Good Quest Outline

[virgil]

Presume you're doing milestone advancement in D&D. What's a good, simple outline for a basic quest (go up one level) you can go Mad Libs on?

Example Adventure Seed: BOSSMOB (Lich, Dragon, Warlord) has acquired MOOKFORCE (storm giant zombies, half-dragon horses, kuo-toa horde in loincloths) and is storming the land. Are you a bad enough dude to save the City/Kingdom/World?

[Zaranthan]

<MacGuffin Artifact> has fallen into the hands of <Evil Organization> who intend to use it to summon <Level 20 creature> and conquer <political region the PCs care about>.

[shinimasu]

PCs have found themselves in <Hostile Location> because they've been <Method of involuntary transportation> there by <Evil Faction> for <Nefarious Purposes> and must find a way to return to their home <Destination> safely.

[Whiysper]

<friendly body> have become aware of a nebulous plot by <unfriendly body>. PCs must investigate, discover <scheme>, <weakness>, and <goal>, and move to <resolve the situation by thwarting or leveraging one or more discoveries>

[RobbyPants]

<Race> has discovered a sealed gate when excavating. The gate is covered in runes in an ancient <other race> language. It appears to be sealing in <ancient evil>.

Monsters with <color> skin have <treasures> you want. Kill them and take it.

[Mord]

These quest outlines are all fucking terrible and you should all be ashamed.

[RobbyPants]

These quest outlines are all fucking terrible and you should all be ashamed.

I feel my second one is the most honest of the bunch.

[Judging__Eagle]

"A [dangerous force] is [taking a shit] on [your local territory]; stop them adventurers"

Is honestly an adventure type that I've seen far too often in larps; and I've always hated it b/c there's no incentive to engage that sort of content instead of letting it move on.

[PrometheanVigil]

I pretty much wrote the article on this back in the day.

It's still getting upvotes and hits to this day. I should really do a series like "How to GM like a BAWSE", I keep getting suggested-to to do that.

[erik]

That's a good post that probably deserves more than 17 people liking it over the course of 4 years, but it doesn't make up for your threadshitting post on the VtM 5e thread.

[PrometheanVigil]

That's a good post that probably deserves more than 17 people liking it over the course of 4 years

Mocking undertone detected. Majority of those votes were when it was a "hot" question. Regardless, wishy-washy answers that are highly abstract and/or using the same worn-out/dangerous "wisdom" win out majority of the time on RPG.SE (case-in point the highest voted answer). That and gamer/personal politics heavily influence policy on there. So hard answers like mine that attempt to get to the root of the problem posed are ultimately discouraged. And yet, what I've written is what is apparrently genuinely craved. People pay for this kind of thing, yo. And this was written when I knew fuck-all about RPGs compared to today -- now I know even less than I did then but I've got far more success and hard-fought experience under my belt in this arena.

but it doesn't make up for your threadshitting post on the VtM 5e thread.

Fucks given: zero.

Fucks to give: also zero.

[erik]

That's a good post that probably deserves more than 17 people liking it over the course of 4 years

Mocking undertone detected.

Hey. Take your compliments where you can. It was a good post. I was mocking that you were so pleased with the mediocre upvotes.

Fucks given: zero.

Fucks to give: also zero.

Your unfuckability isn’t the valuable currency that you seem to think it is.

[RobbyPants]

Your unfuckability isn’t the valuable currency that you seem to think it is.

Although it is a useful trait to have around here.

[Chamomile]

Your unfuckability isn’t the valuable currency that you seem to think it is.

Although it is a useful trait to have around here.

"Useful" is understating it. It's required. But that is also what makes it worthless, and what makes him look like a tryhard for trying to brag about it: Because it is required, it is ubiquitous, and therefore unremarkable.

[K]

The ideal quest is one where the objective is clear, but the quest structure is not.

For example, I recently ran a campaign where the PCs were librarians for the church of Oghma. Their first quest involved retrieving some overdue library books from a sorcerer who had a fortress several days from town, a simple fetch quest. This began as a stealth mission when they realized that the fortress had been overrun, then a fortress assault mission when they made some bad rolls, then an investigation mission when they tried to figure out why they only could find 2/3 of the books, then an exploration mission when they found a planar rip in the basement that led to ancient ruins on another world.

The investigation also revealed a map of several locations of interest by the group that overran the fortress, dropping clues for a campaign-long investigation mission.

Nominally, this was a fetch quest. And yet, mapping out this quest structure would not be useful in any sense because the quest structure changed as PCs made choices.

[brized]

Nominally, this was a fetch quest. And yet, mapping out this quest structure would not be useful in any sense because the quest structure changed as PCs made choices.

Therefore and But Structure comes to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GXv2C7vwX0

[Iduno]

Are we still doing these?

The GM watched [action movie] while intoxicated, follow thinly-veiled/half-remembered plot points from the movie because [organization] is paying you to.