Very Badly Drawn Adventure Quest

>Enter the shop

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Are the boards usually this quiet around this time? Did I pick a bad time to try this? Well, guess I'll keep going for now.
Anyway..


You enter the shop, but instead of being greeted by a welcoming store owner, you're greeted with an angry guy yelling at a fancily dressed woman.
"Please, we need help! We're desperate!" He pleads.
The guy raising his voice looks young, around 16 or 17 you'd guess. Behind him is a girl looking to be of similar age, with a worried expression on her face. Both look dirty and bruised, as if they've been tumbling around the wilderness for days.

"Look buddy I already told you, I can't do anything for you. Now excuse me while I take care of an actual paying customer," she says before turning to look at you. "...You ARE a paying customer, right? What can I help you with?"

You nod, and..

>Ask what all the commotion is about
>Point to the rack of weapons behind them
>Other (write-in)

>>1375330
>Approach the dirty girl and ask her if she needs help.

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>>1375996
You approach the girl, walking past the shopkeeper and completely ignoring the other guy. Seeing her this close, you notice that she's covered in dirt, cuts and dried blood. Her dress is in tatters and her messy hair is barely kept in place by a ponytail. You ask her if she needs help, and she responds with a quiet, shy voice.
"Will.. will you really help us?"

You nod.

"Oh, thank you..!" The girl smiles, looking like she's about to cry. She takes a moment to regain her composure, then explains their situation. "Hector and I, we've been lost for days, and we kept running from monsters. I'm tired, and hungry, everything hurts and I just want to go home.. But we can't get home by ourselves, there are too many scary monsters that keep trying to eat us.."

"We were hoping to hire a bodyguard, or at least buy a weapon to protect ourselves with." The guy, who you guess must be Hector, adds in.

"They won't be able to get either of those things around here though, not when they're flat broke." the shopkeeper says.

You..
>Offer to help them get home
>Offer to help them get home... for a price
>"Good luck with that"
>Other

>>1376102
>Teach the girl and her presumed brother how to earn money with their bodies.
Whelp, if money is what you need, I can help with that. But you know what they say, "Give a man a fish, Teach a man to fish." So tell you what, how about I be your manager of sorts and help you make some money?

>>1376102
>Offer to help them get home... for a price.

Do they have anything valuable on them? It doesn't have to be money.

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>>1376150
>>1376224


You tell her that you'd be willing to help them get home, for a price. Nothing is free in this world, and you can't offer free help to every dirty girl you find. You need to find a way to earn money and keep yourself fed, after all. You ask her if either of them have anything of value, eyeing her necklace.

She looks down and shakes her head. "We don't have anything valuable, no.. all we have are the clothes on our backs, and even that isn't worth much."

You think for another moment, and come up with an idea. You tell her that you'll be their manager, and help them make some money.

She looks up to you with a curious expression.

"Make money? How will we do that?"



Sorry, I feel like my replies take way too long but I've just been waiting for more people to comment, especially now since two people wanted two different things.
How long is a good amount to wait before making a reply? Not really sure since this is my first time doing this.

>>1376276
Let's at least offer them a meal and a bath, they look like they could really use it. We can teach them how to make money over lunch.
Also I think 30 minutes sounds good for deciding when to make a new post.

>>1376276
Sometimes it's best just to play through it.

So if you only get one reply after about 4 minutes or so, just keep going with that one person. If you get 2 replies and no tie breaker, roll dice to see which one you pick, and then next time ask your players to roll with their suggestions and pick the highest one.

That sort of thing. You can keep going like that and see if more people come to your game or get attracted to your game. In my experience it's always better to be bumping by playing the game rather than let the game die.

ONCE in a while a game will just have no body every single time, sometimes it's just because of bad timing, you created the game at a bad time, just randomly, and then the game gets really long with just one player so no one else wants to join because of too much to read/catch up on.

Generally try to make your replies pretty quick at the start of a game, that helps keep people coming. It's all about the first few posts I think perhaps.

Anyway, hope this has helped.

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Also,

>Offer to help them get home.

>>1376297
>>1376351
Thanks for the tips, anon. I guess I did start it off in a pretty boring way, in hindsight I can think of a few ways that would've made for a much better and more interesting start. Maybe people will start participating once things get more eventful. I should've planned this out better..
Anyway..


You offer to at least help them out with a meal and a bath for now, since they're in such a pitiful state. They both thank you repeatedly and stuff their mouths with food as if they haven't eaten in days. As you listen to their story, you realize that that was actually the case. They've spend the last few days wandering the wilderness in search of their home, until they ended up here.

You decide to help them get home, and teach them a thing or two on making money along the way so they can help themselves in the future.
You..

>Ask them where they're from
>Ask them how they even managed to get lost
>Talk about something else

>>1376498
It's alright OP, you can always try again if this one doesn't do well. Learn from your mistakes and all that.

>Ask them where they're from

>>1376534
Actually, I think I'll just let this die and try again some other time. The more I think about it, the more frustrated I get thinking about all the different ways I could've started this off in a much better way. Sorry, and see you next time.

For future reference, is there a good time to start a quest? Are there specific times when the board is most active or is it all pretty random?

>>1376644
You're welcome. The weekend is always a better bet.

It's pretty random, that's why people post their games ahead of time on twitter and stuff like that. Even regular QMs have trouble getting people in their games sometimes - I think it sometimes depends on their timezone.

>>1376605
Also another tip since you said 'boring start' I've seen things start worse and they still make it. I've also seen people who aren't the greatest writers, get plenty of players etc.

Timing is more important than your writing for the beginning of your game. That's what I meant by my first advice. Don't wait 30 mins between posts.

Give them a hook right away, options right away, and fairly quick answers for the first few posts. Try to answer your players quickly, even if it means your writing won't be polished or as good.

What's important is that you keep the thread bumping with actual gameplay long enough that it gets seen as active by a good number of people.

All you need to do that is a decent hook. Any mystery would do. Again, I've seen bad writing do better than good writing on here. So it's more to do with some random luck/timing, but also how you operate the beginning of your game, I think.

I both play, and QM quests, in case you were wondering.

>Saw this thread
>Looked promising
>A few posts in...yeah I could get into this
>Next post...op is ditching
Sadface.jpeg

>>1377346
Also, starts are the worst. The intro is just setting the setting. A few paragraphs can't determine if the rest is worthy of a read. Anyway I like what I saw so you should definitely give it another go sometime

>>1377324
Thanks a lot for the tips, I'll definitely keep them in mind next time. I really appreciate it.

>>1377346
Sorry, anon. Thanks for your support. I'll probably try again this Friday or Saturday, if this current thread is deleted by then so there aren't duplicates of the same quest.
Thanks you guys, I'll do better on my next try.