Quests — Overview
The Quests layer contains active hooks, leads, McGuffin fragments, objectives, and side quests. Every actionable thread players can pursue is a node here.
Quest nodes are what the engine is ultimately in service of. The entire collapse process — seeds, propagation, guaranteed paths — exists to ensure that when players arrive somewhere with a goal, the threads they need are there to pull.
Opposite Face: Lore
A quest without meaning is a fetch quest. The Lore layer is the opposite face — every quest node requires at least one lore post that gives it stakes, history, or consequence. “Retrieve the artifact” becomes meaningful when the lore post explains what the artifact is, who made it, why it was lost, and what happens if a faction gets it first.
Quest Nodes vs. Player Goals
Player goals (from Goals Over Hooks) are inputs to the engine — they become seed tiles that bias the collapse toward quest-relevant content. Quest nodes in the graph are the engine’s output: the specific leads, locations, and NPCs that make a player goal pursuable in this session.
Procedural Counterpart
The procedures for quest generation live in Sections — Quests:
- Quest Prep — the full workflow from player intent to session-ready content
- Dungeons — generating dangerous sites from rumors
- Five Room Structure — the five-beat arc that structures any quest site
- Expedition Types — day trips, overnights, tier boundary quests
Node Types
(To be formalized — lead types, hook types, McGuffin structures, quest chain relationships)
Key Relationships
- Posts to Lore — what meaning, history, or secret makes this quest matter
- Posts to People — which NPCs carry, block, or anchor this quest
- Posts to Factions — which factions have goals that intersect this quest
- Posts to Settlement — where quest-relevant locations are
- Posts to Geography — what destinations the quest requires