Incline Quests which you would like to see in RPGs?

[Falksi]

To contrast the "Stereotypical quests", what are some quests that you would like to see included in RPGs?

 

[Marat]

A heist quest would be cool. Assemble a crew, do the legwork, plan and execute - everything dependent on your skills and choices. And play "Green Onions" as you make away with the loot.

 

[Lurker47]

Give someone a hug.

 

[Wunderbar]

Stuff like Vizima Confidential, i.e. complex scriptwork with many moving parts.

 

[Stormcrowfleet]

A heist quest would be cool. Assemble a crew, do the legwork, plan and execute - everything dependent on your skills and choices. And play "Green Onions" as you make away with the loot.

That's what real dungeoncrawling should be about. That's how it feels in old school/classic D&D anyway.

 

[Sweeper]

No journal or quest log of any kind.
Force the players to pay attention.

 

[warpig]

Go to the basenent and kill some fucking RATS.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Go to the basenent and kill some fucking RATS.

You go to the basement and rats give you the quest to kill the owners of the house

 

[Marat]

No journal or quest log of any kind.
Force the players to pay attention.

Getting Ultima vibes here. That was NOT a pleasant ride.

Another kind of quest i think might be fun: You're asked to help complete the construction of a time machine and when you have done that you're given the honor of trying it out. You change the course of history and have to undo your fuck-up. In the process you have a lot of wacky adventures and meet a lot of historical figures (maybe you assassinate Caesar/invent lightbulb?) only to emerge at the end to see that some small difference still persists and you're gonna have to live with it for the rest of the game.

 

[zeitgeist]

A heist quest would be cool. Assemble a crew, do the legwork, plan and execute - everything dependent on your skills and choices. And play "Green Onions" as you make away with the loot.

This was a pretty interesting heist simulator, it's a sort of an adventure/tactics hybrid, there's more of the planning/execution gameplay in this video:



If you list all the heist-related systems you'll see that technically most of them have actually been implemented in numerous RPGs (there's party building, guard patrols, stealth/sneaking, stealing, breaking and entering, lockpicking, disabling alarms, fencing stolen goods, and so on), and you're interacting with these systems all the time, but you never quite have the feeling you're doing a "heist quest" because it's not presented as such.

 

[The Jester]

In a new idea: we can try to subvert the classic mission of killing rats in the basement and trying to play with it somehow.

So like some tavern owner asks you to kill the rats in his basement but when you go down there if you pass a wisdom check you find that they aren't rats, they're mini people painted to look like rats and if you talk to them the pygmies are like "we're travelers this guy kidnapped us and now he sends people down here to squash us every so often and we can't get out" so you confront the tavern owner but it turns out he's just a rat with really high charisma that's been passing himself off as a human tavern owner because one day some group of fledgling adventurers came down to the basement of the tavern he used to live at and murdered his whole family and the mage hit him with a spell that went wrong and made him all intelligent-like so this super smart rat decided he was gonna amass a ton of shrinking potion and occasionally spike people's drinks with it so he can drop them in his basement and make them feel the pain he felt when some random destiny's child adventurer and his ragtag group of pals came down and fucked up his whole life.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Definitely not enough quests where you need to build or help build stuff. Quests are too often in vein of: go and kill these people, rob this ancient grave, stop this guy from doing that. Why not make players make things happen instead of stopping them from happening?
That's why Kingmaker felt so refreshing. You are building a kingdom and the villain does it's best to stop you from doing so.
My only issue is that smaller quests were about stopping someone from breaking your kingdom. There should also be chapters where your entire purpose is to build something necessary for kingdom's survival. For example a chapter about building a wizard's tower. First you need to find the right architect, secure resources guarded by monsters, then find a suitable wizard and convince him to move-in.

 

[MpuMngwana]

While talking to a bartender in the province capital, he mentions his friend, a lumberjack from a village in the woods. He hasn't visited the town lately, nor any other villagers for that matter, and the bartender finds it a bit odd. Talking to other people, you find out that, indeed, there hasn't been any communication with the remote hamlet whatsoever for a couple of months or so, but with lord Murder McEvil's armies approaching from the east, no-one's really bothered to check up on them. So, being the adventurous sort, you decide to see what's been going on. So you trek through the forest for several days and reach the village. You find no living humans there.

What you do find, however, are rats. Hundreds upon hundreds of fat, giant, bloodthirsty rats. As you cut down their numbers, you find clues as how this whole mess came to be.

You see, the major had a bit of a rat infestation in his basement. Around ten or so rats. So, as any sensible fantasy world civilian would do, he locked the basement up, set 20 silver pieces from his life savings aside and started waiting for a suitable adventurer party to arrive and take care of the problem. But nobody was coming. The village was poor, they didn't even have a weapon shop, and all the villagers combine could buy maybe five wolf pelts from passing adventurers, not to mention being a long distance from any major dungeons. And the rats kept breeding, the noises from the basement grew louder with each day, and one night the inkeeper's wife disappeared, never to be seen again.

Then one day, a ray of hope appeared. A group of adventurers decided to stay at the inn. The major told them about his trouble, they agreed on the price and the group's leader made a note in his journal. But, as adventurers often do, they packed up in the morning and left town, never to be seen again. A couple weeks later,a tide rats burst out of the major's house, devouring everyone in their path. No villager was spared.

As you cut down last of the rats, a shadow of rage flies over your face as you come to a terrifying realization. The villagers were dirt poor, and the rats didn't drop any loot whatsoever. Given that the sheer number of rats forced you to use two entire healing potions, you are at a net negative after this endeavor. But at least, you're richer for the experience. You sigh, sheathe your sword, and leave the village to pursue another adventure.

 

[V_K]

Fuck quests, goal-based gameplay rules.

 

[Lord_Potato]

No journal or quest log of any kind.
Force the players to pay attention.

You're trying a bit too hard.

 

[DalekFlay]

More murder mystery type quests that require actual investigation please. Preferably with the chance/option of naming the wrong culprit and having that effect future quests.

 

[Sweeper]

You're trying a bit too hard.

It would be pure incline and you know it.

 

[Marat]

More murder mystery type quests that require actual investigation please. Preferably with the chance/option of naming the wrong culprit and having that effect future quests.

Something like this maybe? Just found it today. I agree that there is hardly anything like a compelling murder mystery to investigate.

 

[V_K]

More murder mystery type quests that require actual investigation please. Preferably with the chance/option of naming the wrong culprit and having that effect future quests.

Something like this maybe? Just found it today. I agree that there is hardly anything like a compelling murder mystery to investigate.

At first I thought it was another Disco-clone, but it actually looks the opposite of that, with procedural cases and tactical encounters. Hope that "sidebar text look" won't give them any trouble with VN fans too lazy to read the description. Makes me cautiously excited depending on how strong their mystery generation algorithms are.

 

[Tyranicon]

SCP-like, weird creepy shit.

Meta shit.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Quests where you're actively competing with enemy parties for completion.

e.g., if it's a bounty, there should be bounty hunters after it. If news was discovered of a crypt with magical treasure, there should be graverobbers and other(not necessarily hostile) parties attempting to explore it.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

Fuck quests, goal-based gameplay rules.

Sounds interesting, please explain to me what that means as if I was twelve.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Fuck quests, goal-based gameplay rules.

Sounds interesting, please explain to me what that means as if I was twelve.

I assume they mean something like this:
Consider Fort Joy in DOS2. You're given the goal of getting out, but not told how to do it. There are multiple ways to get out and you're set loose to figure it out on your own.

This goes hand in hand with TDTTOE(The DevTeam Thinks Of Everything) design

 

[DeepOcean]

I would like more of a responsive sandboxy design on RPGs and less Theme Park design that is the norm. Just create a sandbox with its own rules:

Ex: You are trying to steal the jewel from a noble.

You can:

Ask the thieves guild for information.

Little you know that if you do that, there is a chance of a rival of yours getting to know of this jewel and compete for it if he is still alive.

You decide to investigate for flaws on the security by learning the secret of a guard and blackmail him.

Little you know he will setup an ambush for you when you try to use his information.

There are little narrative hooks out there that you can trigger with your actions.

 

[Silly Germans]

I don't have a specific quest in mind but I think the current setup where the whole world typically waits until you decide to address a problem/quest could use a little more dynamics. Have the game react to it on occasion, when you take all the time in the world to finish a quest. I am not talking about hard time limits that cause the game to end but it wouldn't hurt if some side quests demanded a little bit more attention to detail. I shouldn't go through quests like check lists or cheap hookers, they should rather make me care a little for them and be a little bit demanding. Let me compete with other adventurers and allow me to sabotage them so i look even more heroic, or let me lead them like lambs to the slaughter to a more perilous quest so i have a free hand. Stuff like that.