The UnOfficial Format 4 Quests!

[This is the RSOF version- I need to see what can be improved on.]

Omhmugod like like i wan;lkt a quewat wher u battl3 zammy!!! And hes lik lvl1000239084339459457 an u hav 2 kjl;ill him w/o paryaer!

Ever noticed those posts called, ‘noob posts’? If you haven’t, they are unstructured, uninteresting, filled with grammar and spelling mistakes, not to mention a wall of text that will make your eyes bleed reading from a LCD screen. No one wants to read your idea if its presented like that. Simple as that- its hard to read and understand.

Now, I’m not saying you should write a quest where you fight a god of Runescape- never EVER do that by the way-you’ll make yourself look like a bumbling idiot; I am trying to say that there needs to be some form of universal format for writing quest guides!

It is so hard having to adjust to so many varieties of styles, but if you read quests all the time, it can get a little for fun for some people! However, I don’t like adjusting- I’ve done it so much, it’s so annoying and that no one’s ideas get heard because of it!

And in this thread, I have devised a specific format for all your quests!

PLEASE note that this is not mandatory, however it would be amazing if you read this!

Now its time to start writing in the easiest, and most socially accepted form of quest writing: The Walkthrough. To begin, after your stunning introduction and table of contents, you should be able to make a list of what you need.

This is where it gets strange: To keep the requirements most organized, keep separate categories! It shouldn’t be a huge amount of effort to determine what is a skill level, is to a monster, and is to an item… So why group them in the same category? I need level 450 Black Demon to start this skill!?

So simply, list them out by:

- Skill - levels required. e.g. 45 Hunting, 15 Agility, and 12 Herblore
- Quests - quests you need to complete to start this quest e.g. Wolf Whistle, Druidic Ritual, and Death Plateau
- Other - monsters, and other things you have done that’s necessary . PLEASE, tell us the number of monsters of a certain level, or you could abbreviate. E.g. Many monsters over level 15 and have traveled to edge of Death Plateau.

Please, for the love of what is good; capitalize the first letter of each word on the list of requirements, unless it is a phrase!

On the same post, you should also include information on how difficult and how long your quest is. However, stick with the words that JaGeX have provided for you.

The Rewards are to be listed AFTER the walkthrough has been written. I can’t stress this enough! It is so stupid to see someone post the rewards right after the requirements! It doesn’t want to make you read the quest- it makes you think “What the Hell am I doing to get these rewards!?”

If you post your Rewards AFTER the quest, you will be forced to read it and allow you to make proper judgments, plus it is very chronological.

Now, just like the requirements, the rewards are to be listed, however, you shouldn’t post it in sections; just one long list starting with the quest point reward, XP rewards descending from greatest to least, and then other rewards (including ALL items received as a special gift, areas unlocked, etc).

Time to start working on the format for the quest proper!

To begin writing your actual quest in this style can actually get quite complicated. You MUST include these objects in your guide, or else you‘ll look like a bumbling or apathetic idiot :

1. Write EACH step from the very first, to the very last step of the quest.
2. Step 1 is ALWAYS the step that starts the quest in your Quest Journal - officially starting it. You may have a prelude, or a few steps before, but please mark those steps as the “Prelude”.
3. Each step must contain at least one action.
4. Be descriptive without taking too much space - especially for new content.
5. Each step MUST be written in third-person
6. If possible, describe what happens should you fail attempting to do whatever the step requires.
7. If your step involves more than one paragraph (one for the action and the other for a description of something), feel free to accomplish it.
8. Write your steps in complete sentences, and use a variety of sentences. Simple, complex, compound, and compound-complex, all work well! No sentence fragments; not even the ones to add a dramatic effect- save those for the narratives.
9. Try to fit as many steps onto one page as possible. If you write a two-paragraph page or more, all the paragraphs must fit on that page, so just put it on the next post. It wastes a little bit of space, but it is less confusing having to read half of the step.


Example:

“5. Jump the stepping stones.”

This isn’t a complete step. Sure it tells you to do it, but you can fail while jumping the stepping stones, but you could also have two sets of stepping stones in the same general place.

This is a step:

“5. There will be two sets of stepping-stones across the stream. One of them is fake and will kill you if you jump over the fake, so it is best to jump across the stepping stones to your right(facing north). If you fail, you’ll fall in the stream, loose 1hp, and swim back to the shore. Try, and try again until you succeed.”

See how the second version was much more clear and gives you so much more helpful information, but doesn’t require you to write a lot? You should.

The occasional Involuntary movement or actions that YOUR character does can be described as, “ *text* ” or, “You ____.”

Any comments or footnotes you want to add?

Comments can be marked off with hyphens or parenthesis. Like:

“One of them is fake and will kill you if you jump over the fake, (ha-ha! ) so it is best to jump across the stepping stones to your right(facing north).*”

The (ha-ha) was the comment to add a little humor!

The asterisk was to notate that there is a footnote based off that comment. At the bottom of the POST, place your information there.

Example:

“9. Pull the lever, thus causing a cut scene.

----Footnote
These stepping stones require level 15 Agility to jump across.
----”

It requires a tad bit more space, but it is worth it. You can have many notations as well, but the asterisk is the most common.

Now, what makes quests come alive are the cut scenes- some can be violent, dramatic, or comedic, or even a disastrously amazing combination of the three. If you have one you MUST indicate that the step before the cut scene is on, so you give Jagex and us a head-start.

You must then write in the next paragraphs whatever happens- including camera angles and dialogue.

Boss Battles are another important factor in quest writing- in-fact, for some people, it’s the most important part of the entire quest! So, you have to write it in, or else who want’s to read it? You must explain the boss, his/it/hers’ level, its fighting style, who much he/she/it hurts you, how to kill it, etc. Just don’t make it too detailed or long, or else it will be very intimidating to read. Just like this thread.

Puzzles are exactly the same way: describe them in a paragraph or two, and you can move on, but you have to include necessary information like how to solve it or how to operate it, rather than “This is hard! I don’t wanna do that!” or the lazy, “I’ll let you or Jagex come up with it.”

Alright, now you’ve passed the basics of writing the body (quest section) of your script, and now it is time to have a look at what your characters say, and do. Yes- this involves character development- a crucial aspect for quest-writing, yet writing ANYTHING. Your quest will be super-dull if you decide to use no character development- all 158+ quests on Runescape has it, whether it is finding someone’s lost cat, to rescuing someone from a cave and going inside their dreams-there’s character development.

It doesn’t have to be extreme, in fact it can totally be a twist; all it needs to do is have a change in emotion. How, you might ask? The answer: through dialogue.

Now, I’m not going to lecture you through on how to compose dialogue, (you should be literate from your language classes in school! ) but to write it in script format.

A good thing about Quest Writing, is that you can summarize the dialogue. But PLEASE make it apply to the quest, and progress you foreword, sometimes backwards- it has to lead you somewhere. You should also include in an emotion, or reaction to something.

However, if you DO decide to write out the dialogue, a simple twist is needed for the dialogue- you use colons rather than commas. You may or may not use quotation marks, but if you remove the name of the character it might get a little hard to distinguish between text and dialogue. You must hint emotions through punctuation and the way the person speaks.

You ALWAYS write yourself as ‘You’; you could post your username, but typically, ‘you’ takes up less space, thus allowing you to write more dialogue. If a character, including you, says your name while speaking, you put ‘(your name)’, or ‘’ .

Here is an example:

Reldo: “Hello, my name is Reldo. Who are you?”

You: “Hey Reldo, My name is !”

This is just an example of well-formatted dialogue- I know Reldo doesn’t talk like that, but you get my point!

If you have a situation where you have multiple choices, you MUST describe each option and the IMMEDIATE effects after choosing that option. This could result in a cut scene, a boss battle, more dialogue who knows, it is up to you!

Example:

'“Murphy: "You ready to go diving?”

You will now have 2 options to choose from, “Yes”, and “No”.

Choosing “Yes”, will cause you to go diving with Murphy, and choosing “No” will allow you to go prepare.”'

If this is the end of dialogue, and you need to say which option will further you on the quest and continue off of that (make sure to get in the description for the others, too!)

Whew! I told all the basics of a great quest script written in the Walkthrough Format! Now what I’ll be doing next - you can totally skip this if you want - is I’ll write a short quest about roughly 20 steps long. Assume this post after the long line hyphens is the first through third post. (I am kind-of squeezed for space) of the thread. Please do not lynch me for accuracy; I am trying to get a point across.
-----------------
Welcome all! Dragon78114 here has a new idea for a quest!

Imagine Taverly, a quiet and peaceful town- with a creepy little secret. Care to find out what this creepy little secret is? Find out in this quest, “Trouble in Taverly”.

Table of Contents:
Post 1: Introduction
Post 2: TOC
Post 3: Requirements
Post 4: The Quest
Post ?: The Rewards

Difficulty: Novice

Length: Short

Requirements:

Levels-
45 Hunter
15 Agility
12 Herblore

Quests-
Wolf Whistle
Death Plateau
Druidic Ritual

Other-
Level 25 Mean Troll

1. To begin this quest, you must first find Sanfew who is in his regular building. Once you find him, talk to him. He will tell that he has lost his magical bag of herbs that can store an infinite amount of herbs in it, and want he wants you to find it for him. He will also describe where he last saw it- which was near the Heroes’ Guild.

2. Go to the Heroes’ guild and travel directly east. There will be a particular mound sticking out of the ground. Search it and you will figure out that it leads into a cave underground.

3. Grab a shovel and dig over the mound. Once you dig, you’ll fall into a long cave, that is filled with caves going each and every way, filled with rocks and stalagmites, and rats.

4. Inspect each rock. It should help you figure out where the foot steps that Sanfew took, just like tracking for hunter.

5. Once you have reached a room with a stream inside, you will encounter two paths of stepping stones to take. One of them is fake and will kill you if you jump over the fake, so it is best to jump across the stepping stones to your right(facing north). If you fail, you’ll fall into the stream, loose 1hp, and swim back to the shore. Try, and try again until you succeed.

6. Once you have gotten to the other side, there will be a table in the middle of the room. Search it.

You will receive a note describing Sanfew’s encounter with a Mean Troll and he discovered a potion to make the Mean Troll go away, but the Mean Troll stole his bag of herbs instead.

7. Continue on further in the cave, until you notice a metal gate blocking your way.

Try to open it, but it is locked! So, inspect it and and you will come to the conclusion that you need to squeeze past the bars.

8. Squeeze pas the bars and you may fail by doing so, causing 1hp of damage.

9. Once you have squeezed through the bars, you will be in a small room filled with tables of junk, and a lever attached to the walls.

Pull the lever, thus causing a cut scene.

Sanfew’s Magical Bag of Herbs will fall from the ceiling and then you try and grab the bag, but you are stopped by the Mean Troll! He tells you to stop, but you ignore him and he starts attacking you.

He is a level 25 Mean Troll, and he’ll fight melee until he has less than 10hp left. Then he’ll surrender and let you take the bag.

10. Before you entered the room, there should have been a turn to the west. If you go down to it, you’ll eventually come across a ladder, leading you to around Death Plateau. Note: If you don’t had climbing boots on, you will fall onto the path below- where the Thrower Trolls attack.

11. Go back to Sanfew and tell him you got the bag back. He’ll be happy and will want you to do one more task for him: create the potion that drives off Mean Trolls!

12. Take a Vial of Water, Marrentill, and an Eye of Newt from the bag and mix them all together. You will receive: ‘Troll Repellant(3)’ in your inventory- a more citrine colored potion.

13. Once you have made the potion, talk to Sanfew again. He’ll want you to spread the potion on the furniture in the room that you found the bag in to make sure no troll comes in his secret cave.

14. Go back to the room where you found the caged room and use the repellant on the furniture on there. Once you put the last bit of repellant on the furniture, Sanfew will pop up and talk to you.

He will be glad and impressed with you for helping him! Hurray! Quest complete!

Rewards:

1 Quest Point
2,000 Agility Xp
500 Herblore Xp

--

Now that you read my guide, if you just started writing, it might be best to 100% sticking to the format. If you get more experienced, like me, you can start to float away from it a little bit.

Remember, PLEASE remember, this is very much so unofficial. However, it will make you look a hell of a lot smarter, and hell, you can get help a lot easier with this. So, if you want to be writing in detailed summaries, that’s fine- I just gave ya’ a nice alternative! : )

If you love writing, I’m sure you’ll love doing this, and I know it’ll feel awkward writing in this format for the first time, but your effort is well worth the pain! : )

I know I am repeating myself, but I am trying to get this straight.

See ya’ until next time!
Have fun! - Dragon


[There, that's the long-fabled formatting guide I've been talking about! Shilo Village 2 re-edited is almost complete... I am only at step 50 of about 65. ]

I'm sorry but if everyone wrote their quests this way it would kill me, variety is golden