Quest Design Lesson 0: Planning

[Lingwei]

Hi and Welcome to the first of my lessons designed to introduce you to designing quests for Oblivion.

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Types of Quests
3. Story

Introduction

So you want to create a quest mod? That's great! What's it about?

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If you are going to create a quest mod that is the first thing you will need to ask yourself. Even Bethesda does this. They hold meetings between all the designers where they suggest ideas that would work in the game. Actually all RPG developers do this, unless they are indies in which case they are probably working as individuals like you and me and we have to come up with all the ideas ourselves.

The basis behind each quest is assigning the player an objective. An objective guides the player to the gameplay that they will need to complete in order to achieve that objective. The story and interactions along the way are just there to improve the quality of the quest. That said there are several different types of quests that ask the player to complete an objective. In designing quests for Oblivion you should try and make use of as many different types as you can in order to increase the variability of your quest mod.

Types of Quests

1. Fetch Quests - Ah, fetch quests. The most basic and most common of all RPG quests. This type of quest simply involves the player going to some place, retrieving an object and taking it back to the person who asked for it. Fetch quests don't necessarily just have to be for a physical item. Information from dialogue or finding an NPC can also be considered 'fetching' something.

2. Delivery Quests - The mirror of the fetch quest. In this case the player already has the item in their possession and needs to deliver it to another NPC or place. Once that is done they return back to the original NPC (sans delivery item).

3. Escort Quests - Closely mimicking the delivery quest is the escort quest. The difference being that a delivery quest involves an inanimate object, while the escort quest involves a living NPC. Since the NPC is interactable with it allows more interactivity during the quest. They are also generally more difficult (assuming the NPC isn't immortal) since the player needs to watch out for not just their own back but the NPC as well. Note than in Oblivion escort quests don't exist thanks to fast travel. Although this can be changed thanks to a script command.

4. Kill Quests - Another RPG staple and almost identical to a fetch quest except in this case you are killing something rather than picking something up. Often a fetch quest is simply an extended kill quest since you will need to bring back some item of the killed individual's dead cold body.

5. Dialogue Quests - Breaking the mold of going somewhere, killing everything that crosses your path, and going back is the dialogue quest. The dialogue quest usually involves some need to 'convince' an NPC to do something for you or for the person who gave you the quest. �Unfortunately due to Oblivion's dialogue system dialogue style quests are...rather hamstrung.

6. Get this done for me Quests - this style of quest does not give the player a concrete objective. Rather it gives them an overarching objective and it is up to the player how they complete it. Of course a good quest designer will give the player lots of different ways to do this,

You'll notice that all of these quest types while making the player do things in different ways are all essentially just getting the player to go something. do something, and return back. That's exactly because that is what they are. At their core all of the quests are just guiding the player to an objective with different dressings.

Homework: Go through the Bethesda quests in the Construction Set and see if you can tell what type of quest it is. Try and look for the underlying objective i.e the thing that the player eventually completes in the end

You'll find that although they all have different backstorys the underlying objective in a lot of them is basically the same.

When you decide what quest to make you'll very easily be able to decide what you want the player to do by choosing which style of quest suits it best. Once you've done that you can start adding a story to the basic part of the quest.

3. Story

A story is what separates killing A from killing B for a reason. "Go and kill that dude and I'll give you 50 gold" is as uninteresting as just going and killing that dude for no reason at all.

"Go and kill that dude because he's a member of a gang that has been harassing everyone around here. If you do that then everyone in the town will love you and name their children after you (and hopefully offer some extra quests too)" is a lot more interesting. It opens up a conflict between a gang of hooligans and a town. It allows you to choose sides between the hooligans and the townsfolk. By providing a different reason for the player's objective you will turn your quest from a chore, into something that the player generally wants to see through to the end.

Unfortunately I can't tell you what is a good idea, since there are just far too many to list here. Still, if you are looking to become a quest modder chances are you already have lots of ideas, you just don't know how to get them into the game yet. The best advice I can give you is would it be interesting to you to play through it? If it is then go for it. If not, then think harder.

Before you start implementing your quest you should write out all the points that will make up the story, such as the background, any special events that will occur during the quest, the different stages that the player will need to go through to complete the quest, and the reasons for the quest, as well as the reward. Writing it out on a piece of paper helps me since my ideas flow onto paper more easily than they do onto a notepad document. How ever you can do so however you wish.

This concludes the introductory lesson to quest design. In the next lesson we'll look at actually getting started in the Construction Set.

[Zaldir]

A very detailed and easy to read Introduction. Good job!

[Fiore1300]

Looking forward to the next lessons!

[Rowan]

Nice intro! But, perhaps you should say a word about non-basic quests that don't really follow any of the above types, for example surviving an onslaught of goblins for a period of time (the Killing Fields) or those quests that you kind of stumble upon when adventuring. Say you find a mysterious key and you've got to find out what it opens. Perhaps it opens a crypt somewhere and inside is a maze of catacombs that must be navigated. You get lost and the goal becomes "Find your way out or die" Those are the kind of quests that I enjoy the most. They might take a little more creative juice, but they are well worth the extra effort.

[DarkRider]

This class is under construction, this is leftover from the original school and will be overhauled soon.