(PS: Shambles is incorrectly listed as Rocks Fall instead of One Shot)

(PS: Awaken is incorrectly listed as Rocks Fall instead of One Shot)

The cost for starting a quest on a whim can be virtually nil, and since it's a hobby people are not compelled by anything but their own amusement to continue it. It follows somewhat naturally that a lot of people will realise that it's not really something they enjoy enough and will stop.

Compare how something like 30% of Portal players never actually get the orange half of the gun.

(Obviously the start-up cost is much more than nil if you're doing preparation work; even DFQ was several weeks of odd bits of planning to try to reduce the amount of ad-libbing I'd have to do, since I knew that'd be a weak point due to inexperience. And predrawing backgrounds. This probably counts as a sunk cost which can lead to overcommit and make people continue to run quests they're not enjoying to try to avoid "wasting" that effort, which means they'll burnt out all the more spectacularly when they snap out of it. On the other hand, it probably helps keep up momentum over dull patches---DFQ might have died early if I didn't have some non-mundanery lined up that I hoped would perk it up a bit.)

Uh well if anyone reading this knows my quests, my personal philosophy for Oren is to close as many loose ends as possible every thread, and to keep working until you can get to a stopping point. Sort of like plan out little self-contained arcs, or episodes almost. Oren and the big spooky house, Oren and the big spooky murder, Oren and the big spooky spook, etc.
Almost like they're shared-character one shots. I try to keep long-term stuff going too (currently his rivalry with Blejwas, for example), so that it's not all disjointed. But I prefer to see it as like a TV show, where there is a larger metastory but the focus of each episode is an Adventure Of the Day type thing. Now that Dio is finished with his alienation and is now becoming a battlemage, I'm probably going to start transitioning Eivr to something like that too.
I still feel terrible about TPD ending like it did with barely any resolution of the plot. I don't want that to happen again.

It doesn't really work for the more epic threads and stories, but I sort of like the system. It means that if I were to vanish off the face of the earth tomorrow, my quests could get moved to the completed section without much grief.

(PS: Designer Dong wasn't really a Rocks Fall; it just had a twist ending.)

>>329224
I've always been a fan of more episodic quests. It gets a bit hard to keep track of the big huge multi-chapter things.

What do you guys think about the granularity thing, though? In other words, how far-reaching each suggestion should be? In Tozol Quest, I've wanted to transition from highly granular actions (pick up that thing, push this button) to actions that have direct plot consequence (like Bite Quest) but am finding it impossible, probably because it's a facility quest. (If we're not pushing THIS button and throwing THAT switch, dungeeoneering gets abstract)

>>329226
This is how most quests have to be, really. Compare the first chapter of DiveQuest (literally picking through a dungeon piece by piece) with later chapters. RubyQuest was the same way, and even though I tried to maintain an adventure-game puzzle motif throughout, by the end the scope of actions had to broaden, but people adapted to this pretty well.

Honestly granularity of action is one of the reasons I've migrated towards more broad-spectrum quests like Dive and Andellousia, wherein the main puzzles and obstacles are dealing with people or open situations, rather than specific, Problem Sleuth / Ruby Quest / Sierra Adventure Game object puzzles. Really I took most of the inspiration for my newer approach from MudyQuest, which I feel generally did a good job of presenting puzzles in a way that didn't seem so distinct from the action ("HEY HERE'S A PUZZLE").

Granularity is less of a problem when actions are broad to begin with, knowing how to handle characters, or just aiming for a specific outcome in a general way.

Also like Brom said splitting chapters episodically rather than arbitrarily is hugely important. Like he said I've tried to split Dive chapters that way (e.g. "Muschio visits the Tower", "Muschio visits Ridder", "Finesse is a loli", etc.).

But Brom is like forty times better at this (and most quest-related things) than I am so really you should just be following his example.

Driblis 2010/07/08(Thu)11:48 No. 19429 ID: a83ce3
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Personally I don't know that I have enough experience either reading or writing quests to comment, but I will anyway because I am not good at anything if not flapping my gums and spewing nonsense.

I like fine granularity but I can see why sometimes it loses its appeal. Certainly you don't want to take it to an extreme "Breathe in, penji! Breathe out now! Now breathe in!" but you also don't want to have the players simply say "find the way out of the room, Ruby" and then she talks to Tom, gets the can, opens it, gets the key, and opens the door.

As quests progress, generally, and this relates to vidya also now that I think about it, the scale of the available areas and available tools tends to increase. In the beginning of Tozol quest, we had to work with Penji's extremely limited abilities and equipment to go from room to room. A locked door was a real hassle. Nowadays we are loaded with ordnance and firearms, and Penji is so counter-suppressed that she can tear a fellow in half. Of course we don't want to say "Level your gun. Ok, pull the trigger. Wait, I mean take the safety off and switch to burst fire on the fire selector." We just say "Shoot the guy".

I think it's reasonable to go to more macro-sized suggestions later on. You just don't want to lose that... sort of direct control. Telling Penji "Ok, handle this combat" is probably effective enough, as she is a remarkable warrior, but it's boring, and it feels like we aren't playing a game as Penji anymore, but rather managing a party. Sort of a shift from Minecraft to Dwarf Fortress, if you will.

All told, I prefer Minecraft.

>>329226
The author should not be required to keep track of months-old suggestions that may or may not have been long-term. If the suggesters forget their own plans, the author is not at fault.
If the quest doesn't end properly on its own terms, then it's better for the author to cut the quest in a suitable spot and make a non-interactive epilogue.
Trying to steer the suggesters to a scripted canon ending is a futile effort.

This is sort of tangental, but why the heck are all these one-shots in completed quests? I kept them out of that category for a reason. :|

Hussie's right, though. It's something I'm slowly finding out for my own quest.

>>329219
As far as reader suggestions go, Hussie has the special magic problem of 90% of his suggestions being random bullshit (largely because Problem Sleuth was very open to this sort of thing). Point still taken, though. (Maybe if I ever updated I'd be more familiar with this feeling.)

Also, both of the quests I've finished were basically "rocks fall" endings. Whoops. (And based on their length probably qualify more as slightly-longer-than-normal one-shots that took forever to get finished. And wait one isn't even tagged properly???)

I just think it's funny how both of my completed quests have a '?' on them :P

>>329238
well, sevi isn't really done at the moment.

>>329238
Both quests finished... and then started again, I think?

>>329236
Hussie has the problem of allowing suggestions (when they're open) to pretty much everything. On the other hand, Quests usually focus on a single character, sometimes including their companions, or a second viewpoint. This allows us to focus on a specific goal with our micro-actions, instead of just making everyone do random bullshit, a distinction I think is quite fitting of the names "Quest" and "Adventure".

The size of the community is another massive difference between us and him. We can actually form plans (and then immediately disregard them, of course) and talk with each other. With the simple suggestion mass he gets, even ignoring the fact that much of them aren't given a second thought of what they're trying to do even with their current action, that kind of cooperation and communication is impossible.

>>329238
They wouldn't if you didn't troll us by restarting quests we thought were done. Then continuing them after we think they're done again.

>>329250
when has this ever happened?

>>329251
Well I recall Sevi having a redo where we went for the horrifying end, then it picked up from the first continuity in another thread. For anything else I may be imagining things because I am insane.

I didn't have a big problem with this kind of stuff. I didn't do things "episodically", but I also tried to avoid requiring anyone to remember something that happened 5 chapters ago-- usually characters would remember for them.

Of course, I had a Command Queue system which lent itself to commands having a hold on the flow of plot in more subtle ways than a typical "Command, Action, new command, new action" style seems to have, so that might be why I didn't struggle much with actions not making the plot go forward. Even if the action was "Pick this up", I simply found a way to make picking it up vitally important for continuing.

This is probably not how you're supposed to do it, but I was kind of a newb at this type of thing.

>>329256
Community size may also be a factor. Tezakia had a handful at most; most /quest/ quests have anywhere from that number to what appears to be a couple dozen or so for the most popular ones. The "big" /tg/ quests (like Ruby) had probably at least half an order of magnitude more than that. MSPA has an absolutely phenomenal amount.

It seems to be more difficult to get increasingly large numbers of people to work in a coherent direction, meaning that when you get up to MSPA levels you've got absolutely no coordination or planning whatsoever and therefore no ability to connect a sequence of granular actions into proper plot movement.

Ooooor something. :O

>>329259
>Community size may also be a factor

Youarewisebeyondyouryears.jpg

>>329256
>if the action was "Pick this up", I simply found a way to make picking it up vitally important for continuing.
I pulled this shit all the time in RubyQuest, and to me it was sort of reverse-railroading (giving every player action meaning and purpose and building the quest around that, rather than vice-versa, so everything you did felt important).
Unfortunately to the observer it looks exactly the same as regular railroading.

I sort of pull this sometimes, but since mine is such an open ended one it's usually more about getting ideas from stuff people suggest and turning the story in one direction or another or putting something I think is sort of cool in there, rather than making it central to the plot (though that sometimes happens too). An example for anyone who reads mine is the cyclical nature of the last Eivr chapter with the weird crayon stuff at the beginning and near the end.

>>329267
I think that may be a requirement some times in adventure style quests. The first part of Journey originally had a set cave layout with certain things planned out ahead of time up to Deme meeting a Lohrke (who at the time was going to be female) but then as /quest/ was navigating the cave, I ended up reshaping the cave and it's items based off /quest/'s actions and suggestions, which made me think people might think I was railroading, when I was really just taking their good or clever ideas and saying to myself; "That's a good idea, I'll give 'em that."

This persisted through the rest of Journey Quest which was, I think it's safe to say, for the better

>>329259
Oh right. This is probably a huge part of it. Not to mention my base contained people who were largely into roleplaying. They were more likely to give those huge dramatic speech-commands instead of typical things like grabbing objects.

>>329267
I mostly managed to get away with it because half the items didn't end up having a use because I forgo-- um, because... I'm awesome. Yes.

I imagine the best way to go is a balance of making set puzzles, but also putting items there you don't actually have a use for. It kind of keeps the quest interesting to the creator as well, since they get to let the players find a use for it in unexpected ways.

>>329278
Stop being so hard on yourself. Just because you did things differently does not necessarily mean you did things wrong. This place needs new ideas sometimes.

Anyway, to add some input to this, I've always tried to make consequences a big part of my quests. Everything the player does has to affect SOMETHING, so I just make sure that something has some way to react back. For example, in early Dorf Quest, we chop down a forest for no real reason. So some elves come to (attempt) to kick Beardbeard's ass. Or later, we took a deal to help Arialla get her husband back. Arialla is psychotic and selfish, so in the end she tried to screw us over. It is just how I make things work.

Granularity of action is made easier by adjusting the reaction. If something little or stupid is suggested, don't make the reaction very big. What counts as little varies based on who has to deal with the consequences.

But then I am apparently a mediocre quester, so take all this with a grain of salt.

>>329267
>sort of reverse-railroading (giving every player action meaning and purpose and building the quest around that, rather than vice-versa, so everything you did felt important)

TOO LATE TO BE A SPOILER: Drawfag Quest as planned did not have fertilizer zombies. That whole thing was an ad-lib to make a suggestion about resurrecting the HUGE DEAD BUG work.

Somewhat fitting for this thread, that plan seemed to get abandoned when people got distracted with fiddling with the fusebox. As did the garden fork, more or less.

If a quest has a fairly small group of followers then the suggestions will tend to gradually become less granular over time. Unless the author starts taking control away from the players (choo-choo!) there are a few notable exceptions.
1: Combat will always be granular.
2: Dungeon dives will always be granular.
3: Interrogations (and conversations in general to a lesser degree) will always be granular.
4: Puzzles will always be granular.

>>329315
I'm fucked. Sideways and without a condom.

>>329320
yep with your dungeon dive with combat and puzzles with a few talking side quests.