#34 Quest Givers

 Today we'll inspect and deconstruct the concept of a quest giver. Following that I'll start implementing the quest I devised last time.

Quest Givers

In stories, characters are one major source of movement/change. One specific figuration of that is a quest giver. Such characters provide the player with quests and are function thus as initiators of sections of game experience.

Initiation 

By their very nature quest givers are the main component for setting up a quest. Here the promises/ dissonances will be introduced, which need to be reflected in the subsequent progress/decisions and final payoff/resolution (see posts #17 and #20). The quest giving is the moment were the transition to a new story and experience happens and it is the designers task to make that transition right.

An initiation can also be seen in a more abstract context of going off into the Unknown, allowing yourself to learn something new, exploring unchartered territory. A quest giver in that sense is the liminal threshold, the access point to a new world or "palace of meaning". Even if the meanings are based on fictional signage, the meanings themselves are real and may be transferred to reality if they belong to a constelation that exists in realiy aswell.

On a more technical note, initiation by a quest giver carries the issue of "How to tell player this NPC is to be a quest giver?". There are various solutions to this

• "have all quest-givers directly approach the characters automatically" and related to this: introduce the quest giver in the context of another quest

• "clearly mark all relevant quest-givers somehow, such as having a sign float over their head"

• "make the quest-giver stand in a prominent place and say things that suggest their function"

• "don't mark quest-givers at all, players won't know if the character gives a quest unless they ask"

These are all taken in more or less verbatim way from the respective tvtropes site.

The above video shows an example of "automatically approaching quest givers" in Fable.

Trope Deconstruction

As the existence of the tvtropes site suggests, the concept of a quest giver is not particularly new to video games and indeed, it has been used quite often in many games so far. However especially in the early days of quest games these characters tended to be rather flat in their conception and often had a mostly functional use (at least that is my impression). This I found mirrored in books like the one Lee Sheldon wrote, where he devotes a large part of his section on quest givers on a commentary advocating that

There are many functions NPCs can have. But none of them need exist only as sterotypes or mannequins cut and pasted from town to town in a game.

A lot has evolved since 2004, and we find now that video games tend to divert more and more from characters that feel purely functional and lifeless. But I think it is an important lesson to have in mind for every designer newly entering this industry (as I am): For they probably didn't experience the origin of these developments and thus maybe need to understanding in retrospective why it is important to give special care to these NPCs.

Further Reading / Inspiration

• Jeff Howard (2008) Quests - Design, theory and History in Games and Narratives, p. 26ff. Howard inspired my paragraph on the idea of quest givers as access points to new meanings.

• TVTropes contributors (2021) Quest Giver. Link. The go-to site for tropes in media.

• Lee Sheldon (2004) Character Development and Storytelling, p. 85. On this page, Sheldon discusses the shortcomings and needs for quest giver design of his time.
  

A Diabolic Witcher Quest: Implementation

So, for this post I've implemented the quest I devised in the last post:

 Have fun. It's better played in fullscreen.

 

Ideas for Feedback

• How do you think the function of quest givers might be used in storytelling?
• Do you think my implementation fit the tone of my design?
  

Conclusion

So today I talked about the topic of quest givers and their meaning to story and quest design. I found the idea of those figures as transition points very sensible. Furthermore, I implemented a second quest design as interactive novel of sorts. I'm content with the result, even though the result did turn out quite experimental.

Have a good time!

#33 Quest Logs

 This post is about quest logs, journals, in-game quest descriptions and the like. Following some paragraphs on the topic I'll write a quest inspired by the ever glorious Diablo.

Quest Logs

In many games with a substantial narrative and goals related to space there is also some kind of quest log, oftentimes detailing what is to be done, why and (to some degree) how. It is also a good place to document things that have been done and give some contextual information.

From a media studies perspective, quest logs can be regarded as a visualization of the avatars goals/plans/ etc. It is thus a way to

• give an in-game rationalization of the tasks given to the player
• make the player understand her avatar better
• focus on task selection, pursuing rather than remembering
  

In a way, one might say that quest logs are a very good quality of life feature for games. This is underpinned by the vastness of task management tools like Trello, todoist or Slack which all have the same goals and effects.

I'll continue with showcasing some of the components/features actual quest logs have. First of all it is to say, that such a log is usually based on visual communication (with the occasional sound effect). It is from this perspective then that quest logs shall be deconstructed here.

A list of quests, categorized

Probably the most common feature and component: A list of all discovered quests is queried and displayed as a scrollable list of signifying visual blocks, labelled with the respective quest titles. Such a list is usually either filterable by pre-defined filters or search strings, or it may also be ordered into collapsible sections. Usual categories are: main/side/.. quests, location in the game world, timestamp for when it was acquired or finished/unfinished.

A classic quest log (from WoW) where quests are categorized by location.

Quest properties

Hereby I mean all static and dynamic (changing on runtime) attributes a quest might have. These can be coded by quest name color (see example above), extra small texts/numbers or tracking symbols. For instance in the above image, the green color of "Vault of the Wardens" means this quest is deemed "easy". Of course there are other attributes besides difficulty might be displayed: belonging to base game vs. expansions, number of participants (see e.g. "Solo", "Solo only", "Small Fellowship", or "Fellowship" in LOTRO), or is/is not tracked. Often there is a possibility to set a quest to "(un)tracked".

Quest content

By selecting a quest often an overview is displayed: Containing such diverse elements as a dynamic description, dynamic objective overview, rewards, location on the map or links to fitting entries of any external view.

A dynamic description tells the context and set up of the quest, but is updated and extended at certain points in the quest progress to reflect new happenings.

A dynamic objective overview lists the current objective(s) and possibly also preceding ones.

A rewards section lists wha the player will gain when finishing the quest or from which items she'll be able to choose from (although I've found the latter only in MMORPGs so far).

So this is it. These are the features I encountered in video games so far (I think). But what about some design guidelines?

Quest Title Guideline: Regarding the quest title, I'd suggest that such a name should reflect the quests underlying theme(s) in some way, catch the quests mood - but not too explicitly (e.g. not spoiling things), rather in a convoluted or artistic way, like a piece in the puzzle you understand only when having experienced the main point of the quest.

Quest Description Guideline: With the quest description it is more about giving the player the information to understand what's going on in the quest right now. So one might provide the trace in the quest by motivating the objectives and explaining what happens. Ideally the description is also embedded in the games narrative itself (e.g. written from the avatar's perspective.

A Diabolic Witcher Quest: And Thou Shalt be a-Blessing..

My quest design today won't be for Diablo as a game but as a genre, I guess. As base game I'll assume some standard open world/story RPG like The Witcher/Skyrim/etc. Anyway, here's the - quite dark - quest:

Gameplay Event: Quest giver sees the avatar and calls them for help.
Scene with Quest Giver: They asked for help because their aunt, Leyla is acting strange of late.
Objective: Visit the aunt in her hut
Log: A busy merchant approached you on the market and asked for help with family troubles: His aunt Leyla showed strange behaviour of late and he himself did not find the time to deal with this situation, so he sends you.

Investigation at Hut: She's religious, avatar decides to ask neighbour.
Objective: Ask in the neighbouring hut about Leyla.

Scene with Neighbour: They tell she went to cathedral of the nearby city and was weirding since, eventually vanished into woods.
Objective: Trace Leyla into the forest
Objective (optional): Speak to the cathedral's priest.
Log: Leyla appears to have been very religious, even venturing as far as to the city to visit the cathedral there in bad times. Her neighbour though tells you she had last been seen wandering into the forest.

Scene with Priest: Aunt had a hard time with herself after the husband died, apparently he'd been burned by the local lord for witchcraft. The priest prayed for her thus and ended with the standard formula "And Thou Shalt be a-Blessing..". On right choice/force induction he'll tell you that she had a very bad reaction to that ending.
Log: From a priest in the cathedral you learned of Leyla's troublesome past. She apparently sought the priest for help at times. [If learned:] To the priests confusion, a blessing he gave her tremendously affected her.

Tracing Footprints into Forest: Leyla is found praying by an ancient altar.

Scene with Leyla:
[Option 1:] If the avatar didn't find out about the blessing and her extremely negative reaction to it, he won't be able to guess that it was the blessing that made her snap - she'll loose hope and sacrifice herself on the altar when the player leaves sight radius.
Log: When you found Leyla, she was already in a state beyond help. You could but stand by and watch her way of concluding with life.
[Option 2:] But if the information was gained, then the player will  be able to convince her of living in a monastery and the true reason for her unsettlement on the blessing will be unveiled: After a long life of not achieving anything being left alone she felt a god-like redemption like that would just not be right (even though unconsciously she of course wished it to be true).
Log: When you found Leyla, she was almost in a state beyond help. Discussing her blessing seemed to remind her of the earthlyness of her troubles and she decided to take a more peaceful road for the last times of her life.
Objective: Return to the quest giver.

Scene with Quest Giver: The avatar tells of what he learned and achieved and receives respective rewards.

Ideas for Feedback

• Do you have any principles for the design of quest log contents?
• Might the quest maybe be a bit too dark?
• How could "good" vs. "bad" ending be more balanced into a morally grey difference? Is that even necessary?

Conclusion

I find quest logs interesting because they are a very direct interface to the underlying quest system. While the "real quest" plays out in the non-UI gameplay, the quest log is a means to access meta informations to the happenings (which is probably also one reason why they're more often abstract in their signs?).

Concerning that quest I wrote, well, I played Diablo II Resurrected the other day so I got inspired. Might be a candidate for turning into an inkle game next time, we'll see.

Until then, have a good time!

#32 Quest Objectives

 Today I'm gonna think and write about quest objectives. Indeed, making them distinct from quest goals will help understanding that matter more clearly, I feel.

Events, Goals and Quest Objectives

In my quest definitions so far one prevailing element is the existence and juxtaposition of events and goals. Since for me at least it never wasn't really clear how their relationships is, I'll try clarifying that in this episode.

Events and goals have in common that they are mental constructions, part of mechanisms in the mind. Events can be defined as abstractions and summations of movements perceived:

An event is thus fundamentally about the change from a previously perceived state. 

Goals on the other hand do not refer to the trueness/falseness of something in the world we perceive. Rather they make a statement about something one wants to be true/false therein:

A goal is about a future state that is wished to become true.

Note that unlike events, goals are bound to an actor of sorts. Events on the other hand are not necessarily originating from an actor only.

We see, that the production of fitting events is the means to fulfill a goal. We also see that the audience always needs to have at least one goal: That of wishing to continue to experience the story. This applies for all media, but mind how this plays out different in e.g. books and computer games: Usually the effort to continue the "book-experience" is trivial: You merely have to turn pages (those are the events needed). In games however the player's ability to participate in event triggering allows for much more complex ways of building the events necessary to reach the goal of "continue game-experience".

But of all this I've talked already lengthily in my post on narrative drive. I'll now turn my eyes towards quest objectives. First, what makes an objective different from a goal? Consider the question of goal-authorship in video games: It is obvious that the player's mind is the last instance of goal-creation. However those goals are oftentimes inspired or even afforded by the game: For example landmarks or those written goal propositions we get whe playing a quest:

Quest objectives in TES V: Skyrim. Source

These I call quest objectives and we see they are designer created and, as quest items, explicitely referenced by a quest system. By quest system I mean that part of the game's code that is responsible for revealing the events of a quest.

Here follows a short list of guidelines I think sensible:

• The KISS principle: Keep it simple, stupid. Players shoudn't have to employ specific postmodern literacies to decipher the objective presented to them.

• Thematic cohesiveness: As with all game elements, the objective too should feel fitting to the theme. One might use e.g. "thy" instead of "your" for a heavily medieval themed game.

• Player expression: As with decisions, goals allow for expressing player thoughts. If a player likes a character, for instance, then you might insert an optional goal of talking to that character before moving on at an important point in the narrative.

Typologies

There have been several attempts to create typologies of (quest) objectives or goals in games. I'll present one here as a pool of inspiration without much further discussion.

Firstly we have Debus, Zagal and Cardona-Rivera (2020):

Choose, Configure, Create, Find, Obtain, Optimize, Reach, Remove, Solve and Synchronize

When reviewing books on quest design or video game storytelling such as Jeff Howard (2008) or Lee Sheldon (2004), then I find that those do not provide exhaustive overviews of such goals. Their value is much rather in the attempt of an overall synthesis of thoughts on their respective topics. What a luck that there are on the hand scholars devoting themselves to specifiv topics such as a listing and destilling of "imperative game goals" (Debus et al.).

Further Reading / Inspiration

• Wictionary Contributors. event, goal. What a time to be alive for linguistically interested people.

• German Wikipedia Contributors. Ereignis (event), Ziel (goal).

• Lee Sheldon (2004) Character Development and Storytelling, p. 224ff.

• Jeff Howard (2008) Quests - Design, theory and History in Games and Narratives, p. 101ff.

A Solarpunk Quest: Implementation Part 2

I'm going to continue my quest for quest implementations. Here is the latest progress:

And it is in its finished form, for now. I added some consequences to the choices and reused the part about tanking from the sun, which I introduced in the first version. Also, some CSS magic, as you see.

Ideas for Feedback

• What design principles do you know or have for (quest) objectives?

• Do you catch up with the story progress in "Sustain the Moon"?

Conclusion

Another post is another win. And I am content with finally having thought and talked about the event/goal/objective difference, whose relations were a point of annoyement to me for quite some time now. Also the feeling of having been able to prototype a quest so fast with inkle is great. I'll probably do that again.

Until then, have a good time!

#31 Quest Items

 Shifting to some more - well - profane, or rather: 'classic' quest design topics. The first one in the line is quest items.

Items

So what are items in the first place? The wictionary tells me, it is a "distinct physical object" and, more specifically for video games, "an object that can be picked up for later use". I think I'd agree that in video games items are usually those which can be picked up and stored in an inventory. However it doesn't seem fitting to reality to say that every item may be used. So I'd go with:

items are distinct physical objects that can be picked up

This gives a good intuition for what is possible with them (some thoughts on meaning here are inspired by Jeff Howards book on quests (see below)):

• distinct implies that the player is able to perceive at least some of its boundaries, form and what else might be part of an appearance

  note, that this allows for an assignment of an equally distinct meaning to this item and also for the relative stability of that: nonetheless assigning different meanings is probably one of the more interesting things to do with items

• physicality gives items a very concrete existence, making them part of the spaces the player herself might pass through - it also forces certain aspects of appearance to be: a physical object needs a shape and a weight, for instance

  note, that this allows for literally embedding meaning into the game world: it is probably the basis to applied worldbuilding and environmental storytelling (see for instance this discussion of objects in the starting area of Cyberpunk 2077)
  

• lastly, the player is able to pick up items and possibly also discard them. well, assumed that the player herself is able to move, then she may then carry this item through the game world

  note, that this is a perfect setup of items as a storytelling device: we can assign the item a meaning and tell the player to carry that meaning through a game world - possibly even showing interactions between item and game world or item and avatar. this is an easy way to make a meaning durable
  

Items in TES IV: Oblivion. Source

The whole concept of items is thus a great way to provide an extra level of meaning relations for a game. The meaningful moving around of items is also quite useful in the context of characters or other agents: Being able to move items aswell, they can give them to players e.g. as a gift or reward, but they might also buy or steal them from him.

Quest Items

Now what are quest items? To answer this, I'll cite a classification made by Jeff Howard. It goes as follows:

1. The "lowest tier" contains items that are "largely useless" but give you "a sense of realism", so that which is known as clutter, junk or similar. Examples: garn, ashtrays, rotten tomatoes, ..
2. The second tier includes "functional objects" which may be used e.g. for boosts, fighting or special game world interactions (maybe a magic lamp uncovering past conversations) 
3. The third level is about quest or plot items. These play an essential role in the quest story or have "great magical power".

I'd like to disagree with the last definition and rather say that quest items are those, which are explicitely referenced by a quest system, "explicitely" meaning here that the concrete item is referenced and not "any sword" for example. This seems much more logical and useful to me.

Further Reading / Inspiration

• Howard, Jeff. Quests - Design, theory and History in Games and Narratives. Chapter 4 - Objects. Link. Has a big focus on the literary, quests, meaning and symbolisms.
  

• Sasko, Paweł. Lead Quest Designer plays Cyberpunk 2077! #1. Link. A big fundus of knowledge concerning mainly "storytelling, game design, quest design and psychology".
  

A Solarpunk Quest: Implementation Part 1

In order to actually implement a quest for a change, I downloaded inkle and wrote a system with hubs and dynamically addable, showable and deletable objectives. Then, I implemented the first half of the solarpunk quest from last time in it:

So this was nice and relatively easy. I'm thinking this might be a format in which I could also tell future stories here, instead of always leaving them in a non-implemented state.

Ideas for Feedback

• In which ways have you used items in quest contexts?

• Do you think my rather "quick and dirty" concretization of last post's quest design worked so far?

Conclusion

I am very satisfied with this post. It contained a theoretically inspired, but practical section on items and it featured an actual quest implementation (we haven't had those in a while ..). The link between them is missing, but I can live with that. For the future, I hope to continue with more such small-scale but worthy productions.

Until then, have a good time!