The Quest
First, what is the purpose of your PCs?
Why do they have to do whatever you want them to do?
Perhaps they have to find a secret item, or rescue
someone, or anything... you should decide why their
leaving home. In my RPG, Worlds , our main PC,
Eta, is accidentally sucked into another world through a
portal, and after an accident in the Lab where he ends
up, Eta is blown to another world, and lost within the
Omniverse. He's now on a Quest to find
his way home. (See that? That's like pointing out the
key word, that is... oooo... )
Now the Quest can (and probably will) change
periodically throughout the game, as more information
becomes available... but they should generally stay
static through most of the major sections (only really
changing occasionally). Now a quest is the overall goal
of the PCs, which is what they're trying to do in a
big-picture type of thinking, a path is sort of like a
mini-quest, that only lasts for a short time, until the
PCs get to the next Path. Try not to get them
confused...
Alright, so you're having trouble Picking a quest.
Well, I've got help for you! Anyone who's familiar with
the D&D Dungeon Master's Guide on Building a Dungeon
should know this trick. Get out your d6es (six sided
dice) (or made a quick random-number generator), and
roll to pick out a quest (roll for each category, and
then add them together):
Type of quest:
- Find
- Destroy/Kill
- Escape from
- Steal/Kidnap
- Free/Release
- Re-roll
Item/Person Involved:
- Royalty (King/Queen/Prince/Princess)
- A City/Town/Building/etc
- Magic Item (Ring/Gem/etc)
- Ruins
- Monster
- Regular Person
Okay, so lets make some rolls....
And it looks like I got........... a 3
, and a .... 1 ... hmmm, so we
consult the tables, and we get: Escape from
Royalty . Well, so how do we work this in as a
Quest.... let's see...
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The Quest |
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Our Main
Character, who happens to be some sort of
political activist, is under surveillance by the
Duke of a neighboring Dukedom. The Character is
suspected in a plot to overthrow the government,
but he continues to state his innocence. After a
failed assassination attempt on the Duke's
Brother, he sends a team of warriors to take out
our main character. While having a quiet evening
at home one night, our PC sees a group of
mercenaries snooping around his house, so he
picks up his well-oiled sword, dons his ebon
cloak, and steps out into the night to confront
the sneaks.
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Pretty neat, huh?
Came up with that on the spot... You may find that
you have a little trouble coming up with a good quest
right off the fly, so you may want to think it out for a
while. I've kind of touched on a little bit of a
path as well, at least the beginnings of one...
You may decide to come up with your own general quest
generator, or just make up a quest out of your head...
You'll want to try and make it a coherent path from
quest-to-quest, so you may decide to do a few rolls all
at once. Lets say I roll again, and I get: 5
and 2 .... Release a
Town/Place ...
Okay, so our hero escapes from the Duke, but then
comes back to Free the town from his tyrannical rule. It
all should lock together. Remember, Quests
are big events, that take a lot of time to
complete, and are composed of tiny Paths
.... it will all make sense soon...
Game Story:
The Plot
