I have been thinking about making a quest a few times in the past, and every time I′m faced with these realities:


It′s a lot of work -> it takes a long time -> I have other projects under work -> I wouldn′t be able to even enjoy it myself

->> I guess I′ll drop the idea for now (read: I′ll never make one).



Today I remembered those stories they create for children, where one person starts the story, the second one says the next sentence, and the third one says the third sentence, and so on.

And I thought - maybe we could make quests this way? One person completes one quest stage. He doesn′t have to even KNOW how the quest plays that far, the story that far could be expressed in general terms.



I′m in the middle of studies, so I′ll keep it short, and leave much to your imagination. But the more I think about it, I feel it could work. Sure, the quest could become a bit fractured. But the whole deal would be that

-it wouldn′t take as much time for one person

-anyone involved could play the quest without knowing it already inside out

-the story itself could evolve to be funny as hell



Technically, I think it would be possible for everyone to simply test their own part of the quest, all they would need to know is the general "background story" so far, and the quest stage they need to set in order to start their own part of the quest.

The part could be anything, a cut scene, one fight, one dialog, one dungeon, one new location where the player goes (for example, this person simply feels like making an inn, and he reads the player is supposed to meet someone, so he decides it happens in that inn he makes, and that′s it, it′s for the next guy to figure out what happens there) - anything.

I genuinely think the project wouldn′t need an overseer, that knows the project and the quest inside out, as long as people make their part so that no items etc are required from previous stages. The overall, vaguely expressed story is logged somewhere, on the forums and/or a text file that′s passed forward with the esp. And of course, questions CAN be asked, but personally I think it would be fun not knowing things too well - just imagine playing the thing!



But I guess it all comes down to what people think about this - it kinda kills the whole idea if not enough fellow modders jump the train. But for now we can just discuss about it, no strings attached.

It sounds like a fun idea. There would have to be a clear set of rules, but as long as we can get enough modders to join it should be fun.

I′d like to participate if other people are interested as well.

Good quests are elaborate and take a lot of time to make. Any group of people interested to make something, should do fine, without much effort.

Just put your thoughts on the table and assemble a team.

IMO, setting goals and guidelines to what the team should be doing would prevent total chaos, unfinished questing, and duplicated work. On the other hand, if that's what your looking for, I wouldn't join, personally.

Great to hear that!

I know the best thing for me to do would be to make up the start of the story, make the first quest quest stage, and so on, to already have the concrete esp to work on. But as I said, I need to study right now, so for now I′m only interested to see if this kinda "silly" idea gets any support - next month I could actually put such a project going.



I think you totally misunderstood my post.

lol! Yeah, I think so.

If you do it like round-robin, a lot of people would have to be waiting for the previous one to finish, so they could take their turn.

On top of that, people may think at similar things to do, similar quests may turn up, I don't know. It's not good for sharing work too, I guess.

I guess the whole point would be that people usually have a lot going on anyways. Almost all modders here today are long-timers, like me, with projects of their own. This shouldn′t be taken too seriously, but rather as something FUN we can do, apart from our eternity-lasting big personal projects.


I have personally noticed that the longer I have modded, the more I demand from myself, and it almost gets exhausting from time to time. But doing something small, even silly - maybe just one joke-like situation - in a mod, that you know is going to be much longer in the end and something you can personally play and enjoy later, would be rather refreshing between for example modding Deadly Reflex. There wouldn′t similar pressures and responsibility involved - I mean can just "mess around" and as well, right?


I think this is all coming from just completing The Tales Of Monkey Island, all the episodes. It′s not the episodes that gave me the idea, but the general relaxed style of the whole game. Some of those small and unrelated jokes and tasks could just as well been created like this, a group of people adding something they feel like into the mix, to bring the story one step forward - or not even at all.


EDIT:

The "waiting time" should be constrained, of course. We should have an initial turn table, and everyone should aim for a week per step. Any one step should be small, this way it would stay interesting. People could drop in and out, naturally. The most important thing would be not to aim for something very big during one "turn", just something small, then the next person would continue.

In the end, realistically, I wouldn′t expect dozens of people to contribute. Rather anything from 5 to 15 people to take turns, from one day to a week at once. So it wouldn′t require much from anyone, the end result would still offer something new to play for everyone involved, and the waiting times between turns wouldn′t be huge, but not too tight either.

Sounds fun. Count me in.

Nice idea.

I'm not too sure how it would work out though, since what I remember of that game was that the resulting story was ludicrous and awful and kept descending into all sorts of nonsense at best. In a mod I suppose you'd get variable quality, but as a basic way of getting a story out, it's pretty good, especially if you've got experienced quest makers involved.

Not saying I'm interested in getting involved though, I'd hate for such a project to meet the same end as those games I played.

Heh, actually I liked TMI very much, but that shouldn′t be mixed into this. It was just an example of how "quests" doesn′t have to be always so serious.


The result in Oblivion would be, well, more Oblivion like. People would mod something they like to see in Oblivion, what ever it is - drama, encounters, dialogs, violence. In the end, when you make just one part at a time, the ideas and the quality could be even better than when you know you have to carry out the whole story, locations, encounters, dialogs, NPCs...you name it. It easily expands so much that you work on it just hoping to get it overwith. That′s what I would like to avoid here, and maybe that could bring up fresh and interesting outcomes.

Sounds interesting however I might suggest that after each modder is done with his or her installment that they release it so that the next moder knows the quest line to that point. This could prevent situations were we jump from searching for a lost Akavari fortress by Bruma to suddenly trying to save Martin who has been trapped in Oblivion (not that such an event would not be hilarious to try to explain, but that it would be rather confusing to follow). I would also suggest that you could have several of these going at the same time if there are enough modders interested in this. Each one could have its own theme with some being darker and others more light hearted.

i really like the idea
i'd participate if there were some rules or guide lines
because i got no inspiration

Oh man, I'm torn on this one... it sounds like a load of fun. On the other hand, I have this one quest puzzle that I've been itching to use, but it's so terribly eclectic that I think this is almost certainly the wrong place for it. Not that it would be bad for me to try coming up with something else, of course.

Put me on the maybe list. I'm curious exactly how this will be structured, though.

This sounds very fun and interesting. I'd gladly participate.

"...and Edward Cullen then directs you to Arnold Schwarzenegger who tasks you with defending Sarah Connor from a Dremora invasion when suddenly the velociraptors (who are immune to all weapons except Frostmourne) eat him, and you are forced to confront a leveled raptor with only your Flux Capacitor and the Ring of Power!"

Oh, sorry, "rules", what?

bump

i'd be happy to participate after i've finished my Disease mod
i even got an idea