Do you create personal side quests for PCs?

[Oryan77]

Do you create scenarios specifically for a PC to do as a side quest or do you just stick to running an adventure that involves the entire group?

I love creating side quests that focus on a certain PC. It really helps pull the player into the campaign world and it makes the character more special to the player. I think it is cool when the rest of the group wants to join along for the ride and help the PC out.

Unfortunately, in the past 10 years of playing 3.5, I have barely been successful doing this. When I was a teenager in my original group, we did this all the time and it made the world come alive. But as an adult, players come in and out of the group, or the player has no interest whenever I introduce something specific for their PC (they just want to focus on the adventure & pretty much ignore anything else). So I found myself wasting a ton of time creating content that never gets used.

Part of my enjoyment from DMing comes from creating scenarios for each PC. But I have not done this in a couple of years because I know nothing will come of it. I really do miss doing that. I like to see a PC build "character" and watch what the player does with the PC.

 

[jedavis]

A thousand times yes! Although I suppose it depends on the degree of sidequestiness that you mean. I once gave a corporate agent get a secret mission which he had to pursue while also progressing the mainplot and keeping his motives secret from the party, for example. Is that the kind of thing that you mean, or like... solo sessions / actually solo quests?

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

No. I don't like it when a campaign involves multiple players competing for DM time.

Although it sometimes happens "accidentally". The only player driven-campaign I've been in that was successful had only two players writing the plot and the others going along (so sometimes it seemed like a sidequest, although the entire group took part). I've been in some very unsuccessful player-driven campaigns where each person had their own plot, which involved very long stretches of boredom for most players while one PC got DM time.

 

[Crothian]

Yes, I do this all the time and the campaign is better for it.

 

[S'mon]

Well... on the one hand I like to be very responsive to player interests - if a player says "Let's do X!" and they decide to go do X, I prep and run X. What does it matter what I had planned? I'm just the DM - the PCs are the stars.

OTOH, as a wise fellow said: You are responsible for your own orgasm!

I am not all keen - in fact I am getting extremely averse - to the idea that it is my job to give the players adventures, while they sit back passively to receive what I provide. And that goes double for side quests. If a player wants their PC to go on a side quest, brilliant, let me know. I'm not so keen on "here's your side quest where you can get that maguffin you've been telling me about" - if a player wants a maguffin, go do something to get it in-game. At least tell me you're rolling a streetwise check!

 

[SkredlitheOgre]

I've only done so once and it was a night when everybody seemed to be a little off. Probably not the best night for gaming, but we soldiered on. Nobody had anything they wanted to do and they didn't seem interested in the four plot hooks I gave them, when finally on PC mentioned his dad. I was having trouble coming up with anything else, so I said "Sure!"

I don't really like doing that very often, because to me, it feels like leaving the other players in the background. I would only consider planning adventures based around specific PCs if all of the PCs were going to get a turn. I can see how it might work for other groups, though.

 

[jedavis]

I suppose I should clarify; I like to grab things from PC backstories or interests and throw those into the world, where the rest of the party might not care. It may not be particularly hooksome, but I'm not averse to using things that are primarily of interest to a single player. Likewise, as a player, I don't tend to mind if we do stuff that isn't of primary interest to me; I find a way to work around it (as when we were pursuing archaeology, also in Traveller. I was a smuggler, and didn't much care... so I had to find ways to get into trouble).

Also, I need to spread XP around before giving to S'mon again

 

[Grimmjow]

I try to make an adventure that seems normal at first, but by the end is special for.one player. I find this really is to if someone Trys hard to worship a certain god. I also reward rollplay to get other to try and start

 

[Gilladian]

I suppose I do this, but not as really "separate" quests. For example, in my current campaign, one of the PCs is only IN the campaign center because her (now wounded and sidelined) mentor brought her here on a mission to find out some historical info about a hero who came here from their part of the world.

In the not too-distant future, they'll be finding that info, and she'll have to decide whether to escort her mentor home, or stay and keep adventuring with her new friends while her mentor tries to go home by himself, brain-damage and all.

In the same game, the wizard is fascinated by the history of a different set of adventurers who plunged deep into the dungeon at one time, leaving much lore behind.

A third PC was trying to trash the main religion of the town, because he followed the trickster god. Fortunately for the DM's sanity he was killed by a giant scorpion... but not before he caused a divorce and an attempted murder!

Then there was the rogue's candlestick theft obsession, which led to several burglaries of a temple, a residence and an inn. He retired not long after that.

Is this the sort of thing you mean? Everyone helps with the discovery of info for the first two, but the others were definitely loner jobs.

 

[Richards]

I frequently create adventures that are geared toward a specific PC. Almost always, it's an adventure for the whole party that merely has special meaning for one PC, and I try to rotate it around so everybody gets a "spotlight on them" adventure in turn.

For example, a recent adventure started off when one of the PCs, Delphyne, bumped into a dwarf in the marketplace and had a sudden flood of recognition, as this was the "Bad Man" that she saw slaughter her parents when she was eight years old. (We had already determined that she was sent to live with her maternal grandmother when she was eight, and that's where she learned her spellcraft growing up - this was an adventure geared towards filling in some of her hidden backstory.) Of course, after hunting down the dwarf, the PCs learned that he was a vampire hunter, that the vampire lord he'd been chasing for decades had killed Delphyne's mother, and eight-year-old Delphyne had witnessed the dwarf bursting into the house and slaying her vampiric mother just after she had slain her husband, Delphyne's father. So the real adventure was tracking down the vampire lord to his lair - a standard dungeon crawl for all of the players, but with some special meaning for Delphyne's player.

I also wrote up an adventure recently that focused not on one of the PCs, but on the paladin's griffon mount - which ended up with the PCs fighting off a formian invasion of the Beastlands.

Of course, that said, not every adventure is focused on a PC, but enough of them are that the players don't mind when the spotlight isn't on them this time, as they know their turn will come.

Johnathan