Design & Development: Quests

[Aenghus]

Before, I played in a Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil campaign. After overextending ourselves at one point early in the mines, the party focused on a systematic room-by-room clearance of the dungeon, retreating before resources fell low.

This slow and steady approach proved to be the best way to balance experience gain and survival. And there was roleplaying, and interparty issues. But the constant grinding could get monotonous.

I see the quest mechanic as providing an xp incentive to do activities other than just kill monsters as efficiently as possible and taking their stuff. The stuff that stories are made of. Taking prisoners, making deals with npcs, being inquisitive.

Every game is an exercise in communication. Most railroading issues are due to bad communication within a group. I think the dangers of the quest mechanic and the quest card suggestion are being exaggerated here.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I also like the fact that I can give the players dilemmas: "Rescue the Princess so she can marry Duke Bundleswat" and "Make sure the Princess can't marry Bundleswat."

Oh gods, I can already hear my players...

"So, in this kingdom, do you have to be a virgin in order to get married?"

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Before, I played in a Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil campaign. After overextending ourselves at one point early in the mines, the party focused on a systematic room-by-room clearance of the dungeon, retreating before resources fell low.

This slow and steady approach proved to be the best way to balance experience gain and survival. And there was roleplaying, and interparty issues. But the constant grinding could get monotonous.

I see the quest mechanic as providing an xp incentive to do activities other than just kill monsters as efficiently as possible and taking their stuff. The stuff that stories are made of. Taking prisoners, making deals with npcs, being inquisitive.

That sounds like another good idea. The DM notices that the dungeon crawl is getting boring. The players come across a room full of orcs, and he feels like spicing things up a bit. *ding!* Quest card: Make peaceful contact with these orcs and question them about the dungeon instead of killing them. Reward: they'll tell you something iiiinteresting.

Every time the DM throws something like this in, it changes their options. They could probably just sneak up and kill all the orcs. Or, they could lose the element of surprise and take a risk on talking to them, which may or may not work out. The ball is still in the players' court, and they get a reward (CR XP vs. Quest XP) either way.

I could also see the quest card system providing what is sometimes called "Lightbulb" or "Idea rolls" in other games (or Nifft's action point rules), where the DM provides some kind of leading hint about something to help the PCs out. If the PCs come across a ruined temple in a dungeon, they might not think too hard about it. There's lots of ruined temples in D&D, right? This is another one. But if, upon finding the temple, they receive "Quest: figure out the origins of the ruined temple," they're given a clue that this location is more important to them than any other random location in the dungeon. They get an XP reward for figuring out why, plus they get whatever benefit the information they uncover might provide (for example, this is a temple dedicated to the same god that the evil cultists seem to be working for. Perhaps this is a clue to locating the cultists).

The more I think about this system, the more interesting options and techniques I can imagine using it for.

 

[The Little Raven]

Oh gods, I can already hear my players...

"So, in this kingdom, do you have to be a virgin in order to get married?"

New Quest received: Be Her First!
Reward: Price on your head and the satisfaction of sliding home before any other man.

 

[Imaro]

This bears repeating. The notions that you can't alter quests on the fly, chuck old quests and replace them when the plan changes, or allow players to determine what the quests are going to be, are all entirely constructed by the posters in this thread, and are not presented by the article in question.

The opposite is not supported by the article either. If it turns out this way great...if a blog that adresses and supports this pops up that's great too. But I'm going by what is presented in the article not by others interpretation of what the quest mechanic will encompass. In fact the blog by Mearls actually supports the opposite of what you're claiming.

"A lot of folks."

That's funny, because only a handful of people (only really you and Imaro, now) are complaining and they keep making things up like "You have to complete this quest in one particular way or you don't get experience," while completely ignoring people that point out that is untrue.

Most other people see the benefit in writing down objectives for their players to easily understand.

While totally avoiding the fact that xp is always assigned to these "quests" so no it's not just a reminder...it's a push nudge or whatever to do this thing, whatever it may be, as opposed to something which isn't a quest, but you may want to do.

Agreed.

So firmly against 4e that they can't help but reinterpret everything they read as a negative, even if that reinterpretation goes so far as to make things up. Plenty of people have legitimate problems with the direction, but there are those that simply like being negative for negativity's sake.

Glass houses and all because there are a few posters I recognize as unconditionally supporting everything presented about 4e...hmm wonder who? I haven't even posted in the 4e threads that much, and in the polls have always voted undecided as to whether I will play it or not. So these types of generalizations can swing both ways. Better to just avoid them, don't you think?

I'm like that too. I don't want to hand out rewards for what choices I think the players should make.

It's the difference between player-driven games and DM-driven ones.

Will the Quest system promote/support/not get in the way of player-driven games? I think it will, even if you need to do a little tweaking to get it to work.

Emphasis mine...
In the end this is the crux of the argument. Numerous pro-posters are in fact acting like this is fact when their has been no present evidence to back this up. As far as tweaking...well that's great but it's not what is being debated.

 

[LostSoul]

New Quest received: Be Her First!
Reward: Price on your head and the satisfaction of sliding home before any other man.

New Quest: Get rid of that price on your head.

That makes me think of a thread game. One person posts a quest, the next person posts how they resolve it and the quest that results from the first one's resolution.

 

[pemerton]

Rather than have an predetermined idea of what the PCs should be doing, merely creatinga situation in which there are bad guys over here, good guys over there and the PCs in between, and then letting the PCs decide howe to engage the situation is what DMing is about.

For this to work, it has to be assumed that the players (and thus, their PCs) will agree with the GM as to who the good guys and the bad guys are. Is that railroading? If not, why is it railroading to assume that the players will have their PCs be allies of the Archbishop?

IThe difference, IMHO, is "quests" as presented so far are more specific than an adventure. In an adventure the PC's are usually presented with a situation and left to deal with it in a manner they find suitable. They recieve xp for overcoming the challenges

What if the players don't want their PCs to overcome the challenges, but to ally with them? Then they don't get any XPs.

As I said in my earlier post, D&D has always assumed that, when it comes to the direction of play, the GM and the player will share inclinations.

 

[The Little Raven]

The opposite is not supported by the article either. If it turns out this way great...if a blog that adresses and supports this pops up that's great too. But I'm going by what is presented in the article not by others interpretation of what the quest mechanic will encompass. In fact the blog by Mearls actually supports the opposite of what you're claiming.

If new quests in the middle of an adventure isn't allowed, then why does the article explicitly use a new quest for an item found mid-campaign as an example? If there can't be player-based quests, then why do they give an example of three separate players having different objectives concerning the same item?

While totally avoiding the fact that xp is always assigned to these "quests" so no it's not just a reminder...it's a push nudge or whatever to do this thing, whatever it may be, as opposed to something which isn't a quest, but you may want to do.

Oh noes! The DM might actually want to reward people for delving into content they have worked on. God forbid the DM want to have some kind of control over his game and run it how he chooses!

Better to just avoid them, don't you think?

Every post I've read you interprets any release of information as a negative. The Quest article basically points out that they're going to be putting suggestions (the key word they explicitly use that you ignore, along with the fact that this is basically a refinement of what was already in 2nd ediion) for basing story rewards on encounters/monsters of the appropriate level, so that players will feel rewarded for roleplaying out some kind of social encounter/non-combat task just as they would for killing some ogres. But, you choose to interpret it as "We are forcing you to put narrow objectives with single solutions despite what you, as a DM, might want to do with your game."

Emphasis mine...
In the end this is the crux of the argument. Numerous pro-posters are in fact acting like this is fact when their has been no present evidence to back this up. As far as tweaking...well that's great but it's not what is being debated.

Player-based goals are given as examples, very clearly, in the article. If plainly given examples aren't evidence, then no amount of evidence will convince you otherwise.

 

[Imaro]

If new quests in the middle of an adventure isn't allowed, then why does the article explicitly use a new quest for an item found mid-campaign as an example? If there can't be player-based quests, then why do they give an example of three separate players having different objectives concerning the same item?

Please show me where it gives an example of a player making their own quest up...even a refrence that this mechanic is intended to be used in such a way. The blog by Mike Mearls even infers that this is a DM tool. When I say player based...I mean what the player wants to do, not what the DM thinks the character should do.

Oh noes! The DM might actually want to reward people for delving into content they have worked on. God forbid the DM want to have some kind of control over his game and run it how he chooses!

Wow, I remeber all the heated debates about worldbuilding, relevance and the fact that players shouldn't be forced into exploring or listening to things that don't interest them by a majority of posters on this site ( I of course argued the opposite). Ah, I see now it's better if they are bribed and cajoled into it, even if it's not necessarily what they want to do.

Every post I've read you interprets any release of information as a negative. The Quest article basically points out that they're going to be putting suggestions (the key word they explicitly use that you ignore, along with the fact that this is basically a refinement of what was already in 2nd ediion) for basing story rewards on encounters/monsters of the appropriate level, so that players will feel rewarded for roleplaying out some kind of social encounter/non-combat task just as they would for killing some ogres. But, you choose to interpret it as "We are forcing you to put narrow objectives with single solutions despite what you, as a DM, might want to do with your game."

And you've supported everything they've announced about 4e. The difference is I only feel it necessary to comment on things that worry me. The races don't concern me so I really have nothing to say about them, the new classes (except the possible limitation of warlocks as evilish) don't concern or worry me so I don't comment. The paladin's smite doesn't worry me (yet) so no comment, The cosmology did so I commented. How my game and those who join or I play under does concern me and if I don't like the direction the game is taking then I will comment. You comment on EVERYTHING and support EVERYTHING.

Huh, roleplaying out a social encounter (if it helps overcome a particular challenge) does reward xp, non-combat tasks do reward xp, what are you talking about? When you as a DM tell me I must capture the spies alive and return them to the archbishop for x experience...that's not the things you're talking about above.

Player-based goals are given as examples, very clearly, in the article. If plainly given examples aren't evidence, then no amount of evidence will convince you otherwise.

Again, show me where it is infered, or stated that a player can create his own goals. What examples of this are given?

 

[The Little Raven]

Please show me where it gives an example of a player making their own quest up...even a refrence that this mechanic is intended to be used in such a way.

Whose to say the rogue-paladin-wizard example didn't come from the players? Whose to say that the paladin didn't get the quest from the DM and the wizard talked the DM into making one for him that conflicted?

The blog by Mike Mearls even infers that this is a DM tool. When I say player based...I mean what the player wants to do, not what the DM thinks the character should do.

It is a DM tool because the DM is the ultimate authority in the game he's running. All the claims of "Getting my dog back" is a great quest is fine and dandy, but it doesn't allow a player to override his DM. If any player of mine thinks he can tell me what is acceptable in my games, then he can damned well run it himself.

Wow, I remeber all the heated debates about worldbuilding, relevance and the fact that players shouldn't be forced into exploring or listening to things that don't interest them by a majority of posters on this site ( I of course argued the opposite). Ah, I see now it's better if they are bribed and cajoled into it, even if it's not necessarily what they want to do.

So, it's better for the DM to spend weeks working up a campaign just to have it tossed in the trash because Joe doesn't want to be friends with the Archbishop and goes out of his way to avoid anything the DM wants, all in the name of "player choice." It's the same kind of player that whines about railroading when he's told he can't play a CE drow cleric of Lolth when the campaign is supposed to be about good characters. Wannabe iconoclasts is the term I usually use.

And you've supported everything they've announced about 4e.

Nope. I post in support of things I like. You'll note a distinct lack of support for Dragonborn from me, since I'm neutral on them. Most people, like you, post about negative things (worries and such). I tend to post in response to other people's negativity rather than posting my own.

You comment on EVERYTHING and support EVERYTHING.

I don't recall supporting the Dragonborn, nor the removal of the gnome, nor the lack of Frost Giants in the first MM. I also haven't supported the Smite stuff released, as I want full context before I judge something.

And yeah, I comment on almost everything, because these are supposed to be discussion forums. Got a problem with that?

Huh, roleplaying out a social encounter (if it helps overcome a particular challenge) does reward xp, non-combat tasks do reward xp, what are you talking about?

So, point out the experience reward for winning a footrace? Bobbing for apples? Making orphans happy by providing a bard for entertainment? There's a lot more to story awards than "I bypassed a CR 6 goblin using social skills instead of combat."

When you as a DM tell me I must capture the spies alive and return them to the archbishop for x experience...that's not the things you're talking about above.

See, there you go, with that whole "you must do this" nonsense. You're making up this sudden inability to make your own decisions because the DM gave you some kind of objective that an NPC wants accomplished. Nothing is stopping you from giving the Archbishop the finger and helping the spies. In fact, if you have a DM worth his salt, he'd have a quest card ready for you if you decide to do that.

The only person claiming that quests are carved into stone is you. Your entire argument is built upon the premise that "absence of proof is proof of absence."