The unknown task is in fact known by the DM ahead of time - it's part of The Grand Plot - and the hope* is that the PCs will either a) somehow stumble onto it, realize its relevance, and do it; or b) do it without ever knowing what they've done until later when the relevance becomes more clear.
* - and if they miss it completely, no problem; it'll reappear somewhere else later.
I
think you're being serious here, but this almost reads like a parody wherein one
mocks DM-driven play. I know that may sound harsh, but I genuinely don't mean it to be so; I simply wish to emphasize how far apart are the perspectives and desiderata of the two poles of this debate!
In the sort of game you're describing, the DM
never gets to play to find out what happens, except in the limited sense of finding out how the PCs navigate from point A to point Z, where Z was already scripted at the same time as A. (And, yes, I realize there may be various paths from A to Z, but that's not the same thing as playing to find out what will happen. The DM already knows that: Z will happen!
I used to enjoy this kind of game, but I found it had become unsatisfying in ways I only recently have been able to crystallize: it leads to railroading of one sort or another (perhaps, in its less pernicious versions Illusionism, at best) and it minimizes the impulses of the player who loves to craft involved backstories and/or complex psychological personae for her PCs that she desires be relevant to what actually impacts play.
The Druid's goal is great - that's the sort of thing one can build a good long multi-faceted campaign around! Excellent stuff!
The Fighter's goal doesn't give much to work with - it can easily be solved in one adventure, if that. Then what do you do?
Of course, I have deliberately chosen examples from the extreme ranges of personal and sweeping character motivations here, and so the Fighter has other, more ambitious, goals, and the Druid is far more concerned with the immediate question of how to get inside the King's Gardens right now than saving the planet. And this doesn't present the third PC and her goals at all!
The rhetorical purpose of presenting these examples, though, was to show how the player signals interests/desires/etc. for the PC and how such concerns shape the scenes the DM will frame.
If the Fighter finds her missing partner? Well, surely other goals will emerge
from actual play to capture the player's interests (through the PC) and drive the game forward.
As the DM, I have some possible ideas for the matter: perhaps the NPC partner is being blackmailed into service as an assassin by the city Templars, who have her young sibling in custody; or perhaps the NPC partner is a secret member of the insurrectionists who overthrew the previous king and is serving as a spy amidst the city Templars.
But the whole point is:
I, as DM, don't know how this will play out. Perhaps neither of these possibilities will arise during play, and a third, perhaps more interesting option will emerge via actions the PCs take.
You know, as I type this I'm having a thought or two (alert the media, it's a rare occurrence!). Would it be the end of the world for the player to not only come up with a goal but to give a high-level storyboard at least ten adventures long* on how that goal might be achieved in the game? That's the player-drive side and with luck it'll force goals more like your Druid's and less like your Fighter's. Then, once the DM gets all these storyboards she takes them and merges them together (without telling the players exactly how she's doing so) into something of a master storyboard for the campaign, while perhaps throwing in a few ideas of her own. That's the DM-drive side. Then she runs the game in whatever manner she likes on the day-to-day scale, and it's up to her whether she informs players which adventures tie to whose goals or whatever.
* - an example of what I mean for the Druid in your game: (I suppose you could call these chapters instead of adventures, but whatever)
GOAL: Encounter Ghost of the Past intuitions and then to somehow use these intuitions to discover a way to bring some kind of healing to the planet.
STORYBOARD:
Adventure 1 - introductory, learn about the other party members, the setting, etc., including history that says the world was once a green place. Dungeon crawl with extras?
Adventure 2 - encounter GotP intuitions at some point, maybe learn what they are (this can be mostly someone else's adventure, my bits can be a sidebar)
Adventure 3 - learn of an item that relates to these intuitions, also start discovery process as to what they mean (another dungeon crawl followed by research)
Adventure 4 - find the Green Crystal: this clarifies the GotP intuitions, tells me I still need more (the intuitions by themselves aren't enough instruction) - typical item-recovery mission
Adventure 5 - locate then recover (then decipher) the Prophecies of Athasia, in effect the rather cryptic divinely-placed instructions on what to do and what is needed - and it's not in a safe place!
Adventure 6 - the Grand Oasis - nobody knows why it's where it is or why it's always green; in fact it's all that remains of what was once a divinely-blessed forest, a piece of which is needed. The adventure is the journey there and back and encounters in the settlements surrounding it, very dangerous.
Adventure 7 - plants need water - maritime adventure where we sail to find the fountain of youth (base the events on Pirates of Caribbean 4?) and recover some of its waters
Adventure 8 - to find the last surviving Ent on the planet, a small part of whom is necessary both to green the planet and contunie his race (dangerous forest adventure)
Adventure 9 - off-plane travel to gain direct divine blessing on parts gathered; danger is the astral journey there and back
Adventure 10 - grand finale - heal the planet and make it green once more. Many people oppose this, so a big sprawling adventure maybe in several parts? Civil war? Battlesystem-type stuff?
You see what I'm after here. Each player gives in something like this for their character, and the DM then synthesizes them into something vaguely resembling a campaign combining adventure ideas where she can. For example, if someone else also needs a written work maybe the adventure to find that can be combined with the Prophecies of Athasia adventure (or maybe the Prophecies can do for both?).
And the "final" storyboard built by the DM will never be final at all - characters come and go, goals and ideals change, and of course nothing ever survives contact with the dice.
Thoughts?
Lanefan
The problem with the approach you outline is here is now
no one is playing to find out what happens. The DM and players all have the script and are just riding along on the rails.
