This is neither a purely mechanical question (“non-player characters scattered through the open world will offer quests, highlighted by giant floating question marks over their heads”) nor a purely story-driven one (“the player is a one-man army, so he’s always getting orders and advice from military commanders”). It’s a question that needs consideration from the very beginning, and ties into everything from the most basic game mechanics to your choice of intellectual property.

Let’s talk about one particular way of thinking about this problem. Let’s talk about story engines.

What’s a Story Engine, and How Much Will It Cost Me?

The term “story engine” is commonly applied when discussing episodic television. It’s the part of a show’s premise that allows a new story and conflict to be created every week–stories and conflicts different enough to cover a wide variety of topics and situations but similar enough to feel like natural extensions of the show’s core. Comedies and dramas both use story engines–“mismatched office workers must serve under a wacky boss who’s constantly causing trouble” is as valid as “monster-hunters live over a small town’s monster spawning grounds” or “explorers in space investigate and learn about a new planet every week.”

Not actually a Story Engine (from The Legend of Grimrock)

These are, of course, simplistic summaries–the “real” engine (note: there is not a real engine) is more complex–but it gives an idea of what we’re discussing. Most good story engines can actually generate stories through a few different methods (“sometimes the space explorers go to war with aliens, or experience conflict within their ship’s crew”), and not every story needs to emerge from the story engine (“this week, in a special episode, the detectives rally around a colleague whose mother has cancer”). Nonetheless, a strong story engine is what allows an episodic narrative to run for one hundred entertaining episodes instead of ten.

With our terms defined, let’s turn to games. Starting with…

What games benefit from strong story engines? Your linear, level-based first-person shooter probably doesn’t need much of a sustainable story engine. (It might! But it probably doesn’t.) Your 40-hour role-playing game, your quest-driven MMO, and your open world action-adventure set in a city packed with tasks and objectives probably do.

Basically, if your game has a lot of content–particularly if that content is consumed in discrete components (such as designated quests or missions)–and that content is offered in a nonlinear fashion, you probably want to think about your story engine. With enough content delivered over a long period–e.g., a game with regular downloadable updates–even linear games may benefit (as we’re essentially in the television model again).

How does a game story engine work? A basic story engine should do the following:

Generate diverse player-oriented stories and conflicts. This may be a passive part of the story–the setting’s background might handle this (“in Raceworld, every citizen wants to win the daily 100-meter dash… no matter what it takes!”), or it may be integral to the overarching plot (“the player’s goal is to become the most popular kid in school by winning over her classmates one at a time”). The generation mechanism could also be active or mechanical (e.g., in a faction-driven game, a player’s progress might always anger one faction or another and create conflict).

It’s easy to end up with a story engine that’s too limited or too generic. Can you really get 50 stories out of a lone wolf’s battle against mindless alien invaders? Does your protagonist’s quest through Under-Earth for the seven mystic talismans actually set up anything useful, or have you simply given yourself a framework without ridding yourself of the burden of introducing a new story with every quest? How is your resource-scarce society constantly scrabbling for food going to generate player-focused stories?

Use a reliable mechanism to engage the player with those stories and conflicts. This mechanism must be supported both by game mechanics and narrative. It may be extremely simple (the player character stumbles upon NPCs with dialogue that open up the story), practically invisible (a pop-up tracker appears when entering a new area, revealing a set of objectives), tightly focused (the player is encouraged to regularly return to his house, where letters arrive in his mailbox pointing to new content), or incredibly intricate (the player can watch crowds of NPCs to spot individuals exhibiting unusual behavior, then follow said NPCs into story areas).

This delivery mechanism has enormous impact on the type and complexity of the stories you can tell. If every piece of content is introduced through a lengthy conversation with a new character, your central conflicts will be very different than if content is introduced via a series of subtle breadcrumbs or a small group of NPC supporting characters. Quest format dictates, to a large extent, quest content; and how you open a quest is an important part of that format.

Allow the resolution of said stories and conflicts through normal gameplay. This one is pretty obvious, but still worth noting: If the conflicts your story engine generates are all about reaching a given destination in a short time, don’t pair them with a game oriented around patient, stealth-based gameplay. If your story engine creates stories about political maneuvering, don’t use it for a game without a conversation mechanic. And if your game is oriented around combat, don’t build a story engine that generates intricate meditations on philosophy and diplomacy.

In the classic action / adventure / strategy game Star Control 2: The Ur-Quan Masters, the player explores and fights through an occupied galaxy to find alien allies against the occupiers. Naturally, different aliens have their own troubles with the occupiers that must be resolved before an alliance can be struck; these troubles can be solved by further exploration (finding more allies, discovering odds and ends on lost worlds, etc.) and combat.

This is a simple, elegant means of generating stories appropriate to the game. It works if there are three alien races to find and it works if there are fifty. It keeps the player at the center of the story (the aliens, being oppressed, can’t organize on their own) and allows for numerous variations (some of the aliens have sinister agendas!) It feels natural. It feels obvious.

Upgrading a (non-story) engine in Star Control 2

But tweak it just a little bit and the engine suddenly becomes weaker. Change all the aliens to humans from a single society and your story variety drops considerably (unless you spend a lot of upfront effort detailing that society). Replace the imperative to make allies with the more vague need to stop the occupiers and the player lacks clear motivation and drive when encountering new characters. Change the exploration-based discovery of content to distress calls that can reach the player at any time and you’ve suddenly got the player flailing to track a dozen threads at once.

(In fact, Star Control 2‘s story engine is far more elegant and far less simple than this, but we’ll save that for a different post.)

It shouldn’t be hard to test a story engine’s basic functionality. Look at your game’s setting, story, and mechanics as they stand. Can you crank out a dozen very short and very interesting quest pitches pretty much immediately? Are they all different? Do they feel true to your narrative and not overly generic? Do they not require excessive setup? Then you’re at least on the right track.

Can a procedural content generation system work as a story engine? Maybe. A good procedural content generation system probably does double as a story engine (see, for example, Shadow of Mordor‘s Nemesis system). It should create a diverse array of conflicts that all naturally emerge from the game’s premise and readily motivate the player to engage.

But story engines are only a mental model for the creative process–they’re not a formula. Identifying your story engine doesn’t mean you can build it as an actual piece of software.

What are some advanced story engine features? In addition to the modular, episodic-style content that story engines are built to create, most games also have a larger-scale throughline–a roughly linear overarching plot of some sort. A good story engine should feel like the natural consequence of this plot–conflicts arise because of the player’s overarching goals, and resolving them pushes the player down the overarching path. (If the player wants to free the Earth from alien invaders, every mission to shoot aliens is a means of progressing. If the player wants to become the Avatar of Virtue, then every encounter with townspeople in which she can demonstrate truth, love, or courage contributes to the main plot.) A poor story engine creates stories tangential to the main plot (“Your goal is to kill the king, but you’ll need money to equip yourself. Fortunately, there are hundreds of ways to make money in this city…”)

In more complex games, stories engines can also nest. Some conflicts and stories are larger-scale than others–a top-level story engine may boil down to “The player must bring peace to a land in anarchy after a war by traveling to hotspots and preventing them from erupting into total chaos; the player receives leads on each hotspot from the heir to the throne back in his home garrison”; while each hotspot might have an engine of its own focusing on local concerns and using different delivery mechanisms.

Similarly, a game might also use multiple story engines that run in parallel but open the same content. This can be a distracting mess if implemented poorly or utterly invisible if handled well. In the Star Control 2 example, a narrative-light resource gathering game emphasizes the need to explore. The process of resource-gathering naturally brings the player into contact with potential alien allies, while returning with resources to a central location triggers pointers to content the player may have missed.

Advantages of Using a Story Engine

In truth, you’re probably using a story engine already–it’s just a question of whether you think of it in those terms. But by tuning the engine’s elements, here are some of the clearest benefits:

Storytelling Shortcuts. A good engine helps cut out the setup of every “episode” of story and get right to the conflict. With many of the story elements already clearly defined and with the player character already motivated, every story can focus on what’s unique and interesting rather than getting bogged down in exposition.

Familiar Form. Expectations are powerful. An audience who understands that a victory taking place too early in a story will soon turn sour feels a dread and tension that adds to the experience. Knowing an audience’s expectations also allows a writer to subvert those expectations for occasional additional effect.

When a player understands the form and themes of a game’s episodic stories, it allows a game writer to design to that experience. A player’s excited expectation when the traditional quest-delivering radio call comes in is a powerful tool; whereas a game that delivers content in a different way every time denies the player that particular sensation.

Episodic Structure. Content-rich nonlinear games tend to be episodic even when the designers don’t intend them that way. In practice, a player’s play session is likely to be bounded by the length of one or more “quests” (or other relevant story components)–that’s the pattern he falls into, starting at the beginning of one story and taking a break at the end of another.

In fact, for many players, the overarching storyline will be secondary to the episodic stories–it’s rare for the majority of players to actually complete a given game (there’s lots of data on this, but see, for example, here). By focusing your game on these episodic stories and building a strong engine, you’re optimizing for the player’s true experience. You’re writing a book of short stories instead of a novel because you know your audience won’t read everything.

See also “Designing Stories for Nonlinear Game Segments” for additional discussion of this and related issues.

Modular Content. Game development is an uncertain art. Content gets cut and content gets added with impressive regularity. If you’ve got a strong story engine, you should be able to crank out additional stories without enormous difficulty when the call to add 5 more hours of gameplay comes along; and when your game needs to be trimmed for cost, you know your stories are modular enough that you can afford to cast them into the abyss.

A Few Examples, Please?

Let’s briefly consider a few examples of story engines in games and how they succeeded (or didn’t).

Mass Effect vs. Mass Effect 3. You might expect two games in a series featuring the same protagonist to use the same story engine. But while they have many similarities–including the player character’s role as a sort of militarized space cop (in the Lensmen / Jedi / Green Lantern mold)–these games spin up their content in dramatically different ways.

Still not a Story Engine (Mass Effect 2, via masseffect.wikia.com)

In Mass Effect (BioWare, 2007), the player’s primary objective is to hunt down a rogue officer involved in a mysterious galactic conspiracy involving ancient but powerful technology. You may notice that this is an extremely specific objective, which is both boon and bane. It gives the player clear direction for the main plot, but–as we’ve discussed–the “main plot” is generally not the majority of content for a game of this type.

Mass Effect integrates its side quests (the real test of a story engine in an RPG) with limited success. Most have limited relation to the main plot, instead relying on the player’s status as space cop to involve him in smuggling schemes, salvage missions, and diplomatic entanglements. Most are received by stumbling into the correct NPCs at the right time and place. For the most part, they feel appropriate to the universe–but they always feel like side stories and often a bit poorly motivated. After all, I’ve got a conspiracy to investigate. At their worst, they’re generic and impersonal.

Whereas Mass Effect 3 (BioWare, 2012), by focusing its story engine, creates a much more integrated feel. In this game, the galaxy is at war, and the player’s role is to lead a coalition to victory. The vast majority of ME3‘s side quests contribute directly to this goal–the player recruits new allies, acquires weapons, makes strikes at enemies, and so forth. The motivation for engaging in these missions is immediately clear; each story can focus on what makes it interesting rather than on giving the player a reason to even care.

Mass Effect 3 also tunes its story engine when it comes to mechanics. A universal “Galactic Readiness” rating rises whenever the player aids the war effort. More quests than ever are delivered to the player directly from her home base–delivered through calls or e-mails to her ship. The story engine creates content that is narratively appropriate, immediately accessible, and mechanically rewarding.

Sunless Sea. In Sunless Sea (Failbetter Games, 2015), the player is an explorer and merchant sailing through a mysterious world: discovering new islands and ports and meeting their strange inhabitants. The player is given very little overall motivation (a selectable “Ambition” determines certain win conditions but otherwise plays no substantial role) and there is no main storyline–all quests, in effect, are side quests. Such a game requires an effective story engine.

Sunless Sea succeeds largely by virtue of the breadth of the type of stories its engine generates. The game’s world includes steampunk technology, Lovecraftian monsters, sorcery, fire-and-brimstone-style demons, Victorian romances, pulp-style talking apes, and a hundred more oddities besides. With so many toys in the toybox, every side quest is able to offer something new–the player is unlikely to grow tired from seeing the same themes too often.

Of course, that same breadth and lack of coherence means that a player may lack the motivation and emotional stake that games like Mass Effect provide. More than once I encountered a questline in Sunless Sea that appeared intriguing, but which I had no compelling reason to involve myself in. (“Why would I risk my life to do that#8221;) Fortunately, there were plenty more questlines to choose from.

Sunless Sea also makes a strong effort at integrating its story delivery mechanisms into the natural course of gameplay. In a game so devoted to exploration and discovery, it’s natural that the most exciting moments of discovery (finding a new island, say) are most likely to deliver a large number of new stories; but even the obligatory tasks of refueling at ports and selling off cargo can result in new quests, thanks to a mechanic that “refreshes” opportunities after time away from a given island.

Look, this was a hard post to illustrate. Okay? (Sunless Sea)

If we were to make a television analogy, Sunless Sea is closer to Doctor Who (wildly careening from genre to genre, largely disintereted in ongoing storylines, and purposefully inconsistent in tone) than Mass Effect 3‘s Battlestar Galactica (tightly focused thematically but able to explore numerous aspects of its constrained setting).

Dismantling the Engine

A story engine is a thought experiment–a creative tool, useful for modeling narrative possibilities and generating inspirational templates. It is not prescriptive or a necessary step in anyone’s process. So why even bother?

Because models can be useful, and help constrain creation to the realm of the viable. The more people on a team, the more templates can lend clarity as to intent. And because it’s good to test whether you can create a thousand interesting side quests before diving in.

Games–especially open-world action-adventure games and role-playing games–tend to have extremely large casts. This is partly due to length (you can cram a lot of characters into a 40-hour game), but mostly due to mechanics: If every quest requires a unique quest-giver, or if every town needs to be populated with a dozen or more conversable NPCs, or if every item seller needs dialogue attached, you’re going to end up with vastly more characters than the narrative really warrants. When it comes to speaking roles, a game like Dragon Age: Inquisition makes the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy look intimate and focused by comparison.

Let’s forget mitigating this fundamental issue for now (and there are ways to design games to reduce this problem) and focus instead on how to handle all those characters. We’re not just dealing with a cast of thousands, but a cast of a thousand walk-ons–characters who appear for one scene, serve one purpose, and then may never be seen again.

These characters still need to be interesting and engaging. They need to establish themselves fast–within a handful of words, not by the end of a full scene. They need to engage the imagination of a player who may not be fully focused on the narrative. And they need to be different. So in the space of a small number of lines, how do you make every character feel unique and memorable? If most characters can be distinguished in at least, say, two of the three following aspects, you’re probably on the right track.

Voice

When I talk about character voice, I’m not talking about actual voice acting. Instead, consider all the aspects that determine how a character speaks: Education, class, word choice, syntax, and so forth. A character who speaks in short, to-the-point phrases using precise but not obscure language has a wildly different voice than a character who speaks in lengthy, ultra-formal paragraphs. Consider these variations on one line:

• “I wouldn’t have killed her, and I didn’t. Doesn’t mean she’s worth crying over.”
• “I did not kill her. I do not mourn her.”
• “I had no involvement in her death, but I grant you this–I’d relieve myself on her grave, given the opportunity.”

They’re all (probably) awful people expressing the same sentiment, but they sound dramatically different. When characters speak in the same voice, it’s one way they can end up blending together in the audience’s mind.

It’s easy to go over the top with character voices and end up with a parody instead of a natural speaking style. It’s also easy to default to a few specific voices (e.g., working class and upper class). Not every character needs to be instantly recognizable from her speech pattern alone, but if you’re falling back on the same few styles over and over, you probably need more variety.

Presentation

I use “presentation” mostly to refer to physical aspects of the character. Age and ethnicity and accent and choice of hat aren’t personality traits, and they don’t excuse a bland NPC–but when you’re dealing with a large cast, they’re effective signposts to differentiate characters in the player’s mind. I’m going to be a lot more likely to mix up two middle-aged white male security officers than I am to mix up a young black female security officer and an elderly Asian male security officer.

This is true even if (especially if!) they have the same basic voice. Physical traits are big, clumsy, and effective differentiating features. (As a side benefit, differentiating characters in this way also gives you a more diverse cast.)

Attitude and Context

Just because characters have similar voices doesn’t mean they’ll actually end up sounding the same. Two characters with similar backgrounds and speaking styles may sound drastically different depending on their respective reactions to what’s going on, to the Player Character, and so on.

An educated, absent-minded shopkeep may be thrilled to see the player if he’s had no customers all day; or he might be irritated to have his day interrupted, if he only wants a few moments of peace. A soldier under fire may be gung-ho or terrified. If all of your characters default to emotionally neutral, they not only all feel the same–they also end up feeling as if they have no lives or history beyond the purpose of their one scene.

When writing a game with large numbers of minor roles, it can be well worth the time to select a few lines at random from a variety of characters and put them all side-by-side. Without focusing on content (that is, specific people or events or quests those lines mention), can you tell who’s speaking just based on the tone and style? If you can’t, you’ve got some work on your hands. Consider how you can adjust NPCs’ voice, attitude, and context to make each one unique–and, if not the star of the game, at least someone who’ll catch a player’s interest for a little while.

Additional Reading: The great Patricia C. Wrede has articles on similar topics (from the perspective of a prose writer) here and here.

While the details will vary significantly from product to product, it’s very common for role-playing games, open world action / adventures, and similar story-and-exploration-driven games to contain segments in which the player is suddenly given access to a large number of quests (we’ll call any small, linear piece of content a “quest”) that are available

a) in a nonlinear fashion (that is, they can be completed in any order, possibly with multiple quests active simultaneously);

b) with a degree of optionality (that is, some may not need to be completed at all);

and

c) in a context separate from the main storyline (even if the newly available quests must be completed to continue the main story, they could be removed from the narrative without causing fatal damage).

This is typically the moment where the world “opens up”–the player arrives in the game’s first big city, teeming with side quests and new areas to explore, or obtains a travel option allowing access anywhere on the game map.

Agency and Modularity

From a design perspective, such a segment provides a number of benefits. For starters, it’s an easy way to supply a powerful feeling of player agency–even in situations where the player must complete all side quests in order to continue the plot or to gain enough experience points to be effective against opponents, it still grants the player a sense of choice, a chance to prioritize and make decisions about the order of events (if not the events themselves). If some of the sides quests are genuinely optional or mutually exclusive, this feeling becomes much stronger.

It also adds an element of modularity to a game’s design. Modularity in narrative is worth a post on its own, but to put it simply: Game development is an inexact art, and no game ends up looking like its original blueprint. Sections of games will be cut or radically revised because they’re too expensive, too time-consuming to develop, or simply not enough fun to play. If the sections being cut are modular (“This side quest is really awful–let’s just take it out.”) then the task is much simpler than if they’re on the game’s critical path (“You know that whole final level in the zero gravity space station? It turns out our physics engine can’t handle it. Can we put it in Alaska instead#8221;)

Now let’s look at it from a narrative perspective. Your main plot rolls along nicely. It’s linear in a broad sense–maybe with branches, but overall it follows a clear path–and then your protagonist arrives in the City of One Thousand Side Quests.

What are those side quests about? And what must you be mindful of as you design and write them?

Types of Side Quests

Let’s take on subject matter first. Here are some of the things your side quests can focus on:

Plot Point Deep Dive. The plot point deep dive can feel like the most natural approach–or at least the approach most similar to those used in direct, linear stories. In this sort of quest, we take one of the main story’s plot points, elaborate on the details, and progress it to the next stage required by the overarching plotline.

For example, if my game’s narrative is about stopping an urban gang war between the Elf Gang and the Dwarf Gang, a side quest in this style could be about reaching the Elf Gang leader and learning what his grievances are. I’ll need that knowledge when the main plot gets to the point of establishing peace. Another side quest might do the same for the Dwarf Gang.

The big downsides of the plot point deep dive are twofold: First, you may simply not have as many plot points to dive into as you have quests that need content–and if you overcomplicate your plot to provide extra fodder for side quests, you risk the player losing track of everything. Second, plot point deep dives tend to be required content and not particularly modular–if the quest is cut and the player never gets to interact with the Elf Gang and sympathize with its leader, will the player care about the gang war at all? Is the game badly damaged if the quest has to go?

Character Deep Dive. Similar to a plot point deep dive, but focused on the personal stories and motivations of major characters in the main story. These can help build an emotional connection between the player and the supporting cast–always a good thing–while still functioning more modularly than a plot point deep dive. (In fact, giving the player the choice of whether to work closely with a supporting NPC or reject the idea altogether is a powerful way of reinforcing emotional bonds.)

Care must be taken to ensure that character deep dives have stakes appropriate to the game’s tone and genre. In an RPG chronicling everyday life in high school, character deep dives could work fantastically as side quests, allowing the player to meet the family of his boyfriend, set up a romance between two classmates, and so forth. In an epic fantasy in which the world is on the verge of destruction, you’ll need a very good reason to have the player visit the home village of his mentor and resolve unfinished business from his past.

Worldbuilding. What’s an average person’s life like in a cyberpunk dystopia? How does Death Village get water in the post-apocalyptic wastes? Why does New Sodom City’s architecture involve so many gargoyles? What’s beyond the Kingdom of Murkotia’s borders? There’s much to be said for the immersive benefits of creating a well-rounded setting–it helps increase a player’s understanding of the setting’s characters and investment in a large-scale story’s outcome. Side quests are a perfect match for worldbuilding–such quests are quick enough that, individually, they won’t dilute the main plot and modular enough that they can be removed without much harm to the main story.

Like the character deep dive, of course, stakes can be a concern. And unlike the character deep dive and the plot point deep dive, worldbuilding quests often have a less obvious hook–I already care about the main plot and main characters, but why am I even interested in Death Village’s water supply?

Thematic Counterpoints. Quests in this style don’t necessarily deal directly with the main story’s plot points, but add nuance by offering a different perspective. If your game is mostly about fighting evil demons, this sort of quest might involve a side story with a demon who just wants peace. These are easy to make modular, but too many of them won’t just add nuance–they’ll actively start to undercut your main plot!

Tonal Change of Pace. Similar to a thematic counterpoint, these are quests that give players a break from the game’s usual tone. Be very careful with these–the “funny side quest” in an otherwise serious story can be teeth-grindingly awful, undercutting the drama of the main plot and feeling like a writer’s indulgence. (Funny side quests in serious games aren’t impossible to do well, but be sure you know what you’re doing.) Tonal changes of pace don’t have to be about humor, though–a romantic side quest might fit just fine into a drama, and a superhero game with a single quest revolving around supernatural horror could fit the genre, offer some fresh air, and provide worldbuilding material as well.

Linear Forward Plot Movement. Or, “the side quest that cheats.” With branching lines and trickery, linear plot progression can be achieved through nonlinear quest selection. Suppose I’m doing side quests in order to build up my reputation to get an audience with the king (the next major plot point of the main story). It may be that, after every completed side quest, I’m told of how my reputation is spreading and the allies who’ve joined me–and that news is determined by the number of rather than which side quests I’ve completed.

Depending how elegantly this information is integrated into the side quests themselves (Am I receiving different dialogue from my handler depending on how many quests I’ve completed? Or is everything identical except for a post-quest screen?), this can become expensive to write, design, test, and so forth. And of course, it doesn’t necessarily give you content for your side quests, but only guides your approach.

In all likelihood, you’ll mix and match the approaches above rather than relying on only one. In doing so, you’ll set the tone for the entire segment of gameplay. This challenge is unique to game narrative, but a comparison to episodic television can be useful.

Is your game 24–that is, purely serialized, effectively one clearly focused plotline running straight through and only broken up by episode or quest? Then you may not want a nonlinear segment at all, and if you do, you may want to focus solely on plot point deep dives.

Is your game The X-Files, interested in exploring a multitude of ideas and happy to do the occasional character-focused episode–or even a humor piece–but with an overarching story that’s often relegated to the background?

Is your game Friends, deeply interested in the state of character relationships but not really bothered by what particular events happen in what order?

While tight serialization is popular nowadays, older TV series are still especially useful as examples. “Nonlinearity” used to be a requirement for TV writing, when shows could be rerun in any order after being sold into syndication.

Questions, Pitfalls, and Takeaways

We’ve talked about approaches you can take for side quest design. But what are the big picture issues you need to consider as you put all the pieces together?

How will you remind the player of the main plot and characters? The further your side quests stray from your main plot and characters, the more you risk your player losing interest in or forgetting your core storyline. You can’t simply take a break from your story for 10 hours and expect the player to jump back in where she left off–especially since 10 hours of side quest gameplay may equate to weeks in the player’s real life. Are you regularly reiterating your key plots, characters, and themes in your side quests somehow? In cutscenes between side quests? Are you interspersing optional side quests with required main plot quests? Are your side quests so short you’re simply not worried? (See also “Subtlety and Narrative Design”.)

How will you maintain stakes and urgency? We touched on this above, so I won’t repeat myself. But the higher the stakes and the greater the urgency of your main plot, the more dissonance you’re generating when you send the player off to do side quests. If you want a high-stakes, high-urgency main plot, you must find a way to make your side quests play into it in a straightforward and obvious fashion; alternately, if you want a game with a rich array of side quests diverse in tone and content, you want a main plot that supports your design! (I touch on this in “Player and Player Character Motivation” as well.)

Consider your scale and your definition of a quest. Much of this discussion can be scaled up–what if each “side quest” is actually its own location with its own nested plot and array of side quests? This implementation is common in RPGs (“Go to these six planets before the invasion starts, and solve a variety of tasks on each.”), and while the end result won’t always be the same, you can use many of the same tools to design your macro-level quest set as for your micro-level one.

What should the player ultimately be feeling as she plays through Side Quest City? If your answer is, “I’d rather be playing the main plot,” then you probably have some adjustments to make. A nonlinear gameplay segment should be rich and rewarding in its own right–not in the same ways as a linear plot segment, but by providing something different and exciting. Don’t struggle against a design choice needlessly. Find your design’s strengths and play to those.