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Quest and Lore Design Taxonomy

Scope​

This page owns the quest and lore design taxonomy for Game 1: how quests are sized, what kinds of quest a Game 1 quest can be, how their importance is graded, and the binding rule that lore is playable — that books, scriptures, ledgers, maps, inscriptions, journals, law tablets, craft manuals, and relics are not flavour drops but content that produces new quests, Site conversions, faction claims, or world-state changes. The taxonomy is abstract and reusable: it does not enumerate concrete Game 1 example quests. Concrete examples belong in a future content wave that authors specific Quests, Missions, and Activity Beats for Game 1.

This is design methodology, not lore. Lore content (what is true in the world) lives under examples/valenar/docs/lore/. This file describes how content authors organize the player's quest experience so that lore facts surface as playable structure rather than as flavour text.

Quest readback routes through the Journal as the durable day-based memory surface. Combat-only chronology remains separate in the Chronicle. This file defines the quest sizes and content shapes those readback surfaces record.

Taxonomy vs Ownership​

This page owns taxonomy. It does not become the canonical owner for concrete Quest Threads or design branches.

Quest Sizes​

Quests in Game 1 are sized along a six-tier ladder. The ladder is normative: every authored quest commits to one size tier.

  • Activity Beat — a single in-world step the queue executes in one or a small number of ticks. The smallest quest unit. Examples of the scale boundary, not the content: walking to a marker, lighting a fire, reading a single inscription.
  • Mission — a planned operation composed of several activities, executed within a single planning horizon. A Mission is small enough to fit inside a single act's pacing and large enough to require explicit player intent.
  • Local Quest — a multi-Mission objective tied to a specific place, NPC, Site, or feature in the player's reachable area. Local Quests resolve within a single act and within a single locale; they do not span the campaign.
  • Quest Thread — a multi-act objective spanning multiple Local Quests and Missions tied by a connective premise (a faction's interest, a recurring NPC, a slowly resolving Site mystery). Quest Threads carry across acts but resolve before the saga arc ends.
  • Act Arc — the playable structure of a single act, integrating that act's required outcomes with its quest content. An Act Arc is the planning surface a content author uses to ensure an act's beats land inside the act's pacing and required outcomes.
  • Saga Arc — the campaign-scale structure spanning all acts. The Saga Arc is the largest size tier; it integrates Act Arcs with the central campaign objectives (the false-king reveal, the Reclamation goal, the MC's cosmological situation).

Quest Types​

Quests in Game 1 are typed along ten categories. The category captures the focus of the quest content.

  • Main — quests on the campaign's critical path. Saga Arc and selected Act Arc beats are Main. Main quests cannot be skipped without breaking the campaign's authored progression.
  • Lore — quests whose primary content is the discovery, recovery, interpretation, or reconstruction of lore. Reading recovered books, reconstructing inscriptions, cross-referencing chronicles, identifying false records.
  • Site — quests whose primary content is a specific Site (ruin, shrine, dungeon, dead hero grave, Calling Shrine, Crownrot site). The Site's properties drive the quest's structure.
  • Skill — quests that grow MC or named-character skills through directed practice or apprenticeship. The quest exists to apply skill pressure that pure free play would not produce.
  • Rune/Crafting — quests centred on rune research, crafting recipe discovery, ward-craft work, or True Harm material acquisition. They produce new player capabilities in the rune/crafting system.
  • Character — quests focused on a specific named character (the MC's relationships, a companion's history, a faction NPC's arc). Character quests persist with the named character across acts.
  • Settlement — quests that resolve at the settlement scale: building a specific structure, establishing a labour pattern, expanding a footprint, founding an outpost. Settlement quests are the top-level surface of the settlement design layer.
  • Pressure — quests driven by demon pressure, taint spread, ward failure, gate scarring, or other Corruption-system threats. They impose time pressure or geographic loss if not addressed.
  • Faction — quests centred on a specific faction (a surviving nation, an internal Zone faction, a religious or ward order). Faction quests bring claims, contracts, and political consequences.
  • Reclamation — quests in the Reclamation loop: cleansing taint, restoring wards, closing residual gates, recovering Crownrot sites, re-anchoring Wardhearts. Reclamation quests are the late-act campaign content.

Act 0 Story Spine​

Game 1's first visible Quest Thread is Survive. It sits inside the Act 0 Act Arc and sets the naming discipline for the whole early game: immediate need first, hidden truth later. The concrete Act 0 mission ladder, reveal gates, and surface-integration notes now live in ../acts/gd-act-0-mission-spine.md, which is the Act 0 appearance view rather than the thread owner.

That authored spine keeps Survive, The Old Stones, The Ruin Beneath, and Make This Place Hold distinct from the live planning stack described in gd-objectives-clues-missions.md.

Quest Importance​

Quests in Game 1 are graded by importance — the authored consequence model that defines what happens if the quest is or is not engaged.

  • Critical Path — the quest must be completed for the campaign to progress. Saga Arc and required Act Arc beats are Critical Path. Failure or refusal to engage a Critical Path quest stalls the campaign at the act it gates.
  • Major Optional — the quest is not required for campaign progression but its outcome shapes large surfaces — a faction's stance, a region's safety, a named-character trajectory, an act's available content. Skipping a Major Optional quest produces a meaningfully different downstream campaign.
  • Local Optional — the quest's outcome shapes a single locale, Site, or NPC relationship without rippling to act or saga scale. Local Optional content gives the player rich locale texture without gating progression.
  • Emergent — the quest is generated by the world's pressure systems (Corruption spreading, gates re-opening, demon raids accumulating) rather than authored as a static content slot. Emergent quests appear because the world state demands them.
  • Hidden — the quest exists in the world content but is not surfaced to the player unless they encounter it through specific exploration or discovery. Hidden quests are not on objective lists; they appear when the player finds them.
  • Failure-Forward — the quest is structured so that failure produces new content rather than blocking progress. A failed Failure-Forward quest opens a follow-up Mission or Local Quest exploring the consequences of failure; it does not present a dead end.

Lore Is Playable​

The binding design rule for Game 1 quest content: lore is playable. Books, scriptures, ledgers, maps, inscriptions, journals, law tablets, craft manuals, and relics are not flavour drops. They reveal old facts AND create new quest hooks, Site conversions, faction claims, or world-state changes.

The canonical reveal chain for a piece of lore content in Game 1 is: ruin → clue → investigation → book/scripture/map → partial truth → new quest → world-state change. Each step is a quest-shaped surface:

  • ruin — a discovered place that suggests something happened here.
  • clue — a feature inside the ruin that points to a question.
  • investigation — a Mission or Local Quest that pursues the clue.
  • book/scripture/map — a recovered lore artefact that yields fragmentary content.
  • partial truth — the lore artefact's content combined with what the MC already knows produces a new understanding (with explicit gaps the player can choose to pursue).
  • new quest — the partial truth surfaces a new Local Quest, Quest Thread, Site to convert, or faction to engage.
  • world-state change — the quest's resolution produces a real change in the world (a Site converted, a faction's stance shifted, a Wardheart partially restored, a new region of map made safer).

A lore artefact that surfaces only flavour text and produces no playable consequence violates this rule. Authoring of lore artefacts must commit to a placement in the chain and a downstream quest hook before the artefact ships.

When a lore artefact enters the player's record, the Journal should capture the readable day entry, the player's annotation surface, and the links back to the affected objective, clue, mission, Location, Site, or faction surface. Readable prose and spoken readback remain separate: narration-safe spoken copy does not carry UI tags, chips, ids, or metadata clutter. This is a surface contract, not a committed schema naming decision.

Cross-references​

  • gd-objectives-clues-missions.md
  • gd-locations-features-sites.md
  • gd-sites-and-dungeons.md
  • ../ux/gd-journal.md
  • ../gd-canon.md
  • ../gd-glossary.md