Minecraft (NeoForge) - free & open source

SableCraft Chronicler

Quests that are given by someone, somewhere.

Chapters, quests and storylines from datapack files, played entirely on a vanilla client. A quest is offered by a person standing in the world, a block, or a place you walk into; it is told in beats, with choices that branch and consequences the world remembers - and sometimes one of several endings. The quest mod for people who found a checklist and wanted a story.

Server-side NeoForge MIT Needs Standards & Cast

Get it on CurseForge View source on GitHub

The ZARP camp near spawn: named NPCs around a campfire, with a mark over the one who has work for you

installs for your players

endings to ZARP's main line

new undead for ZombieMod

What a quest can be

A story, not a checklist.

Given by someone

An NPC with a name, a skin and a greeting, a block you walk up to, or a kind of place - a biome, a structure, a dimension, a CityWorld lot. A mark over every giver shows your own state: ! on offer, ? while you are on it, a tick once done.

Told in beats

Stages with their own text, objectives and effects, deadlines with a fall-back, and decision beats whose choices set flags, pay karma, spawn things, send an NPC away or open another quest.

Measured honestly

Kill this, carry that, reach there, hand it over - a delivery means putting it in someone's hands, not just having it in your pack. Build a multiblock and light it, or wait for the world to change.

Remembered

World flags any quest can set and read, the player's own choices, reputation with a standing, and endings reached per chapter - with replayable chapters to go back and find the others.

Shared

A party quest pools progress across the party, scales its targets to the party's size, and pays everyone. Bounties repeat on a cooldown.

Written as data

A quest is a JSON file in a datapack or YAML under config/chronicler/. Every word a player sees lives in messages.yml, so a fantasy server says Quests while a wasteland says Missions.

It runs on the server

Your players install nothing.

Offers arrive in chat with clickable buttons, progress is tracked on the action bar, choices are buttons, and completions are a title card. Everything a modded client might add later is sugar; nothing is required.

The journal is a written book, handed to every new player and regenerated each time it is opened: what you are doing, what is on offer with Accept links, and what you have done. /quest on its own says what you are doing right now.

The Chronicler journal open on a vanilla client: progress, what is on offer and what is done — The journal: a written book, rebuilt every time you open it.

Writing your own

Three beats and a choice.

This is a whole quest: fetch a torch, survive what comes for it, then decide what kind of person you are - and the chapter remembers which ending you found. Restart the server and it is there.

Content is a frozen registry, like vanilla's own data-driven content, so an edit applies on restart - /reload will not apply it.

The authoring reference →

name: Night Watch
chapter: prologue
stages:
  - text: Get a light. The dark is not empty.
    objectives: [ { type: collect, item: minecraft:torch, consume: false } ]
  - text: They found you. Hold until it is quiet.
    on_enter: [ { type: spawn, entity: minecraft:zombie, count: 2 } ]
    objectives: [ { type: kill, target: minecraft:zombie, count: 2 } ]
  - text: A stranger asks for your torch.
    choices:
      - { label: Give it, effects: [ { type: karma, delta: 5 } ], ending: kindness }
      - { label: Keep it, effects: [ { type: karma, delta: -5 } ], ending: cold }

Dr Amara Okafor, a Cast NPC quest giver, with the mark that says she has something for you — Dr Okafor, with the mark that says she has work for you.

Included

The Zombie Apocalypse Roleplay questline.

Chronicler ships with ZARP, built for CityWorld's apocalypse cities, ZombieMod and LegendQuest's Wasteland pack - and playable without any of them. A camp of survivors near spawn, acts through the streets, the hospital, the Nether and the End, a finale with more than one ending, a side chapter whose refusals have consequences, a bounty board, and new undead for the wards and the fortresses.

It turns itself on when ZombieMod is present. It is also the worked example: every mechanism Chronicler has is in it, in readable JSON.

About ZARP →

Plays well with others

Two it needs, three that make it richer.

Chronicler says so when an optional mod is absent, and a quest that needs one simply is not offered.

Mod	Needed	What it brings
SableCraft Standards	required	Money rewards through its economy, party quests through its groups, reputation through its standings.
SableCraft Cast	required	The people who give quests: NPC givers with names, skins and clothes, standing where you put them.
LegendQuest ReForged	optional	Karma, class XP, levels and skill points as rewards; quests gated on level, karma, race or class.
ZombieMod ReForged	optional	Kill or spawn a genus, and a chronicler:flag spawn condition, so finishing a storyline changes what spawns.
CityWorld ReForged	optional	Lots as places: a hospital, a bunker, an oil platform.

Dig deeper

Writing, the questline, and running it.

Writing quests

Givers, stages, choices and deadlines; every objective, reward and effect; availability, flags, party scope, bounties and quest items.

Authoring reference →

ZARP

The camp and who gives what, the shape of the main line and the side chapter, the undead it adds, and how to test it quickly.

The questline →

Commands & config

/quest for players, /chronicler for admins, the one permission node, and every setting.

Commands & config →

Requirements

Three jars on the server.

Chronicler, SableCraft Standards and Cast, all for the same Minecraft version - the version is in every filename, so take the one that matches your server.

Minecraft	NeoForge	Java	File
1.21.11	21.11+	21	chronicler-1.0.0+mc1.21.11.jar
26.1.2	26.1+	25	chronicler-1.0.0+mc26.1.2.jar
26.2	26.2+	25	chronicler-1.0.0+mc26.2.jar

▸

Requires SableCraft Standards 1.5.0 or newer and SableCraft Cast 1.0.0 or newer. Standards is the economy, groups and reputation the quests pay through; Cast is the people who give them. LegendQuest, ZombieMod and CityWorld are optional.

Any NeoForge build in the series will do. 26.x needs Java 25, not 21 - Minecraft's requirement rather than this mod's. Nothing your players have to do.

Credits & licence

SableCraft Chronicler is by Sablednah, licensed MIT. Source, design notes and the full authoring reference are on GitHub.

Get it on CurseForge Source & issues More game plugins