- faction questlines with multiple endings
- 3
- quest stages in one side quest, A Bad Hand
- 30
- skills and SPECIAL stats tested in that quest
- 12
- voiced dialogue scenes
- 20+
- Role
- Narrative & Quest Designer
- Team
- 30+ modders
- Tools
- Creation Kit, Papyrus, xEdit
- Status
- Early development since Feb 2025
What I did
- Designed and implemented 3 branching questlines for the Republic of Cascadia, the Orcas Syndicate and the Red Leafs, each with multiple endings.
- Designed side quests from premise to stage list: characters, locations, objectives, checks, endings and rewards.
- Wrote 20+ voiced dialogue scenes gated by skills, SPECIAL stats, faction reputation and faction rank.
- Wrote bark libraries and terminal entries for 10+ settlements and regions.
- Built reusable Papyrus scripts for patrol alerts, disguise checks and regional faction reputation. Other designers now use them as templates.
- Worked with level design and QA on navmesh handoffs, triggers and quest stages.
Quest architecture: A Bad Hand
I structured A Bad Hand as 30 stages in 4 phases, so one decision about Johnny Bradshaw, a politician who lost the Orcas' money, can end 5 ways. Each phase tests a different kind of play.
- Investigate: 3 optional leads in Johnny's campaign office, each opened by a different skill
- Negotiate: a private meeting with each Orcas leader before the player decides Johnny's fate
- Act: fake his death, execute him in public, or install him as a secret puppet
- Interfere: anonymously tip off Security, the NCR or the Red Leafs to unlock a wildcard ending
I wrote 5 endings, including a fail state where Johnny escapes and exposes the Orcas. Each ending pays out different perks and shifts the Orcas' power in other questlines.
Designing conflicting motives
I gave each Orcas leader a different goal for Johnny, so no single choice pleases everyone. Every leader is right from where they stand, and that is what lets one quest support 5 endings.
- Granddaddy: a robobrain holding the mind of a pre-war mob boss. He stays neutral and tests the player.
- Alicia Wu, Hearts: a diplomat who wants Johnny alive as a double agent inside Security.
- Rocco, Clubs: the public face, afraid of losing Granddaddy's favor, who wants Johnny dead.
- Sawmill, Diamonds: wants the money back before anything else.
- Johnny Bradshaw: charming, reckless and terrified.
I chose each location to carry part of the story. The Blackfin Lounge fronts the Orcas headquarters, Johnny's campaign office sits inside City Hall, and a hidden safehouse hosts the secret negotiations.
Dialogue that reads the player's build
I wrote Johnny's first conversation to open 6 ways, and each opening leads to its own branch.
- Neutral: plain questions for any character build
- Strength 7: intimidate him into full cooperation
- Perception 7: notice the details that lead to the Spades
- Barter 60: turn his debt into a business deal
- Orcas reputation or Security reputation: arrive as someone's agent
Stat options stay hidden below their threshold. Harder checks inside the branches, such as Perception 8 and Barter 70, dig deeper. Failing one can close a lead for good, so the player's build decides what they learn.
Building it in the Creation Kit
I implemented the Johnny encounter myself with trigger volumes, dialogue conditions and a Papyrus script.
- Checks Perception and Intimidation and routes to different outcomes.
- Updates quest stages, globals and faction reputation from dialogue choices.
- Stages a fake death with XMarkers, actor enable and disable, and custom sound.
- Logs traces so QA can confirm each branch fired.
Small quests and ambient voice
I wrote Catch and Release, an early-game side quest in Kent, as a 9-scene dialogue sheet. Farmer Toby Green asks the player to find his grandmother, who never came back from fishing.
- Refusing Toby twice fails the quest. Asking for hazard pay gets a promise of 50 caps.
- A Barter check on return raises the reward.
- Every line carries a facial expression for implementation.
I also wrote the caravaneer bark library: lines for 37 combat and ambient triggers, from ambushes to pickpockets.
More detail
Design goal
Show Cascadia's civic decay through quests that make players juggle faction politics, such as Orcas Syndicate rackets and Red Leafs austerity. Keep Fallout's freedom of approach, and keep quest states readable for the people downstream.
Checkpoints, port terminals and wasteland routes act as story spaces. Player choices there change faction relationships and the world state.
Responsibilities
- Own faction quest arcs from pitch to Creation Kit implementation.
- Write VO-ready branching dialogue with Seattle slang, NCR politics and stat checks.
- Script disguises, smuggling routes and faction alert levels in Papyrus, built for reuse.
- Seed worldbuilding through terminals, holotapes and patrol barks that react to the player.
What I learned
A large mod team needs tight quest scope, explicit state tracking and readable script conventions. Writing for maintainability kept the quests reactive over long playthroughs and kept level, scripting and QA aligned.