Design & Development: Quests

[LostSoul]

All I'm seeing argued is "CR means you only get XP for killing monsters and surviving traps! There's no roleplaying, no goals, just hack & slash!" from a different angle.

I think it's a slightly different argument. While CR means XP for killing things, it doesn't have anything to say about roleplaying. You can roleplay ("act in character") however you want, and it won't impact your XP. Unless you play a pacifist, but this is D&D.

Quests (might) mean that certain choices you make get you XP, and other choices don't. There is an incentive to only make choices that get the XP.

While you could argue that the CR-based XP system creates an incentive to face challenges, I'd have to ask: if you don't want to face challenges, why play D&D?

 

[Imaro]

If the town puts up wanted posters for a bad guy and puts a reward on the wanted poster, is that a plot hook or a task? What's the difference? And, if the players do bring in the bad guy, do you give any xp over and above the combat xp for defeating the bad guy?

See I would personally give them a bonus xp reward for the resolution of the "bad guy" situation. Regardless of whether they bring the "bad guy" to the town, join him and start raiding the town, execute him or sell the town's defense plans to him.

I think, and this is all IMHO, the difference between a plot hook and a task is as follows.

Plot Hook: Presents a situation, but does not designate how that situation should be handled or approached.

Task: Presents a situation and attaches conditions on to it that must be met to resolve the situation in a specific manner.

I have no problem with either of these having in-game rewards which you choose to accept or not accept. It's when you start offering extra xp to complete a task and not to deal with a plot hook in general.

Most players want xp, and even if some in those groups where some don't care but others do you suddenly have a party working at cross-purposes or those wishing to do something besides the quest being bullied into doing it anyway. Just think there should, if anyhing, be a general reward for completing an "adventure"...however your PC's accomplish this.

 

[Imaro]

I think it's a slightly different argument. While CR means XP for killing things, it doesn't have anything to say about roleplaying. You can roleplay ("act in character") however you want, and it won't impact your XP. Unless you play a pacifist, but this is D&D.

Quests (might) mean that certain choices you make get you XP, and other choices don't. There is an incentive to only make choices that get the XP.

While you could argue that the CR-based XP system creates an incentive to face challenges, I'd have to ask: if you don't want to face challenges, why play D&D?

I agree with what you are saying here, and furthermore the whole "might get you xp" is a "definitely gets you xp"... if you go along with the quest

Quests can be major or minor, they can involve the whole group or just a single character's personal goals, and they have levels just like encounters do. 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), and it often brings monetary rewards as well (on par with its XP reward, balanced with the rest of the treasure in the adventure). They can also bring other rewards, of course -- grants of land or title, the promise of a future favor, and so on.

So unless I'm reading this wrong, XP are guaranteed if you complete a quest...while in-game rewards aren't necessarily guaranteed. People keep arguing that if you give PC's a "quest card" they won't have XP on them...that isn't the point. The PC's will know bonus xp is guaranteed if they complete the "quest" regardless of if the amount is listed or not. While they also know if they do something that is not designated as a quest...well there's a real chance they won't get the bonus xp.

 

[Grog]

XP is a powerful motivator, perhaps the most powerful motivator in the game. What you give, and don't give, XP for has a huge impact on how the players engage the game. If you only give XP for slain foes, for example, you end up with lost of slit throats and running down goblins like dogs. if you give XP for anything that aounts to overcoming a challenge, you get a lot more variable play. if you give XP for purposefully avoiding certain kinds of challenges, it broadens even more (ex: sneaking around the goblin patrol versus engaging it). The same is true for treasure, traps, NPC interactions, goal and task completion and so on.

Hmm. This sounds an awful lot like 4E, where you'll be able to give XP for quests that are completely unrelated to combat and killing foes.

Thus, the rules of the game, the mechanics for rewarding XP, promote a certain playstyle. One of the things about 4E that bothers me in general -- above and beyond the silly and unneccessary core flavor changes -- is that the intent in many of the rules changes is to enforce a very particular playstyle.

What playstyle is that, and how is offering bonus XP forcing anyone to do anything?

 

[Reynard]

Hmm. This sounds an awful lot like 4E, where you'll be able to give XP for quests that are completely unrelated to combat and killing foes.

The key here is Quests. I am not talking about Quests, I am talking about actions, things the PCs do during the course of an encounter, session, adventure or campaign. "Quests" are simply "adventures" that have, for whatever reason, been infused with a meta-game reward mechanic that is apparently designed to allow the DM to tell his "story" and remind the players to "snap to it". In a best case scenario, where Quests are fluid and responsive to player input and PC action, it is a wholly superfluous and meaningless mechanic. In the best case scenario, it empowers the DM to force his players to take a predetermined set of actions by with-holding XP -- the prime motivator -- should they diverge from his script.

"Story awards" and "non-combat awards" are not some miraculous 4E construct -- they've been around since at least the 1E DMG (I don't know if they existed in OD&D).

 

[Grog]

The key here is Quests. I am not talking about Quests, I am talking about actions, things the PCs do during the course of an encounter, session, adventure or campaign. "Quests" are simply "adventures" that have, for whatever reason, been infused with a meta-game reward mechanic that is apparently designed to allow the DM to tell his "story" and remind the players to "snap to it". In a best case scenario, where Quests are fluid and responsive to player input and PC action, it is a wholly superfluous and meaningless mechanic. In the best case scenario, it empowers the DM to force his players to take a predetermined set of actions by with-holding XP -- the prime motivator -- should they diverge from his script.

There's that word again - "force." Again, I will ask - how does offering bonus XP for taking a particular action equate to forcing players to take that action? They are still free to do whatever they like - they may not get the bonus XP, but they can just get XP in other ways.

 

[Reynard]

There's that word again - "force." Again, I will ask - how does offering bonus XP for taking a particular action equate to forcing players to take that action?

You are right. Replace "force" with "strongly promote through mechanics inherent in the system based around the singularly most powerful motivator in the game".

 

[Grog]

You are right. Replace "force" with "strongly promote through mechanics inherent in the system based around the singularly most powerful motivator in the game".

The singularly most powerful motivator in the game is to have fun. If the players think they can have more fun by doing something other than completing a quest the DM gives them, they're pretty likely to do that, bonus XP or no. After all, they can always earn more XP, but a few hours spent on a (from their perspective) boring or undesirable quest is a few hours of their lives they can never get back.

 

[pemerton]

Are you sking me in general, or are you asking in regards to the Quest system as it is presented.

The former.

in general, there's no specific "quest". There's an adventure, which is composed of some combination of location(s), challeng(es) and person(s), and what the players do in regards to that adventure is up to them.

In most D&D adventures, the challenges and the person (either NPCs or monsters) overlap pretty tightly, so I'll focus on them.

The GM writes or buys an adventure. The adventure contains a number of detailed encounters, in which the PCs can earn XP by defeating/overcoming/thwarting a number of persons. If the PCs instead drink tea with those persons, or ally with them, or otherwise fail to defeat or overcome them, they do not earn XP.

Therefore, bog-standard D&D creates a strong (XP-driven) pressure on players to treat as enemies, rather than allies, all the people that the GM (or module writer) has statted up as enemies. Is this railroading?

If it's not, then why is it any different when the GM writes up an adventure which creates pressur for the players to take the same attitude towards the Archbishop as the GM does? Conversely, if the reward system should be able to tolerate the players having their PCs not do as the Archbishop asks, then shouldn't it be able to cope with the players making friends with the tribes of the Caves of Chaos, rather than massacring them?

While you could argue that the CR-based XP system creates an incentive to face challenges, I'd have to ask: if you don't want to face challenges, why play D&D?

It doesn't just create an incentive to face challenges. It creates an incentive to treat as challenges the situations that the GM has written up - that is, it creates an incentive for the players to adopt the same perspective on the gameworld (who is an ally, who an enemy) as the GM does. Is this railroading? If not, what is wrong with the Archbishop Quest?

It is possible to have an XP system which doesn't create incentives for the players to adopt the same outlook on the gameworld and story elements as the GM. One is the RQ/RM style one, where XP are earned simply for using abilities successfully (whether or not any challenge is overcome or plot resolved). Another is one where the players are themselves able to introduce the story elements or plots which they must resolve if they are to earn XP (in 4e terms, these would be player-generated Quests).

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

"Story awards" and "non-combat awards" are not some miraculous 4E construct -- they've been around since at least the 1E DMG (I don't know if they existed in OD&D).

That's true. But the point is, story awards in D&D so far where guesstimating. There are no rules that tell you how much XP rescuing the Princess from the Dark Lord is worth, aside from the XP for overcoming the traps and monsters. The RAW doesn't forbid it explicitely, and we will often find published adventures as well as DMs that grant some rewards for it.

The new thing in D&D 4 will not be that it's possible to hand out "non-combat awards"/"story awards", but that there is a system for it that helps you determining how much such awards should bring.

How important is this? In 3rd edition, I think it would be pretty important. If you hand out extra GP for completing a task, this might give the characters more equipment than they should have by their level. If you hand out XP, they might have too little. If you assign a CR to a story award, you can determine appropriate treasuer and XP fitting the system. Still doesn't give you a guideline how much something is worth, and how you should handle such rewards if they only apply to specific characters.

D&D 4 will _not_ reinvent the wheel. But it will probably help it run smoother (and possibly make it more bullet-proof).