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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheSword" data-source="post: 9855332" data-attributes="member: 6879661">It’s a tangent and not related to the OP but I can’t agree with you here. There is a huge difference between the - as you say - popular fetch quest and the loathed recover-my-own-hard-earned-stuff quest. They are not the same thing. Not even a subset. They’re fundamentally different.All the other quests you mentioned come with their own rewards. Whereas the recovery quest generated its reward by giving the players back what they already had. It is deeply unsatisfying to have to go to more effort to regain something you have already put effort into securing. It is far less fun and even less so satisfying but it’s arbitrary and feels like make-work. It feels like a con. A swindle. A bait and switch. Particularly when orchestrated through deus ex machina.It’s why imprisonment quests always have a convenient box somewhere nearby with all the PCs stuffin it. Rather than the more sensible approach of divvying up those items amongst the various lieutenants and leaderships. Nobody actually liked that kind of adventure - no matter how clever it sounds.I don’t include in this adventures where a McGuffin is fought over back and forth because it has some special significance in the world. The Stone of Grolor for instance. Which has some plot significance but not necessarily a useful piece of kit for the PCs. Neither do I include PC possessions being a reason for foes to attack them. That’s just par for the course of an adventurer that folks will want to kill them.It is almost always better not to give the PCs something at all rather than give it only to take it away again. Something that should usually be reserved for serious balancing issues where you’ve been overly generous and it’s causing long term campaign issues. Even then, you generally want that thing gone for good. Not recoverable.As case in point, I’m struggling to think of a single item in any published campaign that the PCs have previously earned that gets taken from the players and which requires significant effort to get back. Maybe the boards can assist but I suspect it’s the exception not the norm.I say it’s a tangent because I don’t think Reynard has taken away a precious hard earned item, it’s a relatively inexpensive component at the kind of level you can plane shift at. I just let the idea go by that recover-your-stolen-stuff quests are intrinsically fun and satisfying. They are fighting a very uphill battle.</blockquote>

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