Frieren: What if it was an RPG?

what if frieren was an rpg?

If you haven’t heard, there’s a wonderful anime (no, I haven’t read the manga) out there now, by the name of Frieren. The story itself is off-beat and speaks of what happens after the big bad has been defeated.

A heartfelt and touching story of how an elf is finding meaning in her existence, pursuing certain goals for herself, her companions and much more. As I was watching the anime, a thought struck me – what if Frieren was an RPG? What would it play like?

Considering the point at which the story unfolds, I didn’t think the way most RPGs choose their mechanics and designs would suit how this story might be told. So, with the constraint that I couldn’t use typical combat mechanics, how would I tackle telling the story in this RPG?

The first choice came with how we would handle Frieren herself.

She’s a mage and the series depicts her ‘love’ for magic ahem Himmel ahem by procuring more spells, that don’t necessarily see much use.
What if this became the driving force for why a player wants to find more spells and complete quests?
Note: This isn’t necessarily a typical reward cycle for RPGs as usually players can choose which spells they learn by assigning stats. Frieren would be an unusual case as we should assume she’s already maxed out EVERYTHING. In which case, this design choice makes sense!
We have our reward cycle, but how do we ‘play’ as Frieren? How does she cast her spells when in combat?
This is where I’d like to diverge from typical system design assigning buttons for individual spells and instead say that it’s conditional to whether she ‘knows’ the appropriate spell.
Hear me out. Frieren has a collection of spells and always seems to know what the right answer might be. Which means during combat players will be able to fly (spacebar -> wasd), dash (double tap wasd), dodge (wasd based on context), jump (shift) and move (wasd) as they’d like.
The attacking spells will instead be chosen through a system where the most relevant attack spell will be chosen based on how long players hold their mouse button (think of this as casting time), and where players are pointing.
Note: This makes the design for each character interesting as they have predetermined stats, as we’ve heard from the anime. This makes gameplay like a puzzle of its own, where players need to determine how strong the spell needs to be or how quickly they need to cast spells.

Okay, but what about when she’s travelling, meeting people, doing tasks…?
Well, here’s the fun part. Does anyone remember Ookami?
In similar style, players will learn simple spells and how to ‘cast’ them, by moving the mouse in patterns.
This makes tasks a bit more interactive, and hopefully less repetitive as you can add to her repertoire by finding more spells by completing more tasks.
You could get pretty spells like making a field of flowers, to spells like locating a lost accessory.

We now have a general game loop. It doesn’t stray too far from how typical RPGs work, but it allows us to be more experimental in how players play it.
Complete task / fight -> gain more spells
But how would we tell the story in itself?
The core areas of the story will remain unchanged, and instead it will be whether players met the criteria to unlock said story.
For example, in Episode 16, old man Voll tells Frieren he had a dream about his wife and it must be because he spoke about the past with Frieren.
Now here’s the fun bit – what if the conditional was for players to ‘wish’ for Voll to have sweet dreams and Frieren so happens to be the dream fairy?
This provides a way for players to interact meaningfully with the story and engage with all the NPCs they come across, as well as their teammates by giving them a tool to do so.
What does our game loop look like now?
Complete task / fight -> gain new spells -> interact further with the story

Keeping the core loop super simple allows us to expand without losing sight of what we’re trying to achieve with every quest, side story or adventure. However, this also means that to keep the players engaged, the mechanics need to feel satisfying (no pressure there!), as does the motivation to move forward through the story.