Below are samples of quest concepts inspired by modern MMORPGs while they were in development, characters I’ve mostly developed for playing tabletop RPGs games, and a lengthy recruiting document for a guild I intended to form. Each of these demonstrates my ability to create content within a given context or prompt, and demonstrate some of my processes and approach.
Content Designs
Below are a variety of quests and scenarios I’ve designed. They may be made with a game in mind, but can be converted to something similar based on what any other game world contains instead. Whenever I start to get into a game, I get plenty of ideas for quests that I’d love to see, which are part of what inspired each of these designs.
The Vengeful Youth (2021)
The Vengeful Youth is a quest chain about an adolescent who attempts to get revenge for the death of their father, which happened when the family was attacked by corrupted beings when they tried to visit their ancestral homeland. This is the framework for a full quest chain with multiple outcomes.
This quest is written to demonstrate a quest chain with deepening intrigue and the terms for a glorious success or crushing defeat by the end. Instead of filling in all the dialog, the main points and attitudes of the characters are provided, so the quest can better be adapted to the manner of speaking which fits the NPC’s culture. Along with multiple endings, a victory can have additional consequences that can be even more beneficial, especially if there’s a way that NPCs can be recruited for some kind of activity. While it wouldn’t be difficult to adapt to a variety of projects and settings, this was written in 2021 with Ashes of Creation in mind.
Wolves and Rabbits (2021)
This quest is a modular and cyclic design, where players fend off predators, make comfortable situations for prey animals, then capture the prey animals once their population has come back, before the boom in population bring in predators once more. This includes three sets of responses from the quest provider, depending on the player’s standing with the village.
This quest was written to demonstrate a modular design for a cycling quest, where progress in each of the three phases leads to the next, until it loops back around to the first phase again. While it was written with wolves in mind as the predator, and rabbits in mind as the prey, this could be used for any predator/prey relationship that has impact on trade and opportunities for towns nearby. This was also written with the intent to demonstrate three varieties of dialog responses from the questgiver NPC that represent their mood towards the player, whether friendly, neutral, or unfriendly towards them. This was written in 2021 with both Ashes of Creation and New World in mind.
Rations & Iron (2020)
Supplies are low in the settlement, and an ambushed three-wagon caravan left behind much-needed supplies. The lead wagon with explosives fortunately arrived safely, but the rations and iron are unaccounted for in what may soon be a desperate time of need. It is up to the players to investigate what happened, but they should be be wary, for there are peculiar characteristics provided in the descriptions of the ambushers.
This quest was written as a modular quest for a variety of settings, where a trusted officer is the perpetrator of an ambush that is meant to set the stage for the invasion of a nearby fort. They are acting on orders from a bandit leader, and the bandits have showed up to support the perpetrating officer and their personal guard by disguising themselves and the ambush as having been done by some sort of monsters. Players must investigate the ambush to get leads on the enemy hideout, and take them out before they launch the ambush on the fort. This was written in 2020 with New World in mind.
Character Designs
To demonstrate my character design skills, I’ve provided a variety of characters I’ve played or intend to play for various Tabletop Role-Playing Games, as well as a character design I wrote for Warframe. Each TTRPG character has a thorough backstory and lore, which I enjoy doing to enhance the quality of gameplay and roleplay when I play the character. I always appreciate the prompt of a game or story for me to form some ideas and finish with a well-rounded and interesting character.
Drudo the Unhaunted (Blades in the Dark, 2020)
Zar Rudderlin learned of his immunity to possession from an event where his childhood friends were driven completely and permanently mad, and was set to sea to be away from his hometown while learning useful skills as an experimental engineer and effective sawbones. His travels eventually took him from the Dagger Isles to Doskvol, where he became a spirit smuggler with the Phantom Ferrymen.
In preparation for the first gameplay session of Blades in the Dark, I wrote my character a thorough backstory to assist with the quality of roleplay, and the reasons why Drudo knows certain things and acts a certain way. I wrote this in the character’s own words instead of a third-person narrative, to further emphasize their personality and help me convey the behavior and attitudes of the character. In the sessions we played, he made phenomenal progress on the Drudo Rudder, and I was eager to see how the GM would apply its intended effects. We played just a few sessions of the game before our schedules stopped aligning, but I streamed and saved them all to Twitch and YouTube.
Klargus Gorkun (D&D 5E, 2019)
Instead of the usual smelly and reclusive Bugbear, Klargus is very friendly and outgoing, and has a strong set of ethics formed by some time spent at a monastery in Neverwinter. Living just north of Phandelin along the Triboar Trail, Klargus helped build a trade post to legitmize Castle Cragmaw before leaving with the local architects to Waterdeep, where things started getting very interesting for him.
Klargus Gorkun was based on players and NPC influences from the Lost Mine of Phandelver campaign I played previously with most of the same crew as the Dragon Heist campaign for which he was created. Klargus learned architect skills from when he was compelled to visit the Monastery of Open Arms in Neverwinter, and returned to find his father Klarg–a bugbear captured and brainwashed to dispose of the former King Grol during the Lost Mine campaign–was now king. Klargus spent time with my character from the Lost Mine campaign, the stonemason Gorkus of Oreton, to rebuild their home at Castle Cragmaw and help to spearhead the effort to be legitimized by the local authorities and set up a trade post. So far, the campaign is still ongoing, and has been very successful.
Nirvan the Half-Frame (Warframe, 2019)
Nirvan was a concept created for Warframe to make a hybrid of the operator and frame forms, as well as being based on the five schools of focus to provide five different sets of abilities. Powers are based off the Operator abilities, as well as an Overcharge mode for a sudden burst of power.
This was somewhat inspired by the lore of the Helminth on the Orbiter ship, as a sort of adaptable organism that can be attuned to the different schools of focus. Aside from providing a set of powers, other abilities are enhanced by Nirvan, such as the less-used aerial kick while sprinting, alternate bleedout and recovery methods, modifiers that affect the player’s amp and waybound skill effectiveness, and being powered by the operator’s regenerating energy pool instead of a conventional energy system. It is designed with some tradeoffs as well, and may not be usable in some specific environments (such as Orphix missions). The image in this entry represents a vague idea of the Unairu form’s default colors and features.
Thuzar Goldflask (D&D 5E, 2017)
From his beginnings as a troublemaker, to the accomplished alchemist of today, the young Dwarf lad Thuzar Goldflask set out find a manual of old alchemic secrets from the Sunless Citadel. The essence of a Gold Dragon is what helped him correct his behavior, as well as to innately develop sorcerous skills help keep Thuzar safe from harm.
Thuzar was designed as a high-survival sorcerer for the Sunless Citadel campaign, combining racial and class attributes for an extra 2 HP per level, natural Mage Armor armor, and the ability to speak Draconic–which was very useful with the creatures found in this campaign. The backstory was written with vague mention of the location, so Thuzar really could have been used anywhere in the game world as a starting character. I also used his story as a way to demonstrate how he gained his sorcerous abilities and golden-scaled appearance, as well as why he has both brewing and alchemy proficiencies. The campaign resulted in success.
Vil Dekaya (Theleston, 2017)
After seeing the range and possibility for archetypes and backgrounds for characters in the Theleston game world, I wrote up a backstory for an odd style of character I wanted to play. Vil was approved for use in the game world by the story lead, and will be played once Theleston game sessions resume!
Part of the purpose of Vil Dekaya was to make an interesting and well-rounded Felkirk character, since I like the lore and environment of Falcreek for the purpose of the character’s origin. Part of it was a pun on the Yiddish vilde chaya which means “wild animal,” which the crow and lion part of the backstory is there to reinforce. Vil’s origins and logging and totemcraft help to provide plenty of useful skills, as well as being an effective survivalist and fierce combatant. This was written in 2017, but has yet to be played.
Other Designs
Below is an additional project I wrote up for the backstory and formation of a guild, which I was intending to play before the project’s future became uncertain. Combining lots of invented lore based in game-specific content, and a full membership handbook, this massive document was meant to be sent as a parcel to players all across the game world so they could join me or form their own local chapter.
The Lantern Bearers of the Fourth Age (Chronicles of Elyria, 2018)
The Lantern Bearers have started anew here at the start of the Fourth Age by a group of academics, cartographers, and adventurers. The Lantern Bearers of the First Age saw it as their sacred duty to record and archive the history of the world, as no gods deal with such business, so the people of the world would be next in line to carry out this task.
This is a guild I was intending to run in Chronicles of Elyria, focused on cartography and adventuring, as well as recording their adventures so we can understand how attitudes change and areas develop or fall over time. It starts with three letters before getting to the handbook, which has all the rules and intentions detailed out except the actual member roster. There is a bit of repetition if it is read as if it were a single document, so splitting them up into three letters helps to further deepen and communicate the story and purpose of the guild from different perspectives while separating each as their own part of the whole story.