Generating side quests from building blocks

Abstract

Computer games are an important application area for interactive storytelling. In a large subset of games, quests — tasks that the player is assigned to complete — are the primary driving forces of the storyline. The main storyline is usually accompanied by a number of optional side-quests. We present a system for generating side-quests based on chaining simple building blocks, akin to the branching narrative approach to interactive storytelling. Our primary interest was how far can we get with such a simple approach. The simplicity of our system also lets game designers retain more control over the space of possible side-quests, making the system more suitable for mainstream computer games. We implemented the system in an experimental game and compared the quests generated by the system with hand-picked and random sequences of building blocks. We performed two rounds of player evaluation (N1 = 21, N2 = 12), which has shown promising results.