Quests without code

Multi-stage objectives built from the editor, judged by the story rather than flags.

You can build a full multi-stage quest without writing a single expression.

Stages

A quest is a list of stages. Each one completes, and the next begins.

A stage with no condition is judged by the model — it completes when the story says it did. That is the one that makes quests feel like stories rather than checklists:

Convince the harbourmaster to look the other way

There is no flag for "convinced". The narrator decides, in context, whether the conversation actually got there.

A stage with a condition completes the moment that condition holds — has the relic, is at the lighthouse, the harbour is closed. Precise and instant.

Mix them. Most good quests do: hard gates where precision matters, judgment where it does not.

Image: docs/quest-stages.png A quest in the character editor's Quests tab with three stages — one judged, one gated on an item, one gated on world state.

Rewards

Each stage can carry rewards that fire as it completes, and the quest itself has a final payoff.

The reward text is player-visible — the NPC offering the quest has to be able to mention it, so write it as something they would say.

Making stages remember things

The durable way to build a long quest is to have earlier stages write world state, and later stages read it. The editor offers this as a reward action; no code needed.

State written that way survives across sessions and every other system can see it — so a location's description, an NPC's mood and a quest stage can all react to the same fact.

A worked quest

The lighthouse keeper's silence

Talk to the keeper — no condition. Judged.
Find the logbook — condition: has item Logbook. Reward: set world state knows_about_tides.
Confront the harbourmaster — no condition. Judged, and the narrator knows the player has the logbook because stage 2 wrote a flag.
Reward — experience and an item.

Nothing above is code.

When you outgrow this

If a quest needs arithmetic, or needs to react to something that has no editor control, that is Quests on the rules side.