Thriving Ghost Town: Difference between revisions

Due to [[The Law of Conservation of Detail]], towns and cities in RPGs rarely have an observable population measuring more than a single digit (or, at most, the 'teens); this is far smaller than any [http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm realistic level of basic economic sustainability].

 

 

A typical town the heroes find themselves in usually consists of the following; a [[Trauma Inn]], a weapons/armor shop (the true metropolis may have a separate shop for each), an "item" shop, a specialty shop relating to the game's [[Functional Magic|magic system]], and no more than three houses. With the exception of those [[NPC]]s living in those houses, the entire remainder of the population is apparently homeless; some [[NPC]]s seem to exist for the sole purpose of standing in a specific location and [[Welcome to Corneria|talking to passers-by.]]

 

Related to [[Space Compression]]. See [[Ghost Town]] for towns that are actually abandoned.

 

 

* ''[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link|Zelda II the Adventure of Link]]'' arguably tries to avert this by depicting towns with houses that serve no plot or game purpose and where NPCs are constantly walking past you and off screen. Of course, there are still a small number of character models and most of the extra NPCs just repeat the same generic dialogue.

* Mimiga Village in ''[[Cave Story]]''. The small population is justified in that the [[Big Bad]] had already kidnapped most of the Mimigas before the start of the game, but there's also a noticeably small number of houses, meaning either most of the Mimigas were homeless or their houses were perfectly destroyed.

 

 

* The old freeware adventure game ''Omega'' had a starting town that was pretty huge by the standards of the time, but the only people you saw on the streets were guards; everyone else was apparently on permanent house arrest.

* Though most of the ''[[Quest for Glory]]'' games are victims of this trope, the second game manages to avoid it by constantly having townspeople stream in and out of the plazas. You can't talk to them, however; you don't speak their language.

 

 

* [[Fallout 3]] justifies this in that all of the towns you find are, in fact, ghost towns. They're just abandoned ruins of old decaying buildings that a handful of people manage to scrape by in. Usually only being about one or two houses, as with only a few limited guards and resources, there can only be so many capable of living in the area.

 

 

* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' both plays this straight and cleverly hides it. Towns are nearly always too small, but cities have plenty of buildings. It's just that the developers didn't model the insides of a great many of those buildings and locked the doors shut. This has the added bonus of creating walls where the players aren't supposed to go, ''and'' giving Blizzard a place to add buildings—Stormwind's Auction House, or the barber shops, for example, were originally just those empty shell-buildings.

* ''[[Guild Wars]]'' Zig-zags this. A couple places that are implied to be capitals or important towns actually look really ''really'' small. (Lion's Arch in particular) However, many of them have backgrounds that the player can't really access. ''Factions'' is probably the biggest aversion ever - Kaineng City takes up ''half the continent''. While the Kurzick locations play this straight, it's actually a little more justified with the Luxon areas (Luxons are a bit more nomadic.)

 

 

* Unusual for a real time strategy game, ''[[Star Wars]]: Empire at War'' features small to sizable civilian populations and are interactive in that they'll either side with you and be controllable by the player, or side with the enemy, depending on that planet's pre-determined allegiance. Not only that but, when used in a large enough group, ''they were actually pretty powerful units'' (capable of taking down enemy walkers and tanks even!) and if nothing else they were strong enough to make for very useful distractions or at minimum scouts (they respawn).

** Played straight, however, in that while city sizes are at least above the threshold of sustainability (unlike most games), they're still ridiculously small for the cities in question, to provide better game balance and the possibility of a player actually upgrading a city within a reasonable amount of time. This is most notable in ''Rome'', where the practical upper limit on population is ~36000; whereas in [[Real Life]] one of Rome's many advantages was its effectively infinite manpower compared to its rivals (the city itself having a population in the ''millions''. In the ''ancient world''.).

 

 

* Several of the later ''[[Ultima]]'' games, ''[[Ultima VII]]'' in particular, had towns larger than the norm, where every NPC had a home they returned to at night. Still, even the capital city of Britain has a population of fifty or so. ''The entire game'' clocks in at slightly over 100.

** In Twilight Town, this makes sense, since {{spoiler|1=they're replicas of the people in the real Twilight Town; when the simulation is interrupted, the literal NPCs disappear.}}

** Although, by nature of them being large [[Dungeon Town]]s, this trope is handled ''slightly'' more tastefully - Twilight Town, Radiant Garden/{{spoiler|Hollow Bastion}} and Traverse Town both have multiple districts, plenty of houses and (for Twilight Town only) modes of public transportation. There are enough homes (most of them unenterable) to qualify them as small settlements (with the population ranging in the hundreds or so), although the conspicuous lack of citizens is rather jarring. Perhaps they're all hiding from the Heartless and Nobodies?

* While ''[[Baldur's Gate]]'' definitely has less citizens than you'd expect, there are still a lot of people hanging around, a lot of houses are inhabited, and there are always a lot of people at the local pub. I'd guess it's about 75% of what you'd expect, which isn't really that bad.

** It's about a fiftieth the size of the pen-and-paper game's map of the city, but it's about the same shape and the landmarks are roughly in the right places.

 

 

* ''[[Traffic Giant]]'' gives you cities with many buildings and thousands of inhabitants, and individually keeps track of each one.

 

 

 

* [[Deconstruction|Deconstructed]] in ''[[Erfworld]]''. All non plot important buildings in the city are completely empty, and seemingly serve merely to “be the city”; though they get occupied and used based on what they resemble. For example the slaughterhouse somehow feeds the troops through its mere existence, as there are no workers, and no slaughtering going on. Of course, the world they're in is based on [[Turn-Based Strategy]] tropes, where abstractions of this sort are commonplace.

** Not to mention other odd things; Farms “pop” piglets/calves/chicks, which get progressively older and fatter over the course of a few turns, until eventually they disappear and are replaced by pork/beef/chicken food items teleported directly to the consumer. Seriously.

 

 

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[[Category:Settings]]

[[Category:Acceptable Breaks From Reality]]

[[Category:CRPG Tropes]]