I wasn’t sure in which forum to post this, so apologies in advance if I placed it wrong.

I’m working on the Game Design document for my dialogue focused RPG and I’ve been wanting to start writing some quests down.

What I have in mind is a lot of “if this is the case, these are your options”, “if you choose that option, this will happen”, “if you choose this instead, this will happen” and so on.. There’s bound to be a lot of different “branches” to one “quest tree”, if that makes any sense.

What I’m wondering is:

- Does anyone have experience with this kind of quest tree setup, and maybe care to share some tips on what to keep in mind when creating them?

- What would be your preferred way to visualize these “trees” in the planning - their outcomes, relations and options? I’m currently only writing my things in google docs and it doesn’t serve that purpose well when things are supposed to show connections.

- Do you have a personal opinion or experience regarding how many (mandatory) quests a main storyline should consist of?

Grateful for any (kind) thoughts or insights! ?

JulieWilhelmine said:
I wasn’t sure in which forum to post this, so apologies in advance if I placed it wrong. I’m working on the Game Design document

Moved to the Game Design forum.

JulieWilhelmine said:
Does anyone have experience with this kind of quest tree setup, and maybe care to share some tips on what to keep in mind when creating them? - What would be your preferred way to visualize these “trees” in the planning - their outcomes, relations and options? I’m currently only writing my things in google docs and it doesn’t serve that purpose well when things are supposed to show connections.

While it's useful to think of this as a tree structure, the problem comes in quickly when you try to keep all the branches connected to the branch or trunk they branch off of. Try thinking instead about outcomes - you can make names for the outcomes, and at the end of a description, write the name of the outcome to jump to. It also helps to have a section numbering system, especially if you can design a numbering system that isn't messed up each time you add an outcome.

One problem you may run into is that one outcome can be arrived at from different starting points, and with different statuses for the player (has the player collected the necessary items or points, has the player's character met the necessary NPCs to get necessary information).

@Tom Sloper

Those are very good points that I hadn't considered - thank you for the suggestions and input! Maybe I'll think about it a bit like how it is in the Gloomhaven tabletop game - with some scenarios stating what they require to be “unlocked” as well as, in the end, describing the next scenarios that will get unlocked on completion. I expect this to get tricky for sure, as you say there might be different starting points leading to the same outcome - hopefully I'll work it out as I go with a somewhat clear overview ?

There are conceptual similarities between designing “trees” and nonlinear story writing (narrative design). I thought I remembered past questions about trees and branching but all I could find in the past 10 years of posts were these 3 threads in the Writing forum. You might find some more suggestions in these:

https://www.gamedev.net/forums/topic/714266-creating-a-linear-vs-branching-visual-novel​

https://www.gamedev.net/forums/topic/707697-linear-vs-non-linear​

https://www.gamedev.net/forums/topic/691745-how-do-you-storyboard-or-sketch-out-a-game-narrative​

Or you might not. Also check out CYOAs (Choose Your Own Adventure stories, books), which tell you at branching points what page to turn to next.

@Tom Sloper

Awesome, thanks for the links, will check them out! ?

Trees are connected with roots. Like a network. Depending on the complexity of the project you can play with tree sizes and connections between them. When you climb one tree and look arround you find some other trees to climb. Some others not. If the forest is dense enough you can get some hours lost. What the target could be.

The dialogs are more individual same sized trees you can climb to get an overview of the forest. The forest is more the overall game then a story in the game. Maybe especially with RPG the role-playing aspect is no longer entirely relevant if the player is forced into a main quest line.

mgoolong said:
Trees are connected with roots. Like a network. Depending on the complexity of the project you can play with tree sizes and connections between them. When you climb one tree and look arround you find some other trees to climb. Some others not. If the forest is dense enough you can get some hours lost. What the target could be.

@mgoolong , your simile is too obscure.

What you might want is a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph). It's like a tree but allows merging of branches. It differs from a general graph in that you can't have loops which you probably don't want in a story anyway.

On the other hand, there may be some stories that allow for loops in which case you will have to implement a fully general graph, which tends to make the implementation somewhat harder.

Tom Sloper said:

mgoolong said:
Trees are connected with roots. Like a network. Depending on the complexity of the project you can play with tree sizes and connections between them. When you climb one tree and look arround you find some other trees to climb. Some others not. If the forest is dense enough you can get some hours lost. What the target could be.

@mgoolong , your simile is too obscure.

thats true, the comparison with a forest doesn't fit ^^ I was not able to find the correct term where every node is an own reactor maybe even with a small randomized action set for connections to similar class nodes