The Quest Workshop

Writing a Quest

• Where: the Quest Workshop link in the village, next to the Restricted Section. Start a quest with a title and a one-line blurb, then fill in pages one at a time.
• Pages: 3 to 30 (VIP members: 40). Each page has up to 600 characters of text and a scene picked from the Workshop's painted backdrops. The first page is always called start, and it cannot be removed. It is holding the others up.
• Choices: every page that is not an ending offers 2 to 4 choices, each with a label of up to 80 characters. A choice can carry a dice check on luck, charm or level: the Workshop rolls a twenty-sided die, adds a small bonus and compares the total with the difficulty you set, anywhere from 5 to 20. Charm adds 1 per 20 charm and level adds 1 per 3 levels, both capped at 5. Luck adds nothing, because that is how luck works. A failed check sends the student to a different page of your choosing.
• Endings: 1 to 6. Each one is happy, sorry or strange, and offers one reward from the menu: nothing, 1 charm, 50 gold, 1 forest fight, or 150 gold (only in quests of 8 pages or more).
• Forward only: no page may lead back to a page the student already passed, and every page must be reachable from the first. Every quest therefore ends, which is more than can be said for most meetings. The editor lists anything that breaks these rules, with a link to the page that needs attention, before it lets you submit.
• Preview: on a draft, Preview shows a page exactly as students will see it, with the choices switched off. Previous and Next walk through every page in order, a page list jumps straight to any of them, and each page lists where its choices lead and any problem the Workshop has with it. Previewing rolls nothing, pays nothing and saves nothing; the dice stay in the drawer. Only you can preview your draft.
• Plain words only: no formatting, no color codes and no links of any kind. The Workshop removes the first two and refuses the third. Anything that looks like a web address is turned away at the door, full stops in ordinary sentences excepted.
• Limits: 3 open quests at a time (VIP members: 5), counting drafts and quests waiting for review, and one submission per calendar day.

Review

Staff read every quest before it reaches the shelf. They either approve it, choosing the highest reward it may hand out, or send it back with a short note that appears on your desk. A quest waiting for review is frozen; changing it means a new draft. Approval pays the author 150 gold and 2 charm, once, by owl. Staff can also retire a quest from the shelf later, for reasons that are theirs to keep. Rewards already earned from it stay earned.

By submitting, you grant Hogwarts Live a permanent, non-exclusive license to publish, display and edit your quest in the game, this guide and promotion of the game. You keep your copyright. Submit only your own original work.

Playing

• Where: the Quest Shelf in the village, sorted by newest, best rated or most played. Each card shows how many students started a quest and how many finished it.
• Pick up where you left off: if you are partway through a quest, the shelf opens with up to two of them, the one you played last coming first. That one carries the page's only gold button, Continue. A quest you are partway through is listed there once and not again further down, because the shelf is long enough already.
• What a card says about you: in words, since colors get missed. A quest you wrote wears a Yours pill. One you are partway through says In progress, how many choices in you are, and when you last played, as in "4 choices in, last played yesterday". A quest you have finished shrinks to one line with the date, the reward you collected (or that you collected none), your own rating, and Play again. If you are playing a finished quest again, it counts as in progress, and the finish stays on record.
• Your place: opening a quest you have started picks up where you left off. Play again and Start over are the only things that reset it.
• Play again: one click, from the finished card, the ending page, or the page that says you have finished. It is a button, not a link, so a stray click or a browser guessing ahead cannot wipe your place. Start over in the middle of a quest asks before it resets anything. Either way your reward, your rating and the date you first finished stay on file.
• Dice: a check is rolled once, when you choose, and the roll is shown to you in full. Refreshing the page does not roll again, and neither does the back button. Starting over does.
• Rewards: each quest pays its ending's reward once per student, ever, and you can collect at most 3 quest rewards a day (VIP members: 5). If you reach a rewarded ending after the day's limit, it stays in the drawer: start the quest over on a later day and finish it again to collect. A quest never pays more than the cap staff set when they approved it. The shelf keeps the tally in one line at the top, such as "1 of 3 quest rewards collected today", using your own limit. Students in their first week see the eighth-day rule there instead of a count.
• No rewards for: authors playing their own quests, and students in their first week, who play for the story. Rewards start on your eighth day.
• Ratings: finish a quest to rate it from one to five stars. Authors and first-week students cannot rate, and the rating you give can be changed later.

The Front Table

Authors of an approved quest can pay 300 points to put it on the Front Table for seven days. The Front Table sits above the Quest Shelf, holds three items at once (tales share the idea, though not the table), and labels everything on it as placed by the author. It buys attention, not stars. Ratings and the Champions board ignore it completely.