I've used session-based XP before, but never thought to right up an actual objective list. Great idea.
It could be even better in a party with varied alignment, which each character having a slightly different list. For example, the lawful good paladin's objective would say "Free as many slaves as possible", the good druid's objective would say "Free as many slaves as possible without allowing any of the woodland animals nearby to be injured" and the neutral rogues objective would say "Get a reward from the rich man for freeing his daughter from the slavers".
Well let me give you a bit more detail so you can see if it's closer to what you have in mind.
First off, the one-shot was set in Hammerfast. I just got the product recently, and I dig the idea of getting the map of the settlement. We ended up using that to track position of individual party members throughout the town, in one-hour "rounds" of talking to people, doing their research, buying supplies and the like.
The party began with the "party quest." Loremaster Geld Seekingstone hired a group of adventurers two weeks ago, they disappeared, and he wants the characters to track them down. As the characters interact with the townsfolk, they uncover clues that directed them to the Dungeon of the Fire Opal outside town. As the characters make it known that they are seeking the missing adventurers or visiting the dungeon, they got more quests.
The local priest of Ioun had a strange green talisman that one of the adventurers left behind, so they took it upon themselves to retrieve one such talisman. The captain of the guard warned them of hobgoblin raiders seeking gemstones, and offered them a reward if they were able to put an end to the raids.
Once they arrived at the dungeon, they took on some spiders infesting the upper works, then beat a hasty retreat deeper into the ruins, reconnoitering as they went along. They came across a chamber where they encountered more talismans. They ran into a goblin, decided to fight him, and took a talisman that he had. I pointed out that they could have used skills or social interaction to get the talisman from him... But they were Jonesing to take on something they felt like they could beat, so it was all good. Finally, after some reconnoitering and scouting about, they arrived in a chamber where they met a warpriest of Bane trying to use gems to finance his designs of bringing war to the Nentir Vale. They chatted him up a bit, then decided to attack him because they wanted to end the raids. They also ended up finding two bodies of the six adventurers they were looking for.
The players got three "quest cards." First was the party quest, then the quest to retrieve the talisman, and the quest to stop the bandit raids.
So they got into two encounters, scouted around a lot, and made several new friends in Hammerfast. All in all, a pretty full day of adventuring.
The single big thing that facilitated this was having the neat checklist of what the characters were actually supposed to be doing. They actually
avoided combats, hoping to save their resources for the encounters they couldn't avoid, and tried to just go about accomplishing their objectives. Good stuff.
