Community Edition “New breath for an old well.”

Telling a Story

Nothing here is a rule the game enforces. It is the pattern that keeps a world with twenty quests from collapsing into a tangle, and it costs three tokens and four scenes per quest.

Three tokens per quest

Give every quest three tokens: not started, under way and done. The first is really the absence of the other two, so in practice you grant the second when the hero takes the job and the third when it is finished. Every scene that cares then starts with the same two lines:

IF T102, @done
IF T101, @underway
; otherwise the hero has not started

Number the tokens so that a quest's three sit together (101, 102, 103) and the quests run in story order. The script reads better and the token list becomes a plot summary.

Four scenes per quest

  1. The hook. The scene where the hero hears about the problem. It only talks; it grants nothing.
  2. The offer. The quest-giver's scene. It has three branches, one per token state: give the job (and the under way token), nag about the job, or thank the hero.
  3. The deed. Where the thing is done: a fight, a find, a conversation. It checks for under way first, so a hero who wanders in early sees only scenery.
  4. The reward. Usually the quest-giver again: take the trophy, grant done, pay out, and open the next hook.

Narration and dialog

Narration (N:) goes to the chat window and never waits; dialog (an actor's line) draws a bubble and holds the script until it is read. Use narration for what the hero sees and dialog for what people say, and keep both short: a bubble is on screen for ten seconds at most. Long speeches split into several lines read better than one wall of text.

One hub

Route a chapter's quests through one well-placed character. The hero always knows where to go next, you always know where the branches live, and a single MENU in that scene can list every open thread. A quest that can be finished in any order still needs a climax scene that tests for every done token before it opens.

More than one player

A scene runs for the hero who opened it, and the others in the party watch and share the gifts. Test the host's tokens, not an imagined party, and never assume the guests have done the earlier quests. Where it matters, PARTY can send the guests home with a condition of their own.

Things that go wrong

  • A scene that runs off its end into the next SCENE header. Finish every path with END, GOTO or FIGHT.
  • A quest the hero can start twice. Test under way before granting it.
  • A gift granted before the fight is won. Check IF WON after every FIGHT.
  • A test hero that already holds half the tokens. Keep a fresh one, or /take T101 before replaying.