Fetch this

Use those as a starting point, then have things branch into the unexpected, with consideration of your party.

Most recent arc I ran was a very cliche "hired to investigate disappearances," Party gets involved out if general goodness, a pattern begins to emerge with some weird exceptions, they wind up lost and then ta-da, here's the dungeon with all sorts of magical bullshit hijinks.

It's basic as hell and typical shit you'd see in a video game or something, but giving it some time to develop away from where it started is a little more interesting than "go to place do thing go back"

Fuck players.

Spoiled little brats.

Prepping is my part of the fun. They're not going to ruin it with another fucking round of daddy issues and waifus.

You should be thanking the heavens that your players don't have the motivation to run their own games without you.

I thank my players for their laziness every single time "goblins invaded the local ruins, old man needs help!" still flies.

"Things aren't always what they seem."

"You see a mysterious ______ in the distance."

Words to live by.

I'm sure that's just because they don't care, rather than any laziness on their part.

I can't tell whether we're making jokes and yours aren't funny, or if you're trying to raise my hackles with passive aggressiveness.

>I can't tell whether we're making jokes and yours aren't funny, or if you're trying to raise my hackles with passive aggressiveness.
Exactly what I was thinking.

That one was funny, though. Kudos.

Simple quests aren't bad.

All you need is somehow to make your players want to do them. The straightest fetch quest in the world is a blast if you're convinced the item you're bringing about is important.

Well, figure out whats happening in the wider setting. Rarely are jobs so simple as fight this fetch that.

>I want you to burn down the rival merchants warehouse without being detected.

>Convince this baron that my services would be exceptionally useful. Use extract of henbane on his wife if need be. I have the antidote and can prove my usefulness!

>You have washed ashore an abandoned island. Survive until you can signal a passing ship to rescue you, or find alternative means off the island.

>Please consecrate the forest graveyard. I'd go myself but I can no longer make the dangerous journey. The last pilgrim who came back said there were undead wandering.
>(Is actually graverobbers pretending to be undead to frighten pilgrims away while they rob the tombs of the ancient dead. They offer a cut of the profit to leave them to it)

Save the maiden!
>(Dragonborn being held by her husband, a knight of the realm who defeated all comers to win her hand in a wager set by the maidens chieftain father. she wants out. he is desperately trying to get her to stay. Party is marriage counselling + backup when the knight and dragonborns families show up to meddle)

What are the goals of the NPC's in your setting and how can those goals be served by the PC's?

What reputation do the PC's have currently, and who would approach them? A baron? A hedge knight? The local thieves guild? A dodgy merchant or vizier who needs some "work" done?

Not to mention complications that can arise for doing less scrupulous work, such as assassins being sent after the party to remove any possibility of incrimination!

Just associating with the wrong lord could see the party run into trouble. Rescind a job offer after they speak to the representative of the merchants guild because the noble patron the party was entertaining is currently in a trade war with them.

You're only the worst quest writer if the quests themselves seem arbitrary, rather than serving a purpose that expands upon the setting or builds upon something that happens later on.

"Kill boars" means nothing because a) you're just doing what you've been doing since the game began and b) the reward will likely be arbitrary like receiving a hide for each boar slained, which will only be interested for the dude who wants new leather armor.

"kill boars so we have meat for our upcoming festival" tells you a) the area has enough boars to sustain a village, b) they mainly hunt these boars during a specific part of the year, c) something happened recently that prevents them from hunting boars for this year's festival, and d) this festival will feature food and drink, which will be its own reward if the party has been eating nothing but trail mix and water for the past few miles of travel.

an organization that is competent enough to give such quests is pretty rare and its existence would have implications on the power balance.

most jobs are something passed down from a higher level that was conceived without any practical knowledge and is extremely chancy if not totally impossible, or created by a mid level manager that's either telling someone to do it without concern for actual success because only the first part is important in regards to his own position or totally blinded by his own memes and clueless in reality.

there's also the question of getting paid for the job even if it's successful. if they're telling people to fight things it's likely to be severe, and incompetent organizations tend to pick fights they won't win. consider any of the following:
>you have done the job. you return to find the organization that employed you no longer exists.
>they prefer to keep the resources meant for your payment to use for something else. "something else" may not be a good enough plan to keep them from dissolving.
>someone legged it with the money and they're too broke to want to pay you
>your supervisor has been demoted and his replacement doesn't know about you
>someone has decided that you are spies (or something similar) and since neither due process nor accountability exist people will basically be trying to kill you unless either your supervisor or his superiors hear about it, actually care, actually think you aren't spies and have enough pull to fix it.
>your supervisor decides for whatever reason it would be more convenient if he had never hired you to do the thing, and no one can prove he has
>you were promised money that doesn't actually exist
>you are the scapegoat for something that has gone terribly wrong and seen as outsiders exploiting some agreement or other to get away with destructive behavior. people will try to extract justice from your, probably without even telling you what it is you're supposed to have done.

if your players are smart you can >shadowruns and they'll fill out the setting with their crazy paranoid theories, then you can keep them fully engaged by dropping crumbs of their own ideas into the story.

if your players are dumb you're already doing everything you need to do. fast money, big gains and fame is high fantasy when you're dumb.

also

It doesn't matter if your quests are fetch this and fight that. The key is that instead of telling your players to fight this and fetch that, you make them WANT to fight this and fetch that so they get up and go do it.

Quests grow out of setting. Specifically, they grow out of when things in the setting break. Answer the question "how would this normally work?" and then break something so that it can't work that way anymore.

To be fair, many quests can be oversimplified into these categories, but other options:

>Find that
>Transport this
>Collect these
>Defend place
>Scout undetected
>Assassinate secretly
>Escort them
>Mediate situation

All the advice in this thread, like contextualizing the basics, expanding the horizons, and considering complications, is good.

My preferred method is fifty-car quest pileups--a quest never quite goes smoothly since it usually gets itself tangled in another story towards the end, which snowballs and starts picking up other NPCs, conflicts, locations, and complications as it goes. It gets bigger as the players begin delving into the heavyweight stuff, and escalates towards a huge finale down the line. It gives room for simple quests to be simple quests, while tying in story and world developments through a slow burn.
Instead of a plot hook, it's a plot net.

Try and tie it to the characters in the game. There's always room for the fetch/kill quests, but they should somehow be related to your characters, whether it helps them achieve or take steps toward whatever goals they have, or puts them in a personal conflict which is far more difficult than whatever monsters they fight.

Like the Cleric who wants to gather the 8 parts of his holy saint's corpse, or the Barbarian whose old tribe is hunting him to the ends of the earth.

Develop a burning hatred for MMORPGs and consider anyone who plays them to be a piece of shit.

Go from there.

You must be loads of fun to game with.

>Well, figure out whats happening in the wider setting. Rarely are jobs so simple as fight this fetch that.

This. When setting up the quests in your notes ask yourself the following questions:

What is being fetched/fought?
For who?
Why?
How do the PCs come by the job?
Who else has an interest?
Is the quest giver trustworthy?
Are the PCs?
What are the consequences of success or failure?

Lets apply an example. The basic quest is to take a letter from town A to town B, via bandit infested forest.

1. The letter is the item to be fetched (or in this case taken)
2. The letter is from one merchant to another concerning a shipment of spices from the south
3. The shipment didn't arrive when it was supposed to, and the first merchant has creditors after him
4. The PCs are known to the merchant in question having done jobs for him before
5. Obviously the letters recipient. But there are other people who might be interested. The merchant's creditors, for instance, or a rival who hopes to gain a monoploy on the spice trade. Perhaps the church has decided that these spices are in some way immoral and seeks to impose a ban.
6 .In this case yes. Both the letter and the reward offered are genuine. Only you can answer wether your players will choose to fulfill their end of the bargain.
7. If the PCs fail, they will lose the trust of the merchant, and other people will be less inclined to trust them in future. Should they succeed, you then have a new quest hook, as the letter's recipient asks them to look into the missing shipment, allowing for all sorts of intrigue and shenanigans.

Just plan things out.

1. Defeat the protective wards on Arlissa's curse.
- DC 14 for partial success; Arlissa hurt.
- DC 17 for complete success
2. Redirect the curse.
- DC 13 for partial success; Arlissa's curse will hurt, but not kill, her if she answers questions.
- DC 18 for complete success; requires someone else accepting the curse.
3. Seal the curse by establishing new protective wards.
- DC 16 for partial success; wards will erode within a year.
- DC 20 for complete success.

The curse wraps the sorceress’ aura in black and gold chains, strangling her at least metaphorically. The black is thread woven through the gold chains that loops between her chakras, tying her own magic up in knots to power the curse. Each of the black threads hums with a wordless dirge, the enmity and unnatural chill they put off stark against the overwhelming energy of the golden chains. The chains tinkle like a wind chime caught in a hurricane, a projection of the energy tied up within them.

That's an entire encounter. String a few of these together and you've got a quest.

Don't get yourself down! The players could be perfectly happy with this, but if you want to step up your game here's a handy classic "The Big List of RPG Plots".

You can use them straight, you can mix and match, or use a bait and switch from 1 plot to another. Hope it helps!

The quests don't need to be inherently interesting as an objective. You see, if you're hiring someone to act on your behalf, you want to give them clear and coherent instructions for a simple result.

The interesting part is getting there. Like, let's say the quest is "Help me get a certain herb." The herb only grows at the very heart of the jungle, and it's guarded by fanatical druids.

The first page even has this in the sidebar to the bottom left:

>>Don't panic. A lot of GM's cme to the Big List only once they've begun to panic. Don't crucify yourself just yet! In particular, don't fuss too much over plot, as many GMs do. All of the pltos here can provide a tried-and-true simple structure, and structure is all you need a plot for in a roleplaying game. Remember to pay to the strengths of the medium - most all of which are aout character, not plot. Only in an RPG can you experience a fictional character on a personal, first-hand level. OUtlines your adventures to make the most of that. Any plot that contains more than a basic structure is more likely to pull attention away from the character, and tha'ts burning the bright for firewood. All you need to do is by ready to roll with the curves and have fun hamming it up. Relax. Game.

>> Fetch this
>> Fight that
>That's all my quests are.
That's all anyone's quests are. You flesh things out with history and interesting characters and moral complications as you go.

try giving cleaning duty with obscure rewards or bodyguard duties with a spoiled noble brat

Use your favorite movies for inspiration. Ran a Taken ripoff quest in my last game, it was one of the best missions in the game.

Just get weird with it man it can be a simple fetch quest but add a nice twist to it.
For example next week I'm starting a campaign around the new d&d book tales from the yawning portal. There will be illithids and aboleths "working together" to summon an elder evil.
The party will choose a gith faction and travel through time to the dungeons to gather artifacts to defeat the elder evil.
In the sunless citadel they have a retrieve nobleman adventurer hook. Which is pretty bread and butter but there's going to be some tough choices weather or not he should reach the surface when they find him.

Good lord I would fail my wizardly studies if I had her as my teacher.
Probably get expelled for my mags hand "accidentally" removing that aeriola strap.

Write down each piece of the quest. Add one more line to each piece. Do that again. And again. And again. And again. Now you have something.

A good quest isn't good because its end goal is unique. It's good because of how it integrates into the setting, how it evolves as the quest goes on, and how it challenges expectations. Some of the best epics of mankind are just fetch or fight quests.

Journey to the West is about a monk who goes to India to fetch some sutras.
The Illiad is about a lot of fights. The Odyssey isn't even a fetch quest.

Good GMing is never about the initial idea, it's about execution. Hell, any good media does not depend on its initial concept; novelty is overrated. Get better at embellishing fetch and fight quests. The other ideas will come naturally to you.

If you need to be a unique snowflake right this very moment:
>Creation quests
>Reunify the land
>Make target forget something
>Pathing quests - make a safer route or make a route safer
>Convincing others of a truth/a lie

Don't feel bad, the quest is not always a masterpiece from the start, you escalate things as the story goes.
If you make a complicated questline with complex plot from the start the PCs will fuck it up.

So it is best just go with your simple "The Duke has put a bounty on the head of a bandit that has been terrorising the trade routes" and build the adventure from there.

Maybe the bandit was actually a local freedom fighter that is attacking only the corrupt Duke's trading wagons and they actually have the support of the poor inhabitants of the city, in secret as to not become themselves targets.

Depending how the PCs deal with it you can simply change things, you are the GM, just make sure to make it a fun story and have their actions have meaning and impact in the world.

If they help the freedom fighter they become enemies of the Duke and become freedom fighter too, if they kill the freedom fighter as the Duke hired them to they become enemies of the plebe and corrupt law enforcers themselves. Who knows, maybe they turn everything upside down and pull the story in directions you did not expect.

Just make it look as if you had the whole thing planned and that everything went according to keikaku, when in reality you are all creating the story together.