Quest Design Atelier
A bauhaus study of non-player character quest systems. Each card a specimen, each NPC a lesson in narrative geometry.
A curated collection of NPC quest specimens, catalogued by tavern, character, and difficulty.
Brimstone the Innkeep
A traveller has gone missing on the moorland road. Brimstone asks you to recover the lantern that still burns at the crossroads, lit by the missing one's hand.
Saela the Cartographer
Saela's lifelong work is incomplete -- a hollow at the world's edge resists every chart. Bring back rubbings of its three standing stones so the atlas may close.
Includes: stone rubbing kit, parchment cylinder, and Saela's annotated draft.
Brimstone the Innkeep
Three travellers left coins on the bar before vanishing into the night. Brimstone wants them returned to their owners, wherever the road leads.
Hesper, Star-Reader
A new star has dimmed the hearth-fire of every tavern in the valley. Hesper believes it can be answered. Bring her a flame that has never gone out.
Vellum the Archivist
A charter the realm pretends to remember has gone missing. Vellum suspects an apprentice scribe rebound it into a book of recipes -- somewhere in the seven taverns of the southern road.
Reward: a chapter title in the next edition of the Tavern Atlas.
Vellum the Archivist
Walk the southern road at dusk and count every window still lit after the third bell. Vellum will use the figures to revise the kingdom's Atlas of Returning Travellers.
Hesper, Star-Reader
Hesper has dreamed a hearth that opens like an eye. The dream returns. She asks for a fragment of any tavern's chimney brick to test her theory of soft watchers.
Brimstone the Innkeep
A tower has been growing at the marsh's edge -- not built, grown. Brimstone wants you to ascend before it forgets what it is for.
Tools provided: tallow candle, plumb line, and a coil of stubborn rope.
Saela the Cartographer
Three hills west of the tavern share a single echo. Saela believes the missing two are buried. Trace the echo to its source and bring her a stone from each.
Quest design treated as systematic discipline. Four geometries inform every commission.
i.
Every quest answers a private hunger of its NPC. The hunger is the centre of the geometry; the player only orbits it.
ii.
Cards are sized to the golden ratio. Inside the frame the quest is small; outside the frame, immense.
iii.
Difficulty rises like a triangle: a wide base of small acts, a narrow apex of one decision.
iv.
Quests intersect at the tavern. The intersection is where memory becomes a chain.