UC Irvine Cognition and Creativity Title QuestBrowser: Making Quests Playable with Computer- Assisted Design Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2tk0h882 Authors Sullivan, Anne Mateas, Michael Wardrip–Fruin, Noah Publication Date 2009-12-12 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California QuestBrowser: Making Quests Playable with Computer- Assisted Design Anne Sullivan Michael Mateas Noah Wardrip-Fruin Expressive Intelligence Studio Expressive Intelligence Studio Expressive Intelligence Studio University of California, Santa Cruz University of California, Santa Cruz University of California, Santa Cruz
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT narrative; within which the player moves through the experience, Good gameplay has been characterized as a series of interesting fulfilling check points to advance the story. These story choices. Therefore, to have gameplay of any sort requires the checkpoints are delivered to the player in the form of quests, and player to be presented with decisions. Given this definition, many these quests lack interesting or meaningful choices, but are instead quests within computer role-playing games are not playable as delivered as required actions for the player to complete. they currently exist. Instead, quests are given to the player as a Because of this lack of choice, we argue that quests are not series of tasks to perform in a specific way in order to advance the currently playable in many CRPGs. When we look at table-top story within the game. We look at making quests playable – role-playing games, the precursor to CRPGs, we find quests that adding choices for the player – and what a system that could exist in their playable form and are used with regularity.