The Foundation of CRPG Design
Joshua Bycer · 2023
Following the success of TTRPGs and the introduction of video games and computer games to the market in the seventies, we would soon see the rise of many CRPGs. A CRPG can stand for “Computer Role Playing Game,” but others have also referenced this as a “Classic Role Playing Game.” The 80s into the 90s would see the start and development of many popular CRPG franchises built on different styles, much like the golden age of the adventure game genre. Where dungeon crawler RPGs would focus on one area, open world RPGs would become some of the largest spanning CRPGs to be released. Might and Magic was first released in 1986 and was developed by New World Computing. The 90s was a huge era for RPG design both on the PC and consoles. Some of the biggest franchises for RPGs originated during this decade, and two of them would take open world CRPG design in very different directions.