Crafting the Story

With a lot of the systems for the game in place, I have started on what is probably the hardest part: creating a story that is compelling, easy to follow and not dumb.  It's not easy to do when I'm trying to keep this in the style of old-school CRPGs, which didn't always have a lot of storyline to begin with.  Most just had a simple directive to give you a reason to bash monsters...like  the "kill the evil wizard because he's evil" type of plot.

Taking a page from the SSI Gold-Box games (like "Curse of the Azure Bonds" and "Pool of Radiance"), I'm spinning my story in a similar style, through events and dialogue provided by NPCs.  But, while I'm trying to give the story a solid direction and give the player something interesting to do, I'm trying to stay away from overdoing it.

In one sentence, we learn that the goblins don't like intruders...and that their chieftain keep slaves.

I'm not allowing myself to write walls of text and whole books of knowledge into the game.  An NPC tells you what you need to know in a couple of sentences and that's it.  The point needs to be clear and it needs to happen quick enough to get you back to the action.

Sure, I could go into rambling character stories and give tons and tons of information like all those Japanese CRPGs (Final Fantasy, for example), but that's not how the old school computer CRPGs did things.  They were frequently limited on space.  I don't have those same limitations, but there's a real art in telling your story in as few words as possible.

I could have had her lament her troubles for fifteen minutes, but what would be the point?

Somehow, I have a feeling this will probably be the part that takes the longest.