Can anyone share with me how they design and plan quests for their campaigns?

honestly never figured out how to do quests, players will always go at things from an angle you didn't plan for, and long term planning is usually just a waste of effort. so i stopped doing that and just build a setting, and plan 1 or 2 sessions ahead. that setting might include details like "there is a group of thieves stealing seemingly useless magical items from assorted nobility and collectors, which are artifacts of the god Ormet, whom they intend to bring into the physical world. If they are successful, games of chance will never be the same again." and drop hints and general info into the flow of the game. but you cant really shove players into a PLOT like that without having them come into possession of one of the artifacts that the thieves are searching for, and even then they might just sell it. TTRPGs dont have an Essential Object/NPC system to keep you from selling quest essential objects.

>For who? The PCs or the villains (or both)?

For the villains. When you understand what the antagonists want, what they prioritize, what their flaws are, etc, then it's easier to control how they would react to the largely unknowable and unforseen actions of the players.

>>Past history or future events?

All. Again, when you have a rough idea of how it all fits together, deciding what events happen a few hours/days/weeks from which is easier to pull off.

Basically, you need to be able to visualize and understand the world the players are going to be exploring. I use notes to help me remember specific place names, really important people, etc, but most of my stuff comes off the cuff and is based on my knowledge of the world to the point where I can usually take ideas whole cloth from somewhere else and just transplant them in with a little fluffy window dressing.

>I'm currently feeling pretty uninspired right now. I can visualize the beginning and the end perdectly, I've played them over in my head a dozen times, but I have no compelling ideas for how to bridge those two points.

Well if the events are things that must exist because they're what the antagonist requires for their plan to work, then just have the antagonist try to get back to their plans by whatever means necessary.

If you instead have a very specific series of unrelated set pieces to go through, then be open to re-contextualizing them. If the party is supposed to encounter the Owlbears at the beginning of the forest, be prepared to have them instead meet in the middle, or end. If the Villain is supposed to attack a town the party has never heard of in this place, and they decide to go somewhere else, just move the town, or have him attack a town they do know of.

I break it down by location. Under each one I note down a key event which will kick-start whatever happens there, then list off the key NPCs who will be in that place along with a few notes on their character/personality.
Don't overscript it. You're better off having (SIMPLE) fleshed-out characters that you know well and can react organically to whatever the players do

I think this really boils down to what you constitute as a quest OP.

Here, for example: Group A hires PCs to get Material. Thats a quest right there. Well Group A now needs to transport said Material. Theres another quest. Group A hires PC's to transport Material safely. However Group B wants Material. Group B hires OTHER PC's to raid Group A's cart that has material. Boom quest. Group B raids and kills Group A PC's, stealing Material. Group A wants revenge, but can't act out because of LAW. Group A hires MORE PC's (secretly) to locate Material. Group A PC's infiltrate Group B compound. Q-Q-Quest with stealth? Group B PC's are being paid to protect Material cause they know group A is coming for revenge. (Quest) PC's A and PC's B have a re-match. (Storyline potential?)
But all this time Group C has been waiting for the right moment, interrupts the fight of A and B, steals Material, and leaves all for dead.

Does group A team up with group B? Where did group C come from? Did group B have a problem with group A and plan to betray this new partnership? Fuck if i know. Shit like this can write itself if you understand why someone would give a quest. Think less about the quest itself, but more of WHY anyone would give this quest. Group A could be a trading company and Group B could be the thieves guild or something, and group C could be the evil necromancer who heard about Material and decided he needed it for his "super evil plan"

I dunno thats what i do. Leaves things ope for the players, allows consequences, and when you boil it down it gets pretty easy to write. Hope this helps

design by encounter or gaming session, say to yourself, 'these x things will happen tonight', that way you won't feel like you didn't do a good job
make the quests things you would want to do or find interesting or based around monsters or NPCs that YOU find inspiring, this will energize you to create memorable encounters
have an idea of possible outcomes but don't be completely married to them, this will allow you to read the table and shift the focus to great effect

>make world/use default for system in use
>plop them into the first area to get a feel of how they are planning to play their characters, their moral compass, and what their long-term goals may be
>next sessions introduce a few NPCs belonging to some major/minor players (or none as well) for longterm back-to-back/friendly/rivalry/adversarial/stab-in-the-back relationship that will introduce the actual problems of the realm/country/world/galaxy and how the players can help them
>after this point they've likely made their character's personality in their heads and will not diverge too far from it making it safe to plan ahead

I try to avoid doing quests in the traditional sense. Sort of like that flowchart user I give the players a set of options and draw branching paths in my head, then when they choose one or make up their own decision I do it again wherever they land. Instead of discrete questing this tends to create a bunch of overlapping mini-adventures and has allowed us to do some pretty interesting things with the narratives.

Of course this leads to the problem of quest rewards. I've found it's a lot more interesting to replace quest rewards with achievement awards. If a duke hires the party to guard him while he travels to the capital, there will of course be a monetary payment at the end, but the majority of the experience and loot will be awarded as they overcome challenges during the journey. So instead of getting a thousand xp at the end, they get four hundred xp for beating the goblins blocking the road (on top of what they get for combat) and six hundred for fighting off the bandits hired by the duke's enemies to kill him. Likewise, I'll take into account their traveling situation and integrate monetary rewards into the gameplay, so that instead of being paid a large sum by the duke they'll get a more reasonable payment at the end, but have a larger total value in loot available to pick up from their battles, in a form that they can take with them, but still has to be consciously planned for and collected. I feel the lump sum at the end is an obsolete abstraction.

This makes character progression smoother while also keeping the players engaged in what they're doing. Previously to keep them engaged I'd sometimes skip more mundane quests and just give them exorbitant rewards to make up for it, but in this way they feel as if they're significantly advancing both their characters and the narrative every session, and is also a lot easier on me since I can give them more freedom to tell their stories without having to give up on the story I want to tell.

I start off with a general idea, and build on it as we carry on. It's the way dune mangaka who publish to magazines do their work. If a story seems to be doing well, they continue to ramp up to a climax, if it doesn't then the storyline resolves early and they move on.

For example, party visits the "Forest of Beasts" thats contained within a large circular enclosure manned by the Monster Hunting Guild, primarily because they heard the best leatherworker does work there. General idea of the area is the party works for the guild while they wait for the commission to finish and if they're interested they can go ahead an go into the forest to see why a disproportionate number of Beasts flow out of this small area. After the first session (one night in gsme) I ask the party how they like it here. They give me pretty good marks, so I expand.

There is a structure in the forest that ties this plane with a demi-plane representing Primeval, the structure acts add both a gate and also draws nearby beasts, whipping them into a frenzy as they charge through.

The Ranger is actually familiar with this structure as there is one in the desert, and he actually comes from this demiplane (being catfolk.)

This ramping up continues to where I draw the most logical climax, a black dragon who fled here after this universe's Tiamat got rekt, and is sending larger and larger beasts to try and clear the area before slipping back through and enact a plot to bring Tiamat back, to tie the story into the Tyranny of Dragons plotline.

That's some solid advice, thank you user.

I'm not really talking about giant overarching quests, but more side quests or segmented quests of the main quests, the sort the players will be able to complete in one session.

I'm also interested in ideas for not quests but just general obstacles.

Sort of like "You encounter a gorge, the rope bridge is old and collapsed, you need to pass this way" and then let the players figure out how to pass it.

Can't think of others though.