How to create your own text adventure (without writing code)
You can make a playable text adventure from a story told in plain words. Here is what to put in your story so it becomes a good quest, and what the forge on Lantern Saga does with it.
To create your own text adventure without code, tell the story in plain words and let a tool do the structure. On Lantern Saga, Storytellers write a few paragraphs about their hero, their world and what goes wrong; the forge asks up to three questions, then plans the chapters, writes every scene and choice, adds dice checks and fights, tests the quest thousands of times so it is fair, and hands back a quest you can play and share.
The part that makes a quest good is still yours: the story. Here is what to put in it.
What does a story need to become a good quest?
Five things. You don't need all of them in detail, but the more you give, the more the quest sounds like you.
- A hero with a role. Not a name or a face, because the player names their own character, but a place in the world: the lighthouse keeper's grandchild, a disgraced knight, the apprentice who broke the seal.
- A want and a cost. What the hero is after, and what it will cost them to get it. Quests run on hard choices, and hard choices come from wants that cost something.
- People with voices. Two to five characters, each with a habit you could recognise without their name: the innkeeper who answers questions with questions, the child who counts everything.
- Places with one detail each. Not three adjectives, one true detail: flour on everything like snow; a bell rope that is always wet.
- A turn and some endings. The moment the story recasts what came before, and two to four ways it could end that differ in meaning, not just in wording.
How long should the story be?
A few paragraphs is enough to begin. A page or two gives the forge more of your world. Name the moments that must happen and the endings you imagine; anything you leave open, the forge fills in the spirit of what you wrote.
What does the forge add?
Everything a game writer would:
- Chapters and scenes: about 45 to 60 short scenes in four or five chapters, so a playthrough takes about an hour.
- Choices that come back: what the player does early returns later, in a door that opens or a character who remembers.
- Checks and fights: risky choices roll two dice plus a stat, fights have weaknesses, failures lead somewhere new.
- Balance: the quest is played thousands of times by a simulator with six different heroes in three difficulties, and tuned until every ending is reachable and no fight is unfair.
- An editor's read: a final pass for continuity, voice and typos.
Can I change the quest afterwards?
Yes. Play it first, then ask for changes in plain words ("make the miller an ally", "add a chase across the rooftops") and the forge rewrites it as a new version.
Who can play it?
At first only you. Then you decide: share a private link with friends, who can play it with a free account, or publish it to the Storytellers' library, where every Adventurer can find it.
Questions
Do I need to know how to code to make a text adventure?
No. On Lantern Saga you tell the story in plain words; the forge writes the quest in the platform's story format and checks it with the same tools used for the house quests.
How long does it take to make a quest?
Telling the story takes as long as you like. After you answer the forge's questions, writing takes about ten to thirty minutes, and you get an email when it is ready.
Can I write about real people or existing books?
No. Stories must be your own: no real people and nothing copied from someone else's book, film or game. Being inspired by a genre is fine.
Who owns the quest?
You keep your rights in your story and the quest made from it. Lantern Saga hosts it and shows it to the people you choose.
More guides
- A story as a gift: making a personal quest for a friendA personal quest, full of the people and places someone knows, is a gift they can play. Here is how to write one in an evening and send it on the day.
- Gamebooks, text adventures and interactive fiction: what's the difference?Gamebooks, parser text adventures, choice-based interactive fiction and text RPGs all tell stories you play. Here is what sets each apart, and what modern text RPGs keep from each.
- How dice checks work in a text RPG (2d6 + stat, explained)Each risky choice rolls two six-sided dice plus a stat against a target of 7, 9 or 11. Here is how success, partial success and failure work, and how perks, items and difficulty change the odds.