Spikes Tutorial: Story & Plot Development.
Well hello folks, glad to see you dropping by my fancy new thread, well I have been reading through the Story & Plot Ideas thread here, and well some of them are just plain awful, so much of the writing talent that was here when i first came to PokéCommunity has long since died, and in there place are generic story lines that are getting so bad you only need to read one of them to know what 90% of them are about, but now i am here to help you keep away from that generic route and keep your fan games fresh, because remember nice graphics do not make a game, an outstanding storyline does, if you need proof of this then play any of the PS1 Final Fantasy games.
help with that age old problem of character development with some helpful advice
1; Your Birthday.
So often when the hero's adventure starts in fan games it is on there Birthday, why? as far as i can remember the games never started you off on your Birthday and you don't have to either, i think this trend started because in the Anime, Ash stated that because he was ten he could get his Pokemon license, that maybe be true but he never started on his Birthday, he started after, all this means is you have to be 10 or older to become a Pokémon Trainer and so thats all you need to remember, start after 10 years old.
2; Obtaining your first Pokémon.
This is something that needs a lot of work, there only seems to be two ways in fan games to obtain your starter, as a Birthday present(see above) or from the local professor(who often is related to you), for most trainers in the Pokémon world this is not the case, most of them have to go out and catch there own Pokémon, or obtain them from there local Gym or Pokémon Center, due to most regions only having one professor.
Another thing that need to be worked on is why they are given that Pokémon, i see a lot of "here kid take this Pokemon and save the world" type reasons, why would a wise professor put the fate of the world in the hands of a kid when he could easily contact the E4 and region gym leaders, who would be much better equipped to handle a task like this, give them a more realistic reason for them to hand out a Pokémon.
3; Legendary Pokémon.
This always annoys me, Legendary Pokémon the Pokémon that seem to ruin more fan games than anything else, and they always do similar things, randomly appear in the hero's home town, randomly attack things(often including the hero), and randomly disappear, which then seems to mean that the hero must chase after this legendary beast with there just obtained level 5 Pokémon because they think there cool, or feel they must stop them, they don't need to, that is the job of the E4 and gym leaders, to protect the region, however, if a Legendary is introduced toward the middle/end of the game and had a solid reason to, and not just because creator thinks "OMG, THE END OF THE GAME IS HERE I NEED TO FORCE A LEGENDARY INTO THIS AND FAST" i personally would much rather go searching for legendaries that are not part of the story and are well hidden and feel like a reward for surviving a harsh cave or forest, and if you HAVE to use a legendary don't turn them into a psycho (unless the Pokémon is Mewtwo who is supposed to act like that), make them act the way that Pokémon is supposed to act and try your best to keep to the cannon for them.
4; Villains.
OK, first of all, just because this is Pokémon does not mean that the villains have to be called Team "Insert Generic Name Here", there is nothing original in this at all, second why does it even have to be a team? it could be one person on there own or just a small gang of up to 5 people, it's not like Pokémon needs a large amount of villains to fight because you have basic trainers and gym leaders to fight as well as wild Pokémon so huge groups of villains are not always needed, also they do not need to be after a legendary Pokémon every time, they could be after a place (e.g. the promised land from FFVII) and it could turn out that a legendary Pokémon lives there which they did not know about, or they don't even need to be involved in the Villains plans/story at all, if nothing else it will make your story a little more unique, and above all else DO NOT JUST GIVE THEM RATATA, ZUBAT'S AND OTHER RUBBISH POKÉMON LIKE NINTENDO DOES.
5; Rivals.
Rivals is a hard part to help with, every fan game has one, not every fan game needs one, some fan games need more than one, so I'll start with this, your rival does not need to be your best friend for the last X amount of years, too many people are using this because of D/P and it's already boring, in fact the hero doesn't even need to know there rival/s before the start of the game, allowing them to meet for the first time in the middle of the storyline allows for more interesting character growth, and above all else only add rivals if your sure the storyline needs them, there are plenty of other trainers to battle so if there just going to be used for random battles along the way and not the storyline, take them out.
6; Silent Protagonist vs The Talkative Hero.
This is another hard area, Nintendo decided on the silent protagonist route for Pokémon because they wanted it to be the players adventure not the characters on screens, it also makes it easier for the player to choose the Pokémon team that the want rather than ones that fit the character that there playing as, however there are times in fan games where the only way the storyline can progress is to allow the hero to talk, an easy way of getting around this is to give the player a series of choices on how to respond to the situation, instead of forcing one way, but sometimes having a talkative hero is the only way around the story, which sometimes forces players to think like that character and only capture Pokémon that they feel would fit that characters personalty.
Well this is all i have so far, it's not much and i may add more to it in time but I'm hoping it'll help some people to think and put more time and effort into there Story and Plot development more before posting yet another storyline that we have all read over a million times, because remember guys nice graphics make can make a game a hit, but a great storyline can make it legendary.