Can't seem to make my story into an interesting game...

I've been mining the forums for advice and information and I'm feeling a little discouraged. I know that, since I'm making a game, it should be more than just a vehicle for my story, but unfortunately I can't think of any ways to make the gameplay special. Yes, I could possibly list the planned relationship system as a feature, but that's really more of a story deal than a gameplay one. I just don't know what I should do to make it different from the prepackaged system (or, for that matter, how I'd even implement it, as my scripting skills are just about nil). Maybe you'd need to know more about my setting and story to help me figure out a unique system (if so, let me know and I'll edit it in), but does anyone have any suggestions of where to start?

While I'm here, a sort of related question: if I wanted to just "release" bits and pieces of a game for feedback purposes and not a whole demo, where should I ask/post? Early Development? I want help building my game and so I'd like to be able to get quick feedback on it (but I doubt I'll be ready for a decent demo any time soon).

I don't think I've even gotten 15 minutes into my game yet, let alone far enough for actual gameplay (sans one tiny battle), so maybe I'm jumping the gun a bit, but I like to get things planned and secured quickly.

I can't help you but I want to say you're not the only one with this same problem....Mine's mainly be cause of a lack of programming knowledge to make do what I want to do. Else I might not be so afraid of having a "boring" game. My friend's game has a relationship system and that is definitely a unique feature especially if it adds any thing to the other parts of game play at all? Her relationship system affects the battles and every thing. May be learn how to put a twist on your current features so it "seeps in to" other game play elements and look at it from that way.

As far as the story itself, when writing for an RPG you must think of the many ways the player may act. Are you going to constrict them to a linear story, or allow for multiple branches in the story that the player's choices will select?

An RPG isn't an RPG unless it allows the player to make choices, it is up to you whether these choices merely affect their character(like what equipment they choose to use affecting stats and/or skills) or the story over all. Since you are the designer, it is your choice which way to go with it. Think it through and decide, then tweak it to fit what you picked.

The first question you should be asking is "What is the bare minimum I need to tell my story with a game?".  Unfortunately, writing stories and turning stories into games are not quite the same thing and don't follow the same process.  I write stories when I feel inspired to write something...  If I feel inspired to make people experience a story, that story is entirely different.

If all you want to do is just tell a story, then just tell a story.  Get rid of the video game aspect altogether as it won't add anything to the story you want to tell.  I know that sounds mean and rude...  But, that's the honest truth about what you should do.  Some stories could never be made into games, because they're just not interactive.  A narrative gains absolutely nothing if you try to turn it into an interactive story and it isn't meant to be.

Think about some of your favorite books.  How would you ever turn them into a video game?  How would they be turned into video games without absolutely slaughtering the story and turning into a hollow shell of what they originally were?  There's a reason movie adaptations of books don't really work that well or turn out very good.  There's a reason a lot of people scream "betrayal!" when a movie adaptation of a book or even a video game gets absolutely everything wrong.  The story just simply does not translate into that media very well and nobody has really figured out how to fit 16 hour experiences into 2 hour ones.

You'll find that the same applies to standard storytelling and storytelling for a game.  When you start a game's storyline, you need to decide what you want the player to be experiencing right from the get-go.  You're telling an interactive story at that point, so you have to take into account that players will follow your story...  But, they'll also make stories of their own alongside it.  Their experience with your game is the story they will want to tell others and the one they will want to experience.  I don't mean you should throw in explosions and graphic nudity every 5 minutes...  But, you need to take into account that a vast majority of the time spent in your game will be the players doing video game playing things instead of interacting with your story.

Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about...

I have a written story that I've been working on, off and on, for about 5 years.  It's a story about growth, political intrigue, coming of age, war, and the price of freedom.  Honestly, it does not translate well to video game form.  There just wouldn't be enough content there to make a video game out of.  The story itself is characters interacting with each other, going places, doing things, and having an occasional fight.  There isn't anything there that translates well to a video game.  Now, on the flip side, I have a game I've been working on for almost a year (and still no demo!) and its story absolutely translates to video game playing quite well.  The entire premise of the game is to get the player to interact with the world at large, to take quests, to care about everyone involved, and to make world shattering decisions along the way that make them question their own morality and mortality.  With that in mind, it was easy to design a game around that premise as it really only involves tweaking how "level ups", "stat distribution" and "questing" traditionally work in most games.  It is a story that gave me a lot of leeway to defy some of the conventional tropes that most RPGs employ simply because they fit the setting, characters, and story quite well.

You may just have to scrap your story idea and start a new one if it doesn't translate well to video games.  A fantastic story in a game can only forgive so much "bad game".  People will overlook one or two really glaring and annoying flaws if your story is fantastic...  But, they won't overlook extremely terrible game design for a fantastic story.

Perhaps you could try something I do on occasion when trying to make a new game?  Start with a list of gameplay elements you want.  Start with a list of things you want in a game.  Once you have those lists...  Come up with a story that makes those things worth the player caring about.  If you do it right, you just made a really compelling story for a pretty good game.  You could even make a few random, but good looking maps, in order to give yourself a launching pad for your story.  Why is that castle there?  Who does it belong to?  Why should a player care?  Etcetera.

This article might help you. It helped me at least. But if you plan to have more branches, you still need to make a diagram for yourself. :)

I'm not stumped on how to make the story interactive, really (though the opening is a bit cutscene-heavy so far). I have plans for choices, though if I were to make a diagram of it the story would split and then converge again towards the end (with variations depending on the choices you made). The real issue is coming up with gameplay elements that twist up the pre-packaged systems (battle or otherwise). Though I did just realize that I seriously need to tweak the skills and weapons/armor and magic in my game to reflect that you're not using conventional RPG weapons and skills. That's a start, right?

One thing that has helped me is to play some other games and see how they tell their story. What did they do well in my opinion? What did they do badly? Some of the middle final fantasies can be a good place to check (6 - 10 are really story heavy if I recall correctly), just to see how they handle the story.

One thing I've learned myself over time is the more characters, the harder it gets to handle and make the characters stand out. I'm handing that some by having characters rotate in and out in the story (usually for plot reasons), but if you have say 40 characters, it is hard to make them unique and stand out, as they all start to blend together.

I do have to admit it is difficult! I've debated occasionally scrapping my game and making it a book instead.

I love what Tai_MT said and will add to it:

What makes a compelling RPG?  Well, when you make a great RPG, you're making an entire world, but unlike storytelling, you don't have complete control over the characters.  Granted, there is a coherent story behind the game and the player will be subtly or not-so-subtly moved in certain directions ("You want to go kill the Dragon as a Level 1 Mage?  Ooookay, you go do that *roast*."  "It works better if you go fight these kobolds first").

But when you tell a great story in a narrative, you can put in lavish descriptions, and complex nuanced character interactions, hinted at by facial expressions and subtle actions.  While these CAN be put into an RPG, it would be a staggering amount of effort (imagine making even simplified animated facial expressions and managing THOSE during dialogues and you'll see what I mean) to achieve what you can with a few well chosen sentences in a narrative.

So, a good RPG relies on abstraction.  We know full well those 32x32 chibi sprites are NOT what the characters "really" look like.  They are simplified representations, but give enough substance so we can "fill in the gaps" in our minds.  And when we draw even a great map, it is still a pseudo-3D overhead view, but as players we accept that to enjoy the game.

The real skill comes in choosing WHAT to abstract away and how well you as a developer can give enough detail to allow the player to enter and participate in the lavish world you've constructed in your narrative.  You don't need to give paragraphs of backstory as much as you carefully pick and choose pieces of the backstory to be doled out by NPCs, or occasional cutscenes, or as Skyrim did, even with in-world books. 

And as the plot unfolds in your game, you don't need super levels of detail.  You need just enough to lead the player on in the plot and let the player be immersed in the game world.  But as a game, it is all piecemeal.  There should almost NEVER be a case where a single NPC dumps a wall of text.  Why?  How often do people REALLY talk like that?    Sure, maybe if the Main Villain has the party tied up and wants to gloat.  But in casual conversation where people have a choice, they DO NOT idly stand around listening to someone's monologue.

So if you want to take a great narrative and make it a great game, try writing down the plot's outline and make the game walk the player through the plot, basically, keeping in mind what I just said.  You certainly can have minor NPCs hint at world backstory, just like people do in conversation sometimes ("The Civil War wasn't really about slavery you know.")  But let the plot be doled out in carefully chosen pieces, with other NPCs to fill in the representation of the world in the player's mind.

As for unique features?  Don't worry about them at all right now.  Focus on making a great story-based RPG THEN consider adding any features which are required for the story.  Adding a feature JUST to have a cool feature is a REALLY bad idea. 

As a player I'd MUCH rather play an RPG with a great story that's well told than an RPG with a fair story with a ton of unique features.  If the story isn't well done, I won't care about the game world and won't care what features the game has, because I'll stop playing.

I once wrote a huge and deep storyline to a game I was planning on making. Then I started the game and realized that I just can't turn the story into a coherent -game- experience. It had waaaaay too much downtime to be interesting as a game, and to fix that I would've had to add meaningless dungeons to fill in the gaps which obviously isn't a very good idea.

So I moved the story aside for later, and started focusing on gameplay design instead.

Once I knew how my game was going to work, I started writing a new story, on gameplay's terms. And I came up with a really deep storyline that I use in my game atm. It's a bit too ambitious so I had to cut it down a bit to keep it manageable, but that's pretty much how I've done it.

I think story is important, especially in a J-RPG, but it's not a requirement, IMO. Gameplay is king. Story can (and probably will) enhance the experience but if the story holds the gameplay down, you're doing it wrong.