Talk:Advice for Running a Quest

UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT, 10 YEARS LATER. BOW BEFORE YOUR NEW GOD. I mean person who's trying to help by updating the page.

So a big rewrite happened! The old version was sent here, if anyone was looking for it. There might be some stuff in there that should make it over here, maybe.

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I like "various successfull Quest authors" Successful how, exactly? I'm not passing judgment, I just thought it was funny - especially since this is a wiki, so anybody, even someone who made, like, DMC quest or whatever could be giving 'awesome' advice.

I mean, I'm obviously super successful, so all of my advice is like, 1000% awesome. Hey, we might want to link to some of the "getting started" threads or something. There have been like, 3 that are full of good advice IIRC.

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Yeah, that sort of bugs me too.

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Wouldn´ the definition of 'successful' be 'having enough guts to start in the first place'? Or at least to last?

I'd say the line was stricken trough for some reason... xD

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To all those who want to move other people's comments into the talk section, please mind the courtesy and contact them first.

~ Vyt

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"Yelling at PCs < Faffing about < Boring exposition < Interesting exposition < Stuff that reveals new options"

Vyt: But what constitutes an interesting exposition, Test? There are tons of views on a certain perspective that makes normally boring stuff interesting, and also the inverse. How would we know?

Gnome: If you can't tell what counts as exposition, there is a more serious problem going on here. Exposition is anything that gives the PCs more information to work with, be it a scroll of power or a rumor that some kids are being bullied at the local school. "Interesting" exposition is information that is directly relevant to what we are doing right now, or to what we (think we) will be doing sometime soon. Boring exposition is telling us stuff we already know.

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"The rest of the world is still happening. Maybe some small time NPC we met 5 chapters ago got married since the last time we saw him. Or while we are out adventuring, we come home to find the city has a new mayor because the old one was caught cheating on his wife. Life still happens, and having a few things like this will help add realism to the world, and make the players think that more is out there than what we see."

Vyt: It does help that you do not overload the quest with too many "off-screen" events that might greatly affect the quest in some way. For example, if one of your character's main goals is to find her father and there have been a lot of hints pointing towards the general direction of her goal, it might be fruitful that the father stay in that place instead of moving around due to some event (it will look as if the quest is being prolonged unnecessarily, otherwise). Quest authors are expected to make events as realistic as possible, and that also means not adding too much unnecessary events.

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Sometimes, the hardest part about something is knowing when to let it go. Will you just let it slide into obscurity, or give it a brief ending for euthanasia? (Goodnight, sweet prince.)

Vyt: However, you also have to dig deeper and see what it is that makes your quest not take off. Are you leaving your readers with situations where they're not able to do something? Are things taking off too fast that it makes the quest hard to understand? Or maybe it's more technical: have you updated too fast and expect multitudes of suggestions upon your feet? Accepting real "defeat" is just as tedious as trying to start one, and you don't want it to look as if you just deserted it without any planned thoughts.

Words words words

In all honesty, this article is in desperate need of pruning shears. It needs less "Person: essay", and more actual consise summations of the advice. More wiki, less discussion forum.