Planning Out/Creating Quests [Knyfe]

[Lonin]

Created by Knyfe

Here is a guide to both help you develop a quest idea and to help you add it to your site!

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[size=large]Quest Ideas[/size]

Coming up with an Idea

You can come up with an idea for a quest fairly easily if you just ask yourself a few questions.

• What is your site about? Always a good question to start with. Let's say I own a site where you adopt wolves in a world called Wolfsphere. The site revolves around wolves. Naturally, the quest would be about wolves, right? Right! It doesn't have to be about wolves, but wolves would at least make sense in the quest.

• What's going to happen? Something bad is going to happen. Something for the main character to fix. There are tons of bad things just waiting to happen: natural disasters, hostage situations, eternal slumber, evil sorcerers - the possibilities are endless. Choose anything, just as long as there's a way the main character will be able to defeat it. Make sure you'll be able to edit the idea later, just in case you need to.
Note that the bad things that happen don't always have to be enormous. Having one or two fate-of-the-world quests can certainly be interesting, but it's a good idea to have a few smaller, side quests to go along with them. Retrieving a stolen item, delivering a message or even finding a book at the library might make a good side quest.

• Who are the quest characters? We know that the characters are mostly going to be wolves, but we don't know who they are yet. Villains are easy to think of, let's try that first. Are there any natural enemies of wolves? Not really, unless you count humans. Hmm, but I want the hero to be a human, and he shouldn't have to fight against someone of his own kind. Alright, let's have a mutant villain. A human-based creature with some wolf features. And an evil-sounding name. . . . Hafklar. Yeah. That's totally an evil name.
Now we need someone to ask for your help. We don't want it to be a random stranger who's just asking for a favor, though. Many quests are like that, and it gets to be a little overused. We'll have it be someone fairly normal, maybe a wolf citizen from a nearby village. Maybe the protagonist's best friend. Maybe their worst enemy. Someone that tells them the problem--or maybe, they'll figure out the problem themselves.
Most quests have a creepy character who ends up helping them, or really, anyone who is just a little bit odd. It's your decision as to what their role is. They could give a riddle, an item, random advice, false advice, whatever you like. Or nothing at all.

Really, that's all the basic information you need to have a complete quest idea. Chances are, if it makes sense and isn't boring, it's a good (or at the very least, decent) quest.

Writing the Quest

This is a lot harder than it seems. Try writing the quest out before actually putting it on the site; it makes it feel like a lot less work. You may want to include a few dead ends for the character to follow in the quest, so that they have more to interact with as opposed to them just reading a story. Make sure you proofread (reading it aloud actually helps a lot), or have someone else proofread for you. Having bad spelling, grammar or other mistakes looks a lot less professional. Treat it almost like a short story. Don't try to force it out when you don't feel like writing, or it won't come out very well. You don't have to turn your quest into a novel, just make sure you make it into something that might make a nice, short read. Maybe show the quest to another person and see if they have anything else to say about it. And this pretty much goes without saying, but the quest should probably be in second person point of view.

Illustrating the Quest

You don't have to do this, but quests are often more interesting if they have small drawings or photographs to go along with them. Make sure you aren't breaking any Copyright rules. You have to have made it yourself or should have permission from whoever did draw an image before putting it on your website.
I wouldn't have these images be larger than 700 by 700 pixels, if that. Good things to illustrate are (notable) characters, (important) places, and items. I'm not a fabulous artist so I can't offer many tips on drawing, but there are oodles of art tutorials on MyAdopts, and I'm sure you can find something useful somewhere.

Rewards and Promo Codes

What is the point of a quest without a reward of some sort at the end? Rewards can be anything: adoptables, items, money, the sky's the limit (there's a limit?!). If you want, the end of a quest can have a direct link to a prize, but you can also use a Promo Code. A promo code is a code that unlocks a certain pet or item on your site. When you create an adoptable there is an option for it. It's fairly self-explanatory, so I'm not going to go into details on how to add one here. :3
You can disguise the promo code somewhere near the end of a quest. Maybe a secret message or something that a character whispers into your ear. The possibilities for how to add in a promo code are pretty much endless.

Putting it all Together

Before adding the quest to your site, go over it and polish it off. Here are a few key elements your quest should have at least one of each:

• Conflict - Doesn't have to be a villain, just something bad happening that you have to fix - or if nothing bad is happening, at least something for the protagonist to do.
• Challenge - A riddle, dead end(s), etc. that you have to solve to continue the quest. Something that makes it more than just reading a second person story.
• Candy - Or a reward. But candy is pretty cool, no?

Humor, action and illustrations are also very good things to include, but there can be good quests without them. Humor doesn't even have to be funny, even something that makes the read go "PFFT that was really stupid" will work.

If you've got all that, your quest is ready to publish! Go to the Admin Panel of your site, add the pages and whatever else you need for the quest and publish it! You're done!

[Lonin - removed the adding it part, since Myadopts is no more ]

The End