D&D General To Quest or not the Quest?

[atanakar]

Thinking doing a quest for my next campaign. It is the only type of campaign I have never done.

Have you ever DMed or participated in a quest campaign in which the characters receive a long term and world saving mission from level 1. An old school example would be to find the seven parts of a powerful rod. Did the characters have a Manifest Destiny to accomplish it or were they replaceable? How did it go? What are the mistakes you made? Or maybe you don't like quest campaigns.

Let me know what you think.

 

[Fenris-77]

I do love a good bit of old school questing. Not for every campaign, but sometimes. You could always do a little onion layering, and have the enormity of the world-saving unfold over the first arc or two. So long as your players buy in you could do it right from the get go of course. It is your destiny Luke!

I like the parts of an artifact approach. It gives you some tangible mid-arc achievement, and also something you can have stolen from the party. Muhuhahaha! I've played this sort of thing in pretty much every edition and it's always fun. The real trick is keeping it interesting over the long haul. I'd recommend a tv series approach there - in a season of a show like, say, Supernatural, there are season long story arcs, but they don't get attention every episode, they're mixed in with some standard monster of the week episodes. In terms of D&D, you want to leave room for some action based on what happens in play and also player interest.

 

[commandercrud]

That describes most of the 5e hardcover books. Personally I dislike knowing the end goal at character creation. I prefer to start in a more "monster of the week" approach in the beginning, and allowing the "big bad" to develop over the first couple levels of play, gradually shifting toward something more as the PCs interact with the world.