them too. All of us like to get the occasional Lego minifig blind bag and hope it will be the one we want.

(very happy that I have a Wizard of Oz Scarecrow minifig on my desk now!)

So just a small thought: what would an in-RPG collectible look like? What would a world with elves and dwarves have that would be interesting and thematic? Why should someone care? (player and character)

It can't just be about "getting a better sword" or "finding the three Zanthar Crystals" or some kind of key that's in four bits. What, small, interesting, non-trivial things could there be?

3 comments:

  1. Cheap rings that are identifiable as being from a specific place.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The obvious answer is gold pieces in old-school D&D type games, but that lacks the feeling of specialness I think you're going for.

    I quite like the interplay of collectibles in computer games and I've thought now and then about how to capture something similar in an rpg, but I've never got far with the idea.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for ideas guys! Still turning this one over in my head. Got a PS4 in November and have recently played a couple of big games (Horizon Zero Dawn, Resident Evil 2) and a lot of shorter/smaller indie games. Realised the other day that collectibles had bounced into my head partly because of playing games as well.

    I have a longer piece to write about "puzzles and problems" and Resident Evil 2 and RPGs, but every time I go to write it I feel like I'm about to write an essay...

    ReplyDelete