Design & Development: Quests

[Raven Crowking]

Here's the best piece of advice I can give:

Never give out plot hooks at the beginning of a session.

Good post.

RC

 

[erf_beto]

What your describing here is a game that might very well be worth playing. If the players become stagnant because it's easier to follow quest cards the campaign could recover from a quest card situation. I'm not claiming that quest cards are the devil and a game can't ever be saved if the players get too used to the cards. I am saying that I don't think this really encourages good habits and creativity. .

Fair enough. But when you start gaming there are so many things you need to know and remember. Things that, today, we do on the fly, but before, it was just hard remembering everything. Again, these suggestions are aimed at novice players. Heck, when we game a lot, we can possibly toss the books, dices and character sheets away in favor of just telling a good story - have you seen the amount of people looking for d20-lite? They're NOT newbies.

Sure it is a suggestion in 4ed DMG. It is clearly a controversial suggestion that many gamers are not agreeing with. There is probably better advice they could be giving new DMs in that space instead. As for people being angry, it sounds to me like the pro-quest card posters are every bit as angry as the opposition. I think maybe this is an angry time.

I don't think it's a waste of space, but I agree with you on everything else (even the bit about better tips for new DM). I know trying to get your point through is important, but people are getting angry for so little...

 

[PeterWeller]

I guess you didn't read the article that closely? "Completing a quest always brings a reward in experience points (equal to an encounter of its level for a major quest, or a monster of its level for a minor quest)"



Then you are not using the system as described, and ignoring the only mechanic (complete quest = gain XP) that has even been loosely described.


Cheers!

RC

I read the article fine, thank you, but RC, you're missing my point entirely: why does what is written on the card have to be the quest? There are two things being discussed in this article and they are no more related than the fact that they both deal with the generic concept of quests.

 

[carmachu]

2) Who hasn't, as a player, lost track of the DM's "subtle" machinations? What may appear to be be really obvious from the DM's POV gets lost in the noise of a lot of red herrings (which aren't put there intentionally, but get there as a result of PCs talking to random unimportant-to-the-quest NPCs and the DM wanting to portray verisimilitude). Putting up a flag like a card fixes this problem, even if it's a bit awkward and metagamey for those who like an immersion feel to their game.

Sorry, I disagree, smacks of railroading.

Lose track? Try taking notes, in a notebook. Thats what at least two of us do in the party of 6.Others take less sporatic notes, at least 2 more. The last two write down names at least.

Yeah, sometimes players get off track. But I'm not sure quest cards are a great answer.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I read the article fine, thank you, but RC, you're missing my point entirely: why does what is written on the card have to be the quest? There are two things being discussed in this article and they are no more related than the fact that they both deal with the generic concept of quests.

OK, but when you said "Where does it say that players must receive a reward for completing what's written on the card?" I took it to mean that you were asking about where it says that they must receive a reward. Especially as it was in response to

Imagine two possible options for action. One has a quest card, the other does not. The PCs automatically know that, if they choose the quest card option, that it is worth some amount of XP, and that if they do not, it is not.​

The article also says:

One of the suggestions in the 4th Edition Dungeon Master's Guide is to give players a visual, tactile representation of a quest as soon as they begin it. At the start of the adventure, after the baron has briefed the characters on their mission and been bullied into paying them more than he intended, you can hand the players an index card spelling out the details of the quest -- including the agreed-upon reward.​

(emphasis mine)

So it is quite clear that the card represents a quest, and that completing the quest grants you a reward.

If you now want to say that I am misunderstanding your emphasis on the word "the" (as in there may be several quests involved), I am not. It is quite clear from the article that there may be several quests involved, that the cards represent quests, and that completing a quest grants you an XP reward.

So again, in response to your query,

What if I give the players a quest card saying, "deliver X for Y and receive Z in payment," but I don't assign any story XP to completing the mission on the card, instead, I assign story XP to discovering that Y is a wererat and X is a shipment of poisoned wine?

Then you are not using the system as described, and ignoring the only mechanic (complete quest = gain XP) that has even been loosely described.


Cheers!

 

[PeterWeller]

So again, in response to your query,



Then you are not using the system as described, and ignoring the only mechanic (complete quest = gain XP) that has even been loosely described.


Cheers!

Not really. I'm still rewarding XP for completing a quest; I've just used the card as a red herring.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Not really. I'm still rewarding XP for completing a quest; I've just used the card as a red herring.

Using the card as a red herring, however, is not the system described.

The system described is simple:

If Card, then Quest. If Quest, then XP reward for completing Quest.

If Story Award, then Quest. If using Quest Cards system, then hand card at beginning of Quest; give XP when Quest completed.​

Quest Cards and story awards are linked in the Quest Card system, as described.

Your suggestion is "If card, then not Quest; do not hand out Quest Card at begining of quest, hand out card as red herring to trick players, give XP for something not on card."

They are not the same systems.

Yours might be (and I am not saying that it is, just saying for sake of argument that it might be) a better system, but the merits of the system from the article cannot be judged on the basis of a different system, however much you might like that system.

It is fair game, however, to suggest at this point that WotC intentionally expand the system described to take this sort of thing into account. It might, in fact, be a brilliant suggestion...although one that would undermine what WotC apparently expects the Quest Card system to do. I.e., to clearly indicate to the players what their characters should be doing.

RC

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Agreed. With pre-bought modules, even really good pre-bought modules, then this isn't as much of an issue but there can still be problems. Usually the players know they are on a quest. Usually there is a twist. After the plot point, the players then may very well not want to complete the quest. Now at this point, does the xp award that was attached to the quest go away? Or if the players complete the quest would they still get the award.

If I'd only play in one adventure path, and would only play or only DM, there might be less problems. But that's not the case. In our group, everyone DMs, and we switch DMs (and thus campaigns, possibly even systems) each week. Keeping track of all the information we gather, and all the things we want to do is difficult. Not all of us are great DMs, and none of us have a lot of spare time to prepare their own game and also manage our various characters to the best advisable extent.

Visual aids helped us a lot int he past. The main quest of the adventure paths is probably pretty simply described, but our concrete goals at a time "why are we in this city again? Did we meet the contact already? Why were we invited to the dinner?" are sometimes hard keep track off.

 

[PeterWeller]

RC, I see where you're coming from, but my point is, in reference to your worries about rail-roading, that you can easily show players that not every card is a real quest, and not every quest is going to be on a card. You were worried that players will get railroaded by quest cards; I presented a way in which you could incorporate quest cards while also showing your party that they aren't the be all and end all to story development. By giving the players a quest card for every job they take, whether or not it's a real quest, you show the players that not every quest will be on a card, and not every card will contain a quest. Now your original concern about the party ignoring location B because location A has a card associated with it has been dealt with. Or, if you really want to diligently stick to the quest cards, when the players discover the wine is poisoned or Y is a wererat, you take back the original quest card, and give the players a new card concerning the real quest. You can also have cards made for your "hidden" quests. Really, I'm just showing that in your game (or my game, or whatever), it's not hard to use the quest cards and avoid their threat of railroading the game.

Another thing, you can divorce the system from the suggestion, and you can build upon the suggestion and modify it because it's just a suggestion. In fact, it's somewhat disingenuous to discuss quest cards as part of the system because they're not. They're a suggestion for easing bookkeeping for the players.

I dunno, I guess I'm being a lot less literal about the article's contents than you are, and that probably supports your point better than mine. New players are probably going to take everything in the book literally, so hopefully the discussion of quest cards in the book will deal with your concerns.

 

[Raven Crowking]

RC, I see where you're coming from, but my point is, in reference to your worries about rail-roading, that you can easily show players that not every card is a real quest, and not every quest is going to be on a card.

Ah. Well, I am not worried that I will not be able to do so; I am worried that three years from now, when I sit down to game with someone who cut their teeth on 4e, that they will not have learned (as players) to set their own goals, or (as DMs) to let me set my own goals.

The reason that I am being more literal about the article's contents than you are is that I assume that the article gives the indication (unless WotC is twigged to the idea that there should be changes) that this is how a new generation of players is going to learn to play.

As you say, "New players are probably going to take everything in the book literally, so hopefully the discussion of quest cards in the book will deal with your concerns." Because, if they handle this well, this could not only be a good system for D&D, but a portable system for other games as well.

RC