Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 57 - Quest and Adventure Design

Episode Date: January 24, 2021

This episode idea is courtesy of Daniel in Melbourne, Australia who wanted to know where I get my ideas for quests.  In this episode, I talk about the different types of quests that you can run, sources for quest ideas, the importance of flexibility when it comes to quest solutions, and finally best practices for the two categories that all quests should fall under.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode 57 of the Taking20 podcast, this week about quest and adventure design. This week's sponsor, Calipygian Donkey Breeders. We put the hee-hee in hee-haw. This episode idea was submitted by Daniel in Melbourne, Australia. Welcome to episode ideasas, International Edition. He sent me an email to feedback at taking20podcast.com and asked where I got the ideas for adventure and quest designs. It's a great question, Daniel. Thank you so much for sending it in.

To tell you where quests come from, let's look at how quests can be broken down. Quests really fall into four major categories. Fetch quests, location quests, killing quests, and information quests. Fetch quests require the PCs to go get something or someone and bring them back or give them this what's it. Something like, go get me the cauldron of power that can control demons or the seven infinity stones to curb overpopulation or to woo death, depending on which storyline you're in. The staff of Amon-Ra men noodles, which harnesses the power of the

gods to make delicious lunches. My stolen sword. It's worth nothing, but my grandfather gave it to me. Other fetch quests may not have you get something, but someone instead to save the lost princess. I'm sorry, Mario. Your princess is in another castle. Well, kiss my butt, Toad. I'm moving in. Rescue the farmer's son. Find Caramel, the dancer I met in Waterkeep two years ago, and give her this note that just says, Call me, and has a ten-digit number on it. Find the kidnapped donkey that's been...

Donkey-napped? Ass-napped? No, no, no, that sounds dirty. I'll be right back. I'm going to take an ass-nap. Well, you're washing the sheets when be right back. I'm going to take an ass-nap. Well, you're washing the sheets when you're done. Rather than fetch quests, another category is there are quests that are based on going to, going through, or staying at a particular location.

So, location quests. Regardless of which one, the location features prominently in the adventure. Guard the prison where the Lich Falmenerath is being held. Survive the plane crash until help arrives. You're transported to a strange and unfamiliar place, a different planet, a different plane of existence, and you have to find the way home. Escape from prison like the opening quest of every Elder Scrolls game so far, all the way back to Arena and Daggerfall. Which, by the way, Elder Scrolls 6 was announced last year, and if it doesn't begin with you either in prison or about to get executed, I'm going to be very disappointed.

Anyway, get through this dangerous ground to get to safety beyond, like escorting a convoy through the Badlands. Sneak into this parade and get this NPC onto the main barge. Or bad guys have hijacked this pleasure cruise, but the baddies don't know that you're there and you're pissed they ruined your vacay. Regardless of the peripheral details, the place is a key aspect of any location-based quest, whether the PCs have to go there, are transported there, or already there when the quest starts. Third type of quests are killing quests. To finish the quest, something has to die, and you pray to whatever gods you believe in that it's not you. Some killing quests have to do with monsters.

You have to kill the great white whale because it bit off your leg, and wanting to kill it represents your desire to kill nature or God or conquer fate or overcome evil, conquer the ocean, take revenge, etc. But enough about that. This isn't a literary podcast, thank God, because I would be an awful host for that podcast. This week on Tomes and Tones Podcast, A Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust. 3,000 pages containing 9 million words describing a young boy's experiences becoming a man.

million words describing a young boy's experiences becoming a man. The book ends with the realization that we are all a product of the experiences and baggage of our past. Stay tuned for the next seven hours as we discuss this languorous tome using pretentious tones. I am Sir Reginald Thornbottom the Fourth. Of course, somebody probably just heard that and said, well, fuck taking 20, let's hear more about that. I have wandered so far afield, I am sorry, let's get back to actual killing quests. Go slay the dragon Kragmaw, which is terrorizing our kingdom. Take care of the lion who is harassing traitors along the Platinum Road. Or instead of killing a monster, it might be the assassination of a

particular person. Kill the head of the Pirates Guild so the new Hurricane King election can happen. Slay an evil king who's a tyrant to the village of Fairmeadow. Kill the head honcho bandit and break up the I-55 gang. Go back in time and kill the mother of the girl who's prophesied to destroy the world. The fourth type of quest I want to talk about are quests that revolve around acquiring information. The quest to solve something. Finding a solution to a major problem. Answering riddles to win a reward. Solving strange mysteries like what's causing all the pigeons to spontaneously combust. Why are the children all turning into sea foam anytime they touch the ocean?

We have to find the Midnight Stalker and bring him to justice before he kills again. Lift the curse of Pharaoh Tina from the lost kingdom of Atlanta. Find a cure for the Cobalt Plague. Some sort of piece of information that you need or the party needs or someone is willing to pay the party to get

in order to move the plot forward. Which, by the way, by throwing these quests into four big buckets like this, please don't think I'm downplaying quests at all. I love them regardless of the media. Movies, books, RPGs, doesn't matter. Even though there's only four major types, there are a hundred variants on each of the above and they can be combined to form thousands of possible combinations. I mean, the movie Fifth Element, which if you haven't seen already, go fucking watch that movie. I love it. It's a combination of a fetch quest to get these four stones, and a location quest that begins and ends in a desert temple. The Lord of the Rings is a killing the monster quest, but to do it, you have to sneak the ring to a location, the volcano in which it was forged, in order to destroy it. The movie Ocean's Eleven is a

location-based mystery quest where they're solving how to break into a casino and we, the audience, are trying to figure out how they're going to do it. And if that's not enough, you can throw plot twists in. Things like, the monster was the king's illegitimate daughter the entire time. The quest provider who wanted you to solve the mystery was so they could use that to rise the power. The pirates, quote-unquote, are causing destruction in town because they're trying to rescue their families being held by the local militia. All of that is a shit-ton of prologue to finally get to the advice. Obviously, I want to try to keep my advice so that it can apply to any quest that you could design regardless of game system. So let's start with my most important piece of advice when it comes to quests.

Borrow, borrow, borrow. Steal, steal, steal. If you like the idea of a quest from a movie, a tabletop RPG, a novel, a video game, or another DM, then use it. Copy it wholesale and change the quest giver or change the names involved. Use the idea and structure, but change it around a little bit. Instead of trying to find three pieces of an amulet for three dead brothers in Skyrim, you're trying to find the three pieces of the Aegean shield and reforge it for dead King Whatchamahooset and his incompetent children who left the thieves steal it. You're not trying to retrieve the costume of the Silver Shroud like in Fallout 4.

You're searching for the lost cape of invulnerability that makes the wearer immune to damage from arrows and bolts. If you've played Borderlands 2, Tiny Tina's tea party of revenge can easily be reskinned to an elderly matron seeking one last bit of revenge before she passes on. You don't even have to be subtle about it. If one of your players calls out that, hey, this reminds me of the whole Tiny Tina thing,

you can either admit it, play coy, or deny it. It's entirely up to you. But you can lift ideas for quests from all of these different pieces of media that are out there, even borrowing from stories that are thousands of years old like Greek mythology. Second piece of advice that I have,

give your quests multiple possible solutions and or be flexible when it comes to the PC's ideas for solutions to the quest. Some RPGs do this very well, by the way. Fallout 1 and 2 come to mind. The Elder Scrolls series does this really well, and for its other flaws, so does the recent Cyberpunk 2077 game. So what do I mean by multiple possible solutions? If the party has to take the General's ID card to make a forgery, give them multiple options to do it. You can have a main option in mind, but don't be afraid to improvise along with the player's solutions. You might have intended the party to stealthily sneak into the General's house while he's asleep,

pass the guard patrols and the various locks to steal the card and do something with it from there. But the group may have another idea. The party may want to storm the general's house, kill everyone who witnesses the theft, duplicate the card, and then escape, burning down the entire city block to cover their tracks. Bold. Decisive.

Not exactly subtle, but okay. They may want to install electronics on the outer gate that duplicates the general's unique code when he swipes it. I like it. Pretty sneaky, sis. What if they want to use the local counterfeiter to make a duplicate card and then hack into the personnel database for the general's unique code? All of these sound like viable options. So my question to you would be, why would you take away one of those ideas? Why would you make it invalid? If you say no, you can't do that, you're starting to railroad players into the answer that you want and the play style that you want them to play, and that can easily lead to unhappy players.

So when it comes to solutions, don't be afraid to either design solutions or allow your players to use solutions that involve not necessarily just straight combat, but maybe skill checks or feats or abilities or just plain old good outside the box thinking. For example, in Cyberpunk, you could go in to solve a quest, guns blazing, take out the turrets and the guards and take what you need. Go in to solve a quest, guns blazing, take out the turrets and the guards, and take what you need. Or, if you have computer hacking skills at a certain level, you can turn the turrets against the guards. Or, if your electronic skill is high enough, you can shut down power to the building, shutting down the turrets, and limiting sight distance for the guards. Options like this make for memorable adventures, and more importantly, great stories. Look, all of us DMs are going for the players telling the story of that one quest, that one adventure.

Oh gosh, do you remember when we blank, whatever blank happens to be. Options and being flexible with player solutions can help make that a reality. Rarely will you hear a player say, oh, you remember that one time we all did a total of 100 points of damage to that bad guy with a machine gun laser and she died? You'd be more likely to hear one of the players say, do you remember that time we uploaded a virus to the machine laser of that bad guy and her ammo pack exploded? When it comes to quests like this, if all else fails, put the situation in front of the players, sometimes even without a predetermined solution. When the PCs figure out what they want to do, give it a chance to succeed and let the die rolls fall where they may. And if it doesn't work, let the survivors of the party come up with a different plan. One final word about quests. Quests generally should do one

of two things. Reinforce the main plotline or be a self-contained episode. So quests that reinforce the main plotline, think about whatever your main story arc happens to be. The bad guy wants to collect the seven pieces of the Riven Regalia to destroy the universe. Great. Have some quests that support that arc. Some of those quests should revolve around the Riven Regalia pieces themselves. Discovering where these pieces are, countering the big bad's plans to take them, stealing them from the big bad, or maybe even acquiring them yourselves. Some of the quests could be about making the right allies or enemies to help in the future.

For example, forging an alliance with the only blacksmith in the Sword Coast who can reunite the Seven Pieces. Heh, heh, heh. Forging alliances with someone who can forge. You see, it's funny because it's a play on the double meaning of, you know what? Never mind. The quest could be supporting an entity who can supply an army at your back, a king, an empress, an elder dragon, a demon lord. You have an end point in mind for your campaign, so think about what the players would need to have success at the end of that campaign and design some quests based around the PCs

acquiring that. I'll be starting a pirate campaign very soon, and since at least one of my players listens to the podcast, I'm not going to give away any secrets. But suffice it to say that the players will need allies for the climactic battle at the end. I've worked a number of quests in where they provide substantial support to existing power players who may help them when the time is right. But suppose you want to design a quest that has nothing to do with the main plot. If you do, I recommend you make the quest self-contained. It should have a clear beginning, middle, and end, ideally solved in one to two gaming sessions. These side quests can be used to give the party a sense of accomplishment,

give them additional experience points, getting them to higher levels faster. They can tie into character backstories. They can be tied into level-based abilities or retraining opportunities to introduce players to new mechanics having to do with their character. The side quest could introduce NPCs to the characters that they may need to call on later. And then finally, you know what a side quest can do? It can allow you, the DM, to try out scenarios and mechanics that you may use in a more involved way later, but this little side quest just gets your feet wet so that

you can learn along with the players. Daniel, I really hope this answer helped. There are four main categories of quests out there. Fetch quests, location quests, killing quests, and informational quests, but they come in a myriad of flavors. I borrow ideas about quests from other media and other adventures. I use them to drive the main plot, or I make them short, self-contained adventures that serve another purpose for the PCs or for my own DMing experience. Last advice, continue to learn from other DMs, get your quest ideas from them, get your players involved in the adventure, and have fun doing it. Thank you all so much for listening. I want to mention again that you can provide feedback to me or episode

ideas to feedback at taking20podcast.com or head over to www.taking20podcast.com and you can leave feedback at each episode there. And if you enjoy the podcast, mention us to some of your friends who are either already tabletop gaming or may be interested in the hobby. But before I close, I want to once again thank our sponsor, Calipygian Donkey Breeders. We want you to stop by our farm and say, mmm, dat ass. This has been episode 57 of the Taking20 podcast about quest and adventure design. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game.