Hello GameDev community,

I am posting this because I plan on holding a competition for the alpha version of my online text RPG game found at http://adventuregamequest.azurewebsites.net/#/. The competition is simple, create a short story based quest line that falls in line with the quest flow of the game. Before I continue, there will be three winners selected from the competition. The winning quests will be included in the game as a playable quest line and credit for assissting in the devleopment of the game on the website.

There are several categories that will be judged for this competition. These categories are flow, balance, and originality. Flow is judged on how well the story of the quest fits together with the actual quest objectives as well as how the quests go together when leading from one to the other. Balance is the difficulty progression of the quests as the player completes them. Finally, originality is the cumalitive story line of the quests. The latter includes, characters, places, monsters, and all of the other exciting elements of an epic.

Now that we have those details out of the way, there are several rules which I will outline below.

1) Submissions must be made to alpha-adventuregamequest@outlook.com with the subject line of "Alpha Game Quest Contest"

2) Each entrant must define a grand total of 50 Quests

3) Quests have the following structure:

a) Quest Giver

i) Name of the Quest Giver

ii) A description of the quest giver

iii) The location a quest giver is in

iv) The quests that must be completed to unlock this quest giver

v) The quest that quest giver gives

b) Quest

i) The name of the quest

ii) A description of the quest (this is mostly the story part)

iii) Quest brief - Follows the syntax of verb, number, what.

iv) Quest Type

aa) Collect

bb) Slay

cc) Travel To

v) Quests that may be triggered after this one is completed (optional)

vi) Rewards: Score, Experience, Gold

4) Finally, a high level overview of your collection of quests. This includes the full story, where the quests fit in, and anything else you find useful. (Essentially, a short story)

5) Full list of the linear progression (or not so linear progression ;) ) of the quests, each one numbered

6) The deadline is February 27, 2015 and the finalists (top 10) will be posted on the website [ http://adventuregamequest.azurewebsites.net/#/ ] by March 6, 2015. The winners will be announced April 10, 2015.

With all the nitty gritty out of the way, I do have some notes to make about the submissions. These notes are listed as follows:

1) *Slight* Deviation of quest structure are encouraged. By slight, I mean the types of quests, as well as rewards. Be creative - not crazy. Remember, it is a text based RPG.

2) Questions are encouraged in email at the submission address with the subject line "Alpha Game Quest Contest Inquiry", or as a comment below

3) Spelling and grammar are encouraged to be correct

4) English is my primary language, so I encourage submissions in English, but will attempt to go through some online translator if I must, the internet is a world community and I will not impose language restrictions. I poorly read German as a secondary language.

I look forward to your submissions and am very excited for the opportunity to do this for the game development community. If you want to get a feel for the game before getting started, join now for free and play for a bit at the games website. [ http://adventuregamequest.azurewebsites.net/#/ ]

I am surprised you managed to get Socket.io + Node.js running on one of Microsoft's servers - that must have been a pain in the arse to do !

I am surprised you managed to get Socket.io + Node.js running on one of Microsoft's servers - that must have been a pain in the arse to do !

I have two questions, if I may: (My apologies if they've already been answered--while I read the post, I'm a little dozy at the moment, and may have missed something! ^^; )

1) You say that "There must be a grand total of 50 Quests"; does that mean that each entrant is required to produce a full fifty, that there are expected to be fifty between all entrants, or that you want at least fifty entries?

2) Are there any prizes, aside from simply having one's quest-line incorporated into the game?

1) You say that "There must be a grand total of 50 Quests"; does that mean that each entrant is required to produce a full fifty, that there are expected to be fifty between all entrants, or that you want at least fifty entries?

2) Are there any prizes, aside from simply having one's quest-line incorporated into the game?

Fair enough, and thanks for the responses. ^_^

Fair enough, and thanks for the responses.

No problem, always happy to help and/or answer questions. Don't forget to spread the word too! I am aiming for this to be a great new experiment in community driven development and hope it is a small success :D And if you plan on participating, good luck!

Do you plan on committing to the contest?

It is not very hard writing a 50 part quest line, however my Eastern mythology would clash with a game based on Western mythology.

Do you plan on committing to the contest?

It is not very hard writing a 50 part quest line, however my Eastern mythology would clash with a game based on Western mythology.

There are no restrictions on the mythology. As the game stands right now, there are a few weapons, a few monsters, and a few locations. The world is vast; hence Eastern and Western mythologies. Why cannot the game be just as expansive? That is part of the fun on this competition - creative freedom.

I am surprised you managed to get Socket.io + Node.js running on one of Microsoft's servers - that must have been a pain in the arse to do !

The ease of getting Node.js and Socket.IO running on both Windows and Linux is exactly why I use it over other platforms like Clojure or Scala.