# Quests

A quest is a list of **steps**, each with an optional [condition](/docs/conditions) and a
list of [rule steps](/docs/steps) that fire on completion.

## Two kinds of stage

**A step with a condition** completes synchronously the moment the condition holds. Precise,
instant, and cheap.

**A step with no condition** is judged by the model — it completes when the story says it
did. That is what lets *"convince the harbourmaster to look the other way"* be a real
objective rather than a flag hunt.

You can mix them freely in one quest, and most good quests do: hard gates where precision
matters (*has the relic*, *is at the lighthouse*), narrative judgment where it does not.

## Rewards

Two channels:

- **Per-step rule steps** fire as each stage completes.
- **`rewardSteps`** on the quest itself is the payoff at the end.

The `reward` text is player-visible — the NPC pitching the quest has to be able to mention
it.

## Driving quests from world state

The durable way to build a multi-stage quest is to have player actions write world state,
and gate later stages on those flags:

```js
$.setWorldState({ key: "harbour", value: "closed" })
```

State written that way survives across sessions and is visible to every other system — so a
location, an NPC's schedule and a quest stage can all react to the same fact without knowing
about each other.

## Worked example

*The lighthouse keeper's silence*

1. **Talk to the keeper.** No condition — the model judges when the conversation has
   actually happened.
2. **Find the logbook.** Condition: `hasItem` Logbook. Reward step:
   `$.setWorldState({ key: "knows_about_tides", value: "yes" })`
3. **Confront the harbourmaster.** No condition — judged. The narrator knows the player has
   the logbook because step 2 wrote a flag every system can see.
4. **Reward:** `$.grantXp(50)` and an item.

## Next

[Plugins](/docs/plugins) — bundling rules into a system you can share.