Your Quest, Should You Choose to Accept It!

In “Your Quest, Should You Choose to Accept It!” you play the role of a Procedural Quest Generation AI (QAI) during the playtest of an unreleased MMORPG. The QAI that earns the most XP will run the final game; others will be deleted.

In the game, 24 player cards can be matched with 24 avatar cards to create unique P+A combos. A P+A combo is 1 Player and 1 Avatar cards placed together. It represents a player of the RPG game and their avatar. P+A combos can contain characters or avatars that have limitations as well as bonuses and penalties on the quests they will accept. The players must use syntax cards to create quests that would appeal to the P+As and get the most XP at the end of the game.

Each quest must start with an Action. Action cards contain information on which Syntax cards are required and which are optional. For example, “Talk To” requires an Entity, and can optionally include a Quantity and/or Location, such as:

• Talk To + Elven Wizard.

• Talk To + 5 + Troll Rogue(s).

• Talk To + Giant Turtle + (at) Cavern.

• Talk To + 3 + Pirate(s) + (at) Logger Camp.

Named Entities cannot be matched with Quantity cards.

“Find” is a bit different. You are required to match it with either an Item, Entity, or Location. Optionally, you can include a Quantity and a Location but only if you have not chosen a Location before, such as:

• Find + 3 + Red Dragon Egg(s) + (at) Gates of Darkness.

• Find + 3 + Gates of Darkness.

• Find + The Elven Queen.

I have created this game be used in my game design classes as a part of my "Games for Game Designers" research initiative. It can be mobilized around discussions of player types as well as procedural content generation. Students and designers can take the rules template and practice implementing it with existing popular games to understand their content structure.

Your Quest, Should You Choose to Accept It! game and card designs by: © 2020 Sercan Şengün. All Rights Reserved sercansengun.com

Avataaars are by Pablo Stanley and they are free for personal and commercial use. Avataaars — Avatar Illustrations Sketch Library

60 Terrible Character Portraits are by Jeff Preston and they have the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Team-Preston The characters were colored by Sercan Şengün.

Some graphic elements are from freepik.com

Poor Richard (1994) is a font by Microsoft. Rockwell Condensed is a font licensed as a part of Monotype Foundry. Antonio (2013) is a font by Vernon Adams. Lobster is a font by Impallari Type and Cyreal and is distributed by Google.

!The game box does not contain the duration counters displayed in the photos below. You can use any pieces available at your home as duration counters including coins, buttons, etc.!