Pioneer of Nowhere Mission Intro
(Branching dialogue intro script for an action RPG quest, written in Twine, playable within 5-10 minutes)

When the humble prospectors of a mining camp go missing chasing a fabled treasure, local spellslinger Magnus must speak to the criminal saloon owner Nero Jarlan in order to find out where they went.

Pioneer of Nowhere is a short quest intro for an imaginary Western fantasy game that would be like Red Dead Redemption meets Mass Effect. This piece is meant to highlight dialogue and characterization, with some light branching narrative.

The world and characters come from a short story I wrote about a “cowboy wizard” in a second world fantasy setting. I wrote this sample in Twine as part of an exercise from The Game Narrative Toolbox by Ann Lemay, Jennifer Brandes Hepler, Tobias Heussner, and Toiya Kristen Finley, which involved writing the introduction for a fictional game’s quest using only two speaking characters. For the game, I imagined the protagonist, Magnus, as a custom player character like Shepard, so I kept their gender unspecified. During the outlining process, I made sure the player received the essential quest information no matter which dialogue path they took, while not having the characters say the exact same lines in each path. I really enjoyed sounding out the dialogue in my head as I wrote it, making sure both characters had distinct voices, and even including a light VO note with each line.

I hope you enjoy the sample and find yourself thinking about the kind of game this quest would belong to! You can play it below, or here on itch.io, within 5-10 minutes.