Quest Creators: Collaborative, Real-time Editing

Storytellers,

Just a few days left in this month's writing contest! Publish a new quest by the 30th for a chance to earn adventuresome prizes!

This week, we're excited to share that collaborative, real-time editing is now ready for prime time! Just like Google Docs, you can now seamlessly share quests with friends so that you can write, edit and test quests at the same time.

To start collaborating, simply share your quest's Google Drive file with a friend using the Google Drive sharing interface and open the quest in the Quest Creator like normal (open the file in Drive and select "Open With -> Expedition Quest Creator"). Voila! As always, if you have any questions or run into any issues, you can reach us via the chat bubble at the bottom right of the screen.

Downtime transparency report: The quest creator was down this past Thursday between approximately 10am and 5pm, and for a few brief periods this weekend. We sincerely apologize for this unplanned downtime. The outage was initially due to a Heroku service outage, but our attempts to fix the issue broke other parts of our deployment process. We learned several ways that we can further improve the reliability of the Quest Creator code, including tools to roll back changes in production and a dashboard to monitor production health. We've also improved the Quest Creator error page so that you to contact us and monitor the Expedition Twitter feed in case of future errors.

Until next week,

Todd & Scott

Quest Creators: Free expansion beta, new features!

Quest Writers,

We brought Expedition to Origins this weekend and players love it - especially the huge variety of adventures available to them :) We're excited to grow this community together with you. Without further ado, we have some updates for you!

Expansion: Want free beta access to the new expansion? Email your address to Todd@Fabricate.io and we'll email you the PDF!

New feature: Notes. In the bottom bar, there's a new tab called "Quest Notes" that allows you to keep track of your notes. This is great for whole-story notes (like settings and character backstories) that you could need to reference while working on any part of your quest.

New feature: Major Releases. When you publish an update to your quest, you can now set it as a "Major Release", which resets all ratings and reviews. This allows you to go back and fix major issues (or make major improvements to) a quest without having to worry about getting permanently locked into ratings for an older version.

Card Creator update: although our focus has been on improving the app and quest writing experiences, we still managed to sneak in an overhaul of the Card Creator that makes it faster and easier to use. It's still in beta, so let us know what you think! http://betacards.expeditiongame.com

Contest: this month's quest writing contest ends on June 31st! If you publish your quests early, that'll give you a chance to get feedback and polish your quest, increasing your chances of winning one of the three prizes :)

Until next week,

Todd and Scott

Quest Writing Weekly: Contest, Genres and Reviews

Writers,

Four updates this week:

There's a new contest! You have until June 31st to write a quest that incorporates "double billing" to win prizes - including an Expedition shirt! Bonus points if it's in the romance, mystery or horror genre :)

Quest creator feature update: when you publish, you can now set your quest's genre and content rating (i.e. what age level it's appropriate for). Make sure to go back and update your existing quests to make them more discoverable!

The first Expedition expansion: It's launching August 17th at GenCon! In the coming month, we'll be giving you early access to the expansion so that your quests can be at the top of the list when players get their hands on it. Sneak peak: it's horror-themed, so start brainstorming those terrifying, gruesome and unsettling ideas ;)

App feature update: The app's quest search interface just got a major upgrade - users can now sort by highest reviewed, and filter by content ratings and genres.

How are quest ratings handled? As you know, players have the option to rate a quest after they play. Once a quest has received a reasonable sample of ratings, we consider it to be well-reviewed, and users will be able to see the average rating and number of ratings in the app. This prevents the Amazon "one review" effect, where a single one- or two-star review causes an otherwise good product's launch to get lost into oblivion. We're still tweaking how reviews are shown (especially after you fix a cause of negative reviews in your quest), so please let us know if there's anything we can do to make the rating system more fair.

Until next week,

Todd & Scott

Expedition Monthly: Quest Winner and New Features

Adventurers,

Scott and I just placed the order for the second print run of Expedition - and it'll be twice the size of the original run! (2,500 copies) It's not common for a studio's first game to be successful enough for a second print run, and we couldn't have done it without your support. Expedition is here to stay and will keep growing and improving - thanks to you!

Quest Winner

May's quest-writing competition just wrapped up, and the winner is "When the King is Away" by JanoNath and Cory Smith - a fantastic adventure where you play as either a street gang or the city guard, wrecking or preventing chaos. Without a doubt, this is worth playing through twice to experience both sides of the story. Congratulations, JanoNath and Cory!

June Quest Writing Challenge

We have a new quest writing contest for the month of June! And, for those new to quest writing, we just added a chat window to the bottom right that makes it easier than ever to talk with us and get your quest-writing questions answered - check it out at Quests.ExpeditionGame.com

June's contest also has an exciting new prize option - Expedition t-shirts! If you're one of June's three winners, you'll get to choose between a copy of Expedition, a t-shirt (pick between Magic, Melee, Music or Ranged) and a dinner with us at GenCon.

June's theme: Double Billing. Mistake? Misdirection? Who's paying who.... and for what?

Write your quests and publish them by June 31st at midnight for a chance to win!

New Features

Rolling out this week to the web, Android and iOS apps:

• Improved quest search UI to make the perfect quest easier to find, including the new ability to filter by genre and content rating (kid-friendly, teen or adult).
• Quest ratings: for quests with enough ratings, the quest details page will now show their rating score + number of ratings.
• Better display of network-related errors to users

GenCon

Expedition is heading to GenCon on August 17-20th in Indianapolis! We'll be at booth #2962 in Entrepreneur's Avenue, and we're hosting several events. We'll also be bringing prototypes of the first Expedition expansion!

Until next month,

Todd & Scott

Quest Creator Weekly: Improved Publishing

Writers,

This week's update lays the foundation for exciting updates in the weeks to come.

What is it? A new, streamlined quest publishing system! Now, when you hit "Publish", you'll see this:

Rather than having to try and remember that it's "mintimeminutes: 20" to specify your quest run time, you now just select "20" from the dropdown. 

This lays the groundwork for the next update: allowing you to tag your quest with a genre, mood and content rating. (for example, a "Science Fiction comedy that's ages 13+"). Then, once most quests have been tagged, we'll enable users to search by genre, mood and content rating, so that they can find the perfect quest for their mood and audience!

We also added a helpful little notification to the bottom of the Quest Creator to make it easier to stay up to date on the latest version (you'll need to refresh your page to enable it):

That's all for this week - we can't wait to play the adventures you're working on for this month's Quest Writing Contest!

- Todd & Scott

Quest Creator Weekly: Big Contest! Quest Notes!

Quest Creators,

Expedition recently passed 2,000 adventurers playing your quests around the world, and growing every day!

New Contest

We've heard your feedback: One week just isn't enough time to write and playtest an amazing quest. Which is why our next contest will be three weeks long, ending at the end of the month (May 31st at midnight Eastern). And, we'll be awarding prizes to three winners! Each winner will get to choose between a free copy of Expedition OR a dinner + adventure with us at GenCon. (travel + lodgings not included). The theme is "urban chaos" - whether it's corrupt politics, free markets running free, or citizens protesting the smell of the new deer jerky vendor, there's always something afoot in the city / town / village.

To be eligible to win, simply write and publish a quest in the Quest Creator before May 31st at midnight.

We're also having a quest writing night in Pittsburgh, PA this Saturday from 4-8pm. If you'd like to come, email Todd@Fabricate.io for the details.

This Week's Winner

This week, we saw two great new quests - Armageddon Throne (Worldbreaker #1) and Magus Duron (the epic conclusion to the Landfaria Chronicles). It was a tough call - Greg Miller and JanoNath both did an amazing job. But, we had to pick a winner - congratulations, Greg Miller for your epic Armageddon Throne! Your harrowing tale of mountain climbing, combined with several clever new mechanics, kept us on our toes the entire adventure.

New Features

We're excited to share a new feature that'll make it easier for you to write longer storylines: Notes! In the bottom bar of the Quest Creator, there's now a new "Notes" tab that lets you save and access private notes on the story without disrupting your current position in the story. Just as with the main quest editor, this is collaborative and supports multiple browsers editing it at once.

Also, Scott and I recently did a big planning spree for the app and quest creator. If you want to see what new features and fixes we have planned for the next two months, check out their issues pages (app; quest creator). Also feel free to add issues if you have ideas or have seen bugs!

Until next week,

Todd & Scott

Expedition Monthly: New quests, features and more

Adventurers,

It's hard to believe that it's already been a year since the Kickstarter! In that time, Expedition's transformed from a black-and-white print-at-home game to a professionally printed game with nearly two dozen community-written quests (and growing rapidly!). Thank you so much for your support, and we can't wait to see how far we can go in the next year!

New Quests

This month saw several great new quests:

• This week's Quest Writing Winner, Gotta Get There in Time by Chris Merkel. Congrats, Chris!
• The Dread Apprentice Chapter 1 by Greg Miller
• Azure Agents Chapters 1 and 2 by Graphite Helix
• An Expedition to the Past by Todd Medema
• Stormin' the Castle by Greg Miller

We're excited to see so many quest authors creating epic stories and worlds with multiple chapters.

Quest Writing Contest

Speaking of quest writing, this week's Quest Writing Contest theme is Man vs Nature. Don't limit yourself to man always winning, and remember that it doesn't always have to be a contest of strength ;)

Want a chance to win a free copy of Expedition and the praise of adventurers around the world? Write an adventure using the Expedition Quest Creator and submit it by this Sunday at midnight EST. It's almost as easy as writing in Microsoft Word!

Second Printing

We're thrilled to announce that we're working on a second print run of Expedition. We still can't believe that we've almost sold out just five months after we started shipping!

We're expecting the new copies to arrive in time for our booth at GenCon in August. If you can't wait until then, make sure to buy your copy of Expedition before they sell out!

New Features

Scott and I spent the month improving the code to better support quest writers and all of the new quests coming out. Now that we have so many quests available, we'll be spending this next month building new search and discovery tools to make it easier for you to find and enjoy your next adventure.

Until next month,

Todd & Scott

Quest Creator Weekly: Improved Design and Example Conversation

Creators,

This week's updates: win a copy, improved design and an example of how to implement a conversation!

Win a copy

As a reminder, we're giving away a free copy of Expedition to the best quest each week.

This week's theme: time travel

There were no submissions this past week (make sure to hit "Publish" to make it visible!), so nobody won a copy. If you've been thinking about writing a quest, or just have a few finishing touches to put on your quest, this week's a great time to do it! Published quests are due by Sunday at midnight EST.

Improved Design

This week, we updated the Quest Creator experience. Now, when you visit the main page, you're greeted with a much more comprehensive homepage that matches the theme of the Expedition website. Over the coming weeks, we'll be continuing to implement new design improvements and features to make your experience easier and more enjoyable.

Also - we'd love to hear what you think about the new homepage. If anything's unclear, or we could do a better job explaining something, let us know at Expedition@Fabricate.io!

Example Conversation

Here's a quick tutorial on a cool technique you can use to make your next quest even more awesome:

From one of our recent award-winning quests, here's an example of a dynamic conversation (or market, or exploring sequence) where each path may only be taken once. Shout out to Daniel Riddle for sharing this technique with us!

_Conversation_ (#conversationSetup)

// variables that were set during your adventuring

{{sawMagic = true}}

{{haveKey = false}}

You walk into the room and nod to the mage.

_Conversation_ (#conversation)

You prepare to ask the mage a question:

* {{sawMagic == true & _.viewCount("magicQuestion") == 0}} So, how about that magic?

        _About the magic_ (#magicQuestion)

        *silence*

        **goto conversation**

* {{haveKey == true & _.viewCount("keyQuestion") == 0}} What is this key for?

        _About the key_ (#keyQuestion)

        "That's for a door", he says.

        **goto conversation**

_Carrying On_

Having run out of questions, you leave the room.

Until next week,

Todd & Scott