On the Value of Roads
2004/09/13
Roads should not be considered some mere "nice to have" feature appealing only to a few players who keep asking for "immersion." Roads are important to creating memorable game experiences because they serve double duty as both a storytelling and a gameplaying device.
The concept of The Road -- and of Home, beyond which lies adventure and toward which one will find peace at the end of journeying -- is one of the most enduing concepts in all of human literature because it is symbolic of all journeys. Homer sent Odysseus out on the sea-road (as the Vikings called it) 2500 years ago in The Odyssey because that was how to make interesting things happen to Odysseus as he tried to return home after the fall of Troy. When Chaucer looked for a setting that would cause a group of very different people to interact, he set them on a road in The Canterbury Tales.
Roads are still crucial to modern literature as well. When Tolkien wanted to tell a tale about how a simple person could accomplish great things, he set Bilbo Baggins on the road out of the Shire in The Hobbit... and then sent Frodo down even greater roads in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien even has Bilbo singing a song called "The Road Goes Ever On." And as Frodo remarks wistfully, "Sam, remember what old Bilbo said, 'You have to watch yourself, Frodo. Once you've stepped out onto the Road, there’s no telling where your feet will lead you!'"
As new forms of literature, MMORPGs such as EverQuest benefit from having roads or paths that are safer than the surrounding areas that are "off the beaten track." This is important in both a story-telling sense (because journeying farther from home by taking roads to far-away places is the outer journey that mirrors the character's inner journey of personal change) and a gameplay sense (because players know they can find adventure by stepping off the safe road and traveling into the deep, dark forest).
Whether implemented for roleplaying or for pure gaming, roads are invitations to adventure!