Quest Design
In this page, I will detail and show my workflow and share some examples of my Quest design.
Within this document is an example "Main Story" quest. When I am creating these quest documents, I usually like to follow the "Three-Act Structure" as shown below. What this means is having a build-up to a Climax before the resolution. Within the "Isolate and Pursue" quest shown in the above document. We start with the player being informed that they need to create a distraction to draw troops away from an outpost, the current "BBEG" (Big Bad Evil Guy) is in. This is the first act and the setup.
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Once the player has completed their first mission. With a given optional task, they can also complete. They are informed that they can go and attack this "BBEG" since their defences are lowered. This would be within the Second act of the Mission and the main buildup until reaching a "Boss Fight" with this "BBEG" which would be the climax of the story of this quest. After defeating "The BBEG" of the quest the player would have the 3rd act of the Resolution where they get answers and directions to their next quest line in the main story.
Source: Kindlepreneur
Now that we have gone over my Quest design document and an explanation of my thought process of a Main story quest. Further down you will find my process for planning out a number of shorter "Side quests" I think it's important to show my ability to understand the difference between a Main-story quest and a simple Side-quest. It's very easy to get carried away and end up creating something far too big and out of the scope for a side-quest.
Below you will find a snippet of my "Side-quest" document detailing the LOST AND FOUND quest.
​Due to this quest being unlocked after the completion of the quest above ISOLATE AND PURSUE​ I like to have a thin chain connecting quests. So while the quest Requires ISOLATE AND PURSUE to be completed, because of this. The Quartermaster thanks the player for completing that quest. Making the characters feel just that little bit more alive and immersive in the story. Throughout this quest there are a number of call backs to the previous quest since it is quite a pivotal moment in the story.
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This quest is not a Main-Story quest, therefor it's important not to get carried away with the scope of the quest and keep it contained within the scope of a "Side-Quest".
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For LOST AND FOUND I decided to go with a "Fetch Quest" design but weave in a little bit of detective work so the player feels a little bit more involved with the event and quest. First of all was briefing the Player on what exactly the quest is and giving them their first hint and location. This hint being "Find Private Jackson" inside of "The Barracks" I follow this theme throughout the rest of this quest.
Found in the second page of the link found at the top of this page.
Quest Log Design
Quest Log design of Quests: ISOLATE AND PURSUE and LOST AND FOUND
Above you will see my designs for the Quest Log. These are things the Player is able to check on in order to check on their quest progress and remind themselves what quest they're doing if returning from a break of gaming. I find it important to keep Quest objectives clear and easy to understand. The Quest description is meant to cover key parts of information the player picked up from the characters they spoke too.