12/24/2023

12/25/2023 2:06 AM

1

0

0 wins / 0 losses

Architect

Always thought questing was kind of similar to CYOA as an IF form so this thread seems like a good place to talk about it. QUESTING Questing is a type of interactive fiction/game that's somewhat of an offshoot of old adventure games such as Kings Quest and Zork and developed and popularized through 4chan's /tg/ forum before splintering into several offshoot forums/boards dedicated towards the medium. The writer of the game or the "QM" (QuestMaster) typically starts with an introductory prompt then includes a few suggestions and a freeform "write-in" option where players will vote on the action the protagonist takes. Ie: You are a goblin and you have an apple. What do you do? >Eat the apple >Screech Incoherently >Write-in They usually involved sketches and talking animals as characters at first with quick small updates as that was fit best with 4chan thread, but developed to be mostly slower and entirely text based as time went on to fit with forum style post-by-play. The first game/quest that really defined the genre was RubyQuest, a psychological/mystery horror thriller that follows the adventures of a rabbit named Ruby in their efforts to escape and discover what the fuck is going on in the facility they woke up in. It was wildly popular on /tg/ and dominated threads and discussions during its months-long run. There's a decent voice-over of it on youtube and even its own fanmade soundtrack, and it holds up better than 90% of quests I'd say. (And yes... the author is a degenerate furry who draws really shitty furry porn as living) http://evilcorporation.com.br/rubyquest/ (website made by the author to archive it) Quests would be popular on /tg/ for a while before 4chan decided all the anthropomorphic creatures in them violated their blanket furry ban at the time. /tg/ would go back to being... I don't wasn’t hanging around there back then. I was too busy being 10 years old. Most of the QM's/artists who did the old-style "drawquests" with anthropomorphic creatures either fucked off and found a new hobby or went to the smaller splinter-site specifically for quests; tgchan (or questchan)- which still exists today as probably the smallest of the sites that still does quests. (Mostly uncomfortably furry quests done in the early style) https://questden.org/kusaba/quest/catalog.html Space Battles and Sufficient Velocity two forums about science fiction discussion also ended up as being another bastion of questing, but not really as splinter-sites because of the ban, but really as them copying the quest format from ones that were run on their forum by /tg/ users who also used those forums without much idea of the original 4chan connection. These forums with dedicated threads and a disconnection from the progenitor quests that featured crude drawings and talking animals (furries), ended up being drawn to being completely text-based formats with slower updates and fan-fiction A LOT of fan-fiction. (and there's /qst/ a containment board on 4chan made much later that's kind a bastardized child of tg-chan and SV/SB) https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/forums/quests.29/ https://forums.spacebattles.com/forums/quests.240/ https://boards.4chan.org/qst/catalog Now we get to the good part. Why should you care? Because it's actually really popular, and something to make fun of. Sufficient Velocity and Space Battles probably has 50x the playerbase of CYS I think there are people who even making a living off it through patreon (somewhat), and who doesn't want to gawk at stuff like a 5.1 million words fan-fic quest about Viserys Targaryen? Yes, 5.1 MILLION WORDS. https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/a-sword-without-a-hilt-a-song-of-ice-and-fire-d-d-3-5-crossover.27579/ Look at it. Disgusting. I’ve never actually read any of it but the sheer volume is enough to be entertaining. (And if you REALLY want something to gawk at there is anon-kun which exclusively really degenerate porn in the style of quests.Not linking that.) There’s also some genuinely decent stuff that came from the medium. I stumbled upon it only a few years ago so it’s not going to be the old shit. White Tower Quest and the currently running VerseQuest really encapsulate the zany charm of what is appealing about 4chan-style draw quests to me. https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?searchall=White+Tower https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=Versequest Out of the SV/SB I really like some of the cultivation quests because that’s an interest of mine and the probably better written original setting quests that pop up. There’s something really appealing to me about having a passive-aggressive pissing match with mlpbrony27 over whether the best decision for a 15 year old Chinese peasant girl is to cultivate moon dao or fire dao, while trying not to take it far enough to get a ban from really sensitive mods. https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/forge-of-destiny-xianxia-quest.35583/ (probably the best cultivation quest even if a shadowy discord math cabal controls the vote to optimize the character instead of doing the NARRATIVE choices that are OBJECTIVELY the right choice because I voted for them, but whatever.) https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/the-first-hero-a-first-gen-superhero-quest.39844/ (My favorite quest that I was actually there to participate in, probably better out there but I’m not digging through that.) Plus if there’s a setting I’m really into there’s probably a 500,000 word quest about it that I can read or vote in to get my content fix. And as for tgchan I don’t really go there because of it being almost exclusively furry, but I kept tabs on the author of RubyQuest who used to be active there before going entirely into making furry porn. He made Nanquest on tgchan which is still one of my favorites. https://mozai.com/quests/NanQuest/ Anyways questing is an interesting if amateurish medium of interactive fiction that you can check or, or not. Also don’t argue with me if it's actually a form of IF or a form of forum game, everyone in the questing community calls it IF and I didn’t question it. (PS: I forgot there’s also another porn questing site I forgot, Questionable Questing, which is slightly less degenerate than Akun and more like… tasteful porn games that's an offshoot of SV instead of 4chan like Akun. Interesting stuff I know).