I'm fairly new around here, so I hope I'm not presuming too much here. But this is basically the process I go through when I devise a story.

Pick A Subject

Stories need to be about something. They need to be about something more than "this is what happened when I went down a hole in the ground and killed a bunch of monsters". It can be anything really. Let's pick a fairly harmless (and somewhat unlikely) subject for our example. Picking wild flowers in a mountain meadow.

Motivation

Next thing to think about: Why is the Dragonborn going to do this? Some players will do anything that has a quest market attached, but you get a better story if it's something they want to do in its own right.

In the case of our example, the obvious one would be a "collect X blooms from plant Y" mission from the local alchemist. But the obvious approach isn't always best the best one, and it's always worth considering an alternative or two. Maybe our hero is escorting a small child, and she is doing the picking. Why? Perhaps as a favour for the child's highly attractive single mother.

Work Out The Cast

Stories are about people, so make sure yours are well built and believable. Get your main participants sorted out early. Give them names. (The http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/index.php?p=modding_data/ngen can be a life saver here) and work out what they want.

We already have our two main characters:

• Grier : Widowed mother living with her daughter in a shack in the Rift. She's been widowed three or four years. Long enough to be out of mourning, but she's not looking for another man.
  
• Rostei : Greir's daughter. Maybe seven years old.

We'll add more as we find we need them.

Get The Basic Scenario

Something like this: Dragonborn (DB) finds Grier's shack for the first time. A scene plays between Greir and Rostei:


Player can now talk to Greir and Rostei.

• Rostei reveals that she wants to be an alchemist, just like her Da. She picks flowers for ingredients so she can practice. She doesn't do the "yucky stuff" yet, although she knows she'll have to, someday.
  
• Greir approves of Rostei's ambition and would like to encourage her, but doesn't have the time needed to supervise her properly.
  
  • If the player can find the right path through the conversation he can gain her trust and offer to supervise Rostei on a trip to the meadow where the wild flowers grow
    
  • If not, he can try again in a week or so. Sometimes it takes time to get to know someone.
    
  • Speechcraft helps

With Mum's approval secured, DB takes Rostei to the meadow where she picks flowers. This is potentially where the mod fails, as the player watches bored beyond belief as the little girl picks flowers. So let's try and make it a bit more interesting. Give Rostei a selection of comments as she wanders around the place. Maybe if the player listens he can get a few hints about how best to get into Greir's good books. Maybe he can point out some flowers the girl missed using the follower command interface.

And it's probably worth throwing a few obvious hazards around at the edge of the meadow so the DB can shepherd Rostei away from them. Maybe have a wolf sneak up to add a little spice.

Back at the shack (don't keep them out too long), Grier is grateful. She offers to let the DB stay over (in the spare bed!) and cooks him a meal that gives a reasonable buff for a day or two. We're going to make this a recurring quest, and we need a reason for the player to go back again.

"What Could Possibly Go Wrong?"

Once you have the basics established, start thinking how you can complicate matters. For instance, a bandit ambush in the meadow would be good. We could just have them appear like the wolf ... but it's better if we can establish the reason for it first.

So: who are these bandits and why are they here? Well ... a widow living on her own, out in the mountains. It would be surprising if there wasn't someone showing an interest. Let's introduce an unwanted suitor into the equation:

• Snotvar The Surly : Big, ugly and unwashed, it's only a matter of time before the widow woman falls for his manly charm, right?
  
• Hugji, Diuji and Lugji : Snotvar's three buddies. All done out in furs and leather, bandit style.

Basic two dimensional bad guys. The third time DB turns up to go flower picking he gets a scene with Snotvar arguing with Grier.

• Talking to Grier reveals that she's not interested in Snotvar, but sadly he doesn't seem to take "no" for an answer.
  
• Talking to Rostei reveals that she doesn't like Snotvar "because he's smelly!"

We have enough now to stage the ambush, and instead of the player thinking "where did they come from?" it'll be "I thought that might happen". But we can do better than that.

Let's give the DB an option to try and solve matters peaceably. DB offers to "have a gentle word" with Snotvar and Greir gratefully accepts. It turns out that Snotvar drinks in the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Vilemyr_Inn in Ivarstead. Going there and talking to him results in a brawl.

• If the DB loses, Snotvar says "and you'll get worse if I catch you sniffing around that widow woman. She's mine, you hear? You just stay away"
  
• If the DB wins, Snotvar says "So you're good with your fists, you think that settles anything? This isn't over. This isn't over by far"

Apparently there are some problems you just can't solve with your fists. Battleaxes are a different matter however. At least that's the way Snotvar sees it.

When the player gets back to Greir, he get fussed and tutted over and much dabbing at bruises. Maybe even have him strip down to his undies so she can apply some slave.

And the next time the player goes flower picking, that's when Snotvar and his buds try and jump the DB. "I told you what would happen if I caught you round here again" he says, unlimbering his axe. And now the ambush is a logical consequence of what has gone before.

And so the fight breaks out and Rostei screams, and runs. Sadly the bandits are between her and home, and so she runs higher into the mountains.

Don't Be Afraid To Backtrack

You generally tell a story start to finish, but that's not usually how you write it. Often you'll get so far through the process and think "I need such and such". Don't be afraid to go back and add in new characters as we did with Snotvar, or new dialogue or items.

For instance, we'll want a quest marker on Rostei so the player can find her once he's dealth with the thugs. Now I'm not generally a big fan of sticking quest markers on people for no good reason. I mean I'll do it, but it's better if there's a justification for it. So let's give Grier some more dialogue, something she can say before the DB takes Rostei out for the first time:


And so we have a trivial magic item that justifies the quest marker. And we get in some early foreshadowing as well. I've also take the time to name Rostei's father who's starting seem like an actual person, albeit a dead one.

Further Complications

DB chases after Rostei. He had better: if he goes back to Grier without her, he'll never get another pie from her again!

He finds her screaming on a cliff ledge. There's one or more trolls below her tryng to get up and another one above trying to get down. The DB can deal with the ones on his level, but while he's doing that the upper one drops down to chase Rostei who flees in the only direction open to her - a cave at the end of the ledge.

The DB now has a good reason to go into a hole in the ground and kill a bunch of monsters

The Dungeon

We're moving a bit away from story telling, but ... basically a two part dungeon; half cave and half draugr ruin. The cave half is home to trolls. Rostei eludes her persuer by crawling through a hole that's too small for the troll (or the DB) to follow. After the DB kills the pursuing troll, we get some discussion.


DB then proceeds to clear the troll half before finding the portal into the Dragur half. Annoyingly the lever that opens the door is broken on the troll side. (Thus ensuring that the Draugr are still there, even if the player earlier cleared the troll half). However Rostei, crawling through narrow passages in the rubble can get to the activation lever on the far side. That opens the door, but there isn't enough gap for Rostei to get through to the DB, who now has to fight through all the Draugr to rescue the girl.

Wrapping Up

The DB takes Rostei back to Grier, who has been getting worried. We can throw in some conversation about how brave Rostei was, and Grier can start musing about how the girl really needs a father in her life (or a positive role model if the PC is female I suppose). The DB gets unlimited sleepover rights at the shack, and Grier becomes a marriage candidate.

And of course, he can take Rostei flower picking any time he likes. The End.

Notes

• You could deepen the plot quite a lot by making Snotvar less of a cardboard cut out and giving him a more sympathetic portrayal. Maybe add an option to get drunk with him instead of fighting, possibly leading to an option to help (the hopefully re-named) Snotvar get his girl.
  
• If you add a new element, it's always worth looking back over the story and seeing if you can introduce it a bit earlier. For instance we could give Grier an early line that says "Do be careful with her. You should be safe enough on the lower pastures. Just don't let her go too high. The trolls come down off the mountains sometimes. It can be dangerous". Similarly a good question for Rostei on the first time picking flowers would be "What's a 'dragger'?" / "A what?" / "Mam says she saw draggers in the upper pasture one time..." / "Oh, 'draugr', you mean. Well ..."
  
• Think about where you want the characters to go, in terms of their personality. In this case we wanted to get Grier to the point where she'd consider the DB romantically, that being the major hook to get him to put up with all those flower picking trips. And we wanted the DB to a point where he was motivated to go chasing the girl through trolls and undead.
  
• Get into your characters heads. Put yourself in their shoes and imagine the world the way they see it. It helps with the dialogue, and can suggest plot twists you'd have missed otherwise

OK, I'm done. Hope I'm not teaching too many grannies how to svck eggs

Thanks! This is very helpful, I'm going to try to make a quest tomorrow.

A very well written tutorial, and it's defiantly helped me to think about my quests in a different light.

WOW! DocClox, Good Job Man.

That reads like a story, provides a tutorial along the way and ends up being a specification to a developer!

Awesome Post, that must of taken you ages!? (and I bet you didn't risk typing all that via one Browser session)

Your idea could be easily implemented, and I am sure it will be.

I would do it myself, BUT...

I'm working on Fireworks at the moment, so have enough to do, but I would love such a carefully crafted Quest / Specification for how fireworks! should be introduced into SkyRim.

Your post has made me sit back and think about the whole story of a quest. My new Fireworks Mod, where Fireworks are man made, now need to be introduced!

Which is not like my previous mod which was Lightning during thunder storms, which is environmental, so I didn't have to worry about why there is lightning in the sky during a thunder storm.

Good post Dude.

I'm glad people are finding this useful


I tend to use indented bullet lists to work out the structure for things like this. My notes for a story like this tend to look like this:

• Topic - what to do?
  
  • something innocuous
    
  • picking flowers?
    
    • WHY?
      
      • Alchemist quest?
        
        • Boring!
      • Escorting a child
        
        • Favour to her attractive single mum
          
          • result!
• Cast
  
  • Grier
    
    • Widow
      
    • out of mourning
      
    • not looking
  • Rostei
    
    • seven years old

[edit]
The editor seems to be playing havok with my bullet points...



The advantage of doing it like that is that it's easy to add stuff into the tree in the right place.


I'm tempted myself, I must admit

Maybe when my current project is a bit more stable.


Exactly. People always say that such-and-such isn't "lore friendly", but most things are lore friendly if you take the time to introduce them properly and establish their place in the game.


Thanks again.

Very nice walkthrough DocClox! And a great story

I'd seriously considering teaming with someone if you didn't want to do it (I enjoy the coding and putting it all together parts, but not so much the dungeon layouts.)

Edit: And, if YOU made the mod, I'd download it.

This is where writing games gets a lot harder than writing normal stories. You have to take other things into account. For example, the player is dragonborn. They are prophocized to kill a god and save the world. Is the player really going to want to spend time escorting a child to pick some flowers? Maybe. Maybe not.

Also, children in this game are tricky because they can't fight, and are unpredictable in battle. If the player is escorting the child, clearly at some point there will be danger. Will the child run off? How can the player find them after they've gone and hidden? What's attacking the child and why does it have a reason too?

Great tutorial, but it really only covers one side of writing a story for this game. The other side can get very complicated, but it's crucial to making a fun experience that flows well. Though a lot of it can't be thought of until you put in ingame.

Lol, someone forgot to tell this to my character - all that time he spent chopping wood! He could have been out picking wildflowers, errr, slaying trolls!


I think he did a good job giving background on the story to handle those issues... but I certainly agree the game mechanics could really get in the way. But isn't that true for any mod?? (I spend hundreds of hours working around Bethesda bugs to get ScenicCarriages where it is, and it still has issues!)

I would say, your points AV are half of what DocClox is getting at. How many things "just happen" - like the house mods? How many actually have taken the (considerable) time to create any kind of quests? I'm not saying they should or have to, just saying that what I got from DocClox post was some pointers on "how" to tackle that rather big challenge. And as I am finishing up a follower mod, I've spent some time in this very area of the game and sure, some of the suggestions would be a lot of work - but that's what made it so good, imo. That's what adds some depth. In my mod, I coded a certain behavior when a certain enemy is killed.... (I didn't get my original idea because I don't have animation skills) but I did come up with something to give some added meaning to the story. Hopefully, people who use my mod will appreciate that little extra touch. (Who knows, maybe peopel won't even notice it! )

Anyway, I really hope this post inspires lots of people to take on the challenge of adding story to their mods, because really, I think this would add a lot of depth.

Well, that was part of the reason for choosing such an unlikely subject. I wanted to show that you could spin a tale around just about anything, no matter how unlikely it might seem.

That said, you've got a point: The aim of the tutorial was to show how to craft stories rather than quest design, which has a whole new raft of considerations which I only just touch on here. If "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy" then no story line emerges unaltered by game mechanics. But it's still good to be able to think of the story in isolation from the mechanics. That way you make yourself think first and foremost about what the characters would do and what they want, rather than limiting yourself to what you know you can make them do.

Least that's the way see it, anyway. Like I say, it's far from the only approach.


All in the first post. Yes she's going to run off, scripted to do it in fact. The player finds her because she has a magic locket that generates a quest marker (all explained to the player in advance). The initial attack isn't on the child but against the player, but the girl panics and runs into trolls and then draugr, also foreshadowed in the early dialogue.

The problems that can arise are going to be from things outside the scope of the mod, like dragons turning up unexpectedly.


Agreed. Like I say, the intention here is story telling rather than quest design.


Agreed. I mean if you consider the number of Champions of Cyrodiil who must have Viyja horseback riding, just so she could watch the sun set from a certain bridge, I don't think it's too unlikely that we'd find dragonborn escorting a child for a chance to get into her mum's pants ... I mean good graces!


I wasn't thinking of it in quite those terms, but I agree entirely. I mean you could cut to the chase and make a "player home and marrigable NPC" mod, without the quest to get there, but it's a lot more fun if you have to earn it, and a lot less jarring to the player if everything is properly introduced.

(great topic, doc )

I really enjoyed the process of laying out the characters and the story of a series of quests. I use this for the notes/thought that goes into it http://freeplane.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page (is free )

But AV is right, what seems like a throw away thing in your head often needs either - as sollar says - a lot of work to make happen in game, or a rethink.

(But then the implementation-difficulty is sometimes much of the fun)

Another thing I would say is to try and be sympathetic to the wide variety of players and play styles that may try your story. I know sollar will be amazed, but not everyone spends hours of every game-session chopping wood

Not everyone wants to read all of the story, so get the go-here-kill-him-bring-this out of the way early and those that don't need to know about the reason why they need a bunch of flowers can be off ... any one who does want to know more picks the next dialogue option (and remember, to be excellent ... worth releasing, imho ... a quest mod needs voice acting. So the more epic your story, the more actors (and their time) you'll need to make it work in game - I think this is the biggest reason why many poeple won't finish stuff they start)

Things like trying to allow the player to take a side, so rather than have a defined end point to your quest, have one of two possible bosses to kill ... A white or a black route through your quest ... depending on which path the PC chose (Morrowind did lots of that, if I remember correctly ... Even for quite short quests). You can use all the same locations and dungeons, if you're careful most of the monsters, even the same story (often) ... It's just about which NPC gives the quest and to which NPC the treasurer is returned.

If you have the voice talents available (or are doing text) then some racial or other comments about the PC's character - and achievements - is cute. As AV alludes to, there's something slightly cool (which Beth seems almost to have ignored) in an NPC calling your character Dovahkiin ... or Archmage ... or what-not. Checking the completed-stages of vanilla quests helps do this (good for surprise revenge attacks too ... )

And you're right, doc, any story will do ... I'm sort of planning a who-dunnit (but it will be text only, if I ever do it) and the systems available will cope easily with it. It's really about finding a plausable (ish!) reason to go clear a dungeon (and/or get a new companion/house). Players just wanna kill stuff and all that

They don't?!


That really does sum up my point. I agree with you and AV, some of the things Doc suggested would be a challenge. But it is the fun of modding.

And thanks for the link to Freeplane!! That looks very interesting.