On September 25th, we brought four years of storytelling to a close with the release of The End; And while we worked hard to release a finale that felt satisfying and resolved any remaining plot threads, there's still one question a lot of listeners probably leave the episode with: what comes next?
And the answer is many, many things! While our Numenera campaign is over, Quest Friends! is far from finished - in fact, we plan on doing more than we ever have before! Lots of things will be announced as they come up, but I wanted to take a moment to discuss a few of our plans and outline the general trajectory of the next four years of Quest Friends!
Mid-season games
In order to give us time to fully prepare Campaign 2, each of us chose an indie TTRPG to play a game in! These games will each be two episodes long (except for Kyle’s, which is one episode long) and will be GMed by their respective hosts (except for Tom’s, which features a GM-less game). The games we chose are as follows.
Four guests are invited to stay the night at a haunted mansion, with promises of the thing each of them desire most… if they survive, that is!
An emergency shuts down a high school, leaving the students to fend for themselves in the terrifying world of high school politics.
A girl finds herself in a fairy tale world, and Emily finds that their friends can cause untold chaos if left to their own devices.
A team of super-spies return from a high-stakes mission only to be pitted against each other in office boardroom conflict. In this choose your own adventure episode, YOU will get to decide which agent deserves the big promotion!
What if famous (and not-so-famous) historical figures went to high school together? We explore the fun of obscure historical comedy in this adventure that’s just Clone High fanfiction.
Campaign 2
Once the mid-season games wrap up in early 2022, we’ll start releasing our second campaign! We’ll share more details about this game as it comes closer, but here are a couple of quick facts about the campaign.
It will use a custom Powered by the Apocalypse system designed by Kyle and inspired by shows like Gravity Falls, The Owl House, and Amphibia.
It will be a similar length to our first campaign.
It will star a consistent cast of four protagonists, just like our first campaign.
Instead of having a handful of lengthy arcs, the campaign will feature a more episodic structure, being composed largely of adventures that will be four episodes long each. These episodic adventures will then tie into larger arcs that will serve a role similar to seasons in a TV show.
GHOSTS!
Live shows and other Flashback Future spin-off content
While our Numenera campaign is over, that doesn’t mean we plan to leave that world forever! In fact, we’re working on multiple pieces of spin-off content related to our Ninth World adventures. One of the first pieces of spin-off content you’ll be able to experience are live shows using independent systems, which we hope to play approximately once every three months at twitch.tv/questfriends. Current ideas include MISHA and the Speedy Speed Boys skateboarding on Pryliman ruins, Elee and other elderly women solving a Murder She Wrote-style mystery, and a murder mystery party starring four new JARVIS models!
Additionally, since these live shows will be using indie systems and our ability to use official Numenera content will be limited for other spin-off content, we realized that we need a name for our first campaign beyond just “the Numenera campaign.” And so, we’ve decided to officially name our first campaign (The) Flashback Future! We, uh, couldn’t decide whether or not we wanted to include “The” at the start of the title, so until we decide for sure, it’s going to just hang out there in parentheses.
Patreon
Our patreon will continue moving along pretty much unchanged. Content that directly relates to episodes being released (e.g. gameplay clips, GM notes) will reference those episodes, while completely original content (e.g. short stories, Zines) will contain a mix of content related to (The) Flashback Future and content related to the episodes being released (although as we get further into Campaign 2, they’ll get increasingly more focused on that campaign). Any personalized benefits (e.g. NPC shout-outs) will continue to include (The) Flashback Future content.
And those are our plans! If you have any additional questions about our plans, feel free to ask us, and we’ll answer whatever we can. The past four years of Quest Friends! have been an amazing creative experience, and we’re so thrilled to charge into new adventures.
-Kyle