How do you make your quests? - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

How do you make your quests?

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
matthias_kelvine
Jan 11, 2009 18:03:18 I have just recently moved from DMing D&D 3.5 to becoming a D20 Modern GM and I find myself at a loss for quest ideas and how exactly to implement them. It is different, creating a quest for D20 Modern, I cannot simply say "The town you are in is attacked by Orcs" then have the PCs help repel them and offer them a job to track down the Orcs to their lair, thus giving them a small dungeon crawl. The Modern world simply isn't structured like that.
So to you all I ask, how do you make your quests? How do you get your ideas and how do you implement them in a way that gives your PCs a good time?
#2
layla_minogue
Jan 11, 2009 19:08:33 The modern world still has locations that can be used for a good crawl. Abandoned buildings, forests, caves, war-torn locales, and other such places can be used to pepper with bad guys and loot. I try to use organizations or specific enemies to center the campaign around. Anybody who does espionage, organized crime, or needs some rare thing is a perfect candidate.
#3
korik1
Jan 11, 2009 19:33:30 A disclaimer first: I have not ever run a modern campaign, I just use d20 Modern for my Steampunk game.

However, some thing still apply.

It largely depends on the type of game you want to run. If the party are professionals than they can work for an agency, either being hired or drafted. Drafted also works if the party are amateurs who happen to be in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time.

If there are status quo breaking secrets (think MIB) then the party learning these secrets thrusts them into the secret world, and the weirdness finds them.

So, in short tell us what kind of game you want to run, and we can better help you with how to make quests.
#4
nclanceman
Jan 11, 2009 21:11:25 The all purpose short answer would be action movies and newspapers.

The long answer is basically take inspiration from almost any modern setting story or movie. Sure, there aren't any orcs to chase from village to village, but surely the big city has a gang problem, right? Or if you're running an Urban Arcana game, it could actually be a gang of orcs in the big city.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Make sure you're aware of the stock modern bad guys. You know how D&D has bandits, evil wizards, and so on (I'm guessing, I didn't stay with D&D too long before converting to Modern)? Well here we have corrupt politicians, drug lords, gangs, terrorists, foreign spies and so forth.

Usually, if the characters become involved, they're there from the first, rather than second unless they're government agents or police. No one hires the group to play vigilante and hunt down the gang, they were there when a gas station or bank got robbed. Maybe if the big bad is a serial killer, then someone they knew got murdered, and maybe they were even the first to discover the body.

I mentioned action movies and newspapers a while back, so allow me to elaborate. Newspapers (especially for games set locally) help tremendously to come up with a plot. For example, let's take a trip to ABCNews.com, shall we?

Once you're there, pick an interesting sounding headline. For the purposes of this post (which is already longer than I thought it'd be), I'll pick three.

-"Somali Pirate's Body Washes Ashore With $153,000"
Hell, this one almost writes itself, and I've barely read the first paragraph. For your campaign, it doesn't even have to be pirates, the basic story can work for just about anything: a group of criminals or terrorists hold something fantastically valuable for ransom. With the setup they have, this can last for months, and due to an unfortunate mishap, the negotiations could be setback for a while. What happens next is a rather good question. Maybe the terrorists don't see it as a mishap and things get more tense. The hostages lives could get worse and the deadline could be drastically shortened. Perhaps the heroes have to act immediately, kicking down the door and saving everyone. Or maybe that's not the problem at all. Where are the terrorists getting all their supplies? If they were cut off from them, could we end this peacefully? Is the cargo really what the news says it is, or is it much more important?

-"Israeli Forces Advance Deep Into Gaza Urban Areas"
Not much to say here, except that military campaigns are pretty popular around here.

-"Storm Blankets Snow Across Midwest, New England"
Weather is a wonderful tool to use. The Exit 23 adventure in the Dark*Matter sourcebook wouldn't work without that snowstorm, for instance. Aside from being a hindrance to movement and Spot and Listen checks, it also grants a reprieve from the Emergency Services system, which can lead to all sorts of mayhem the heroes can get involved in. Sometimes it pays for the heroes to have a showdown with the big bad when the police response time gets over thirty minutes. Of course, the ambulance and fire truck response time also suffers... but hey, that's what I call drama!

And since that Gaza Strip one didn't have much advice...

-"Sleepwalking Domestic Violence?"
Adventure gold, right here. Why did this man choke his wife in his sleep? Ignoring for the moment that that question is a bit up in the air, why? Any number of answers could work for this. Maybe he's unknowingly part of an experimental treatment by a major drug company, and that flu shot he got at his last physical wasn't really a flu shot at all. Or maybe he's under the effect of an actual spell by a voodoo witch or something. Maybe there really are government mind control rays and he just wasn't wearing his tin foil hat. And aside from that, why would someone else want her dead? Is it just an accident, just to see what this new drug or spell does, or is she carrying a secret that someone would kill for?

And that about does it. Hope you find this helpful.
#5
matthias_kelvine
Jan 11, 2009 21:16:48 Yes, of course. Well, it's a mutant campaign, largely based on Heroes and X-Men. I have two slight problems though, in addition to my initial, large one of being unable to competently make a quest: I only have 2 PCs, and as of this moment neither have made their characters or given me the vaguest idea (Beyond which ability each has) of what they will be.
In any case, you see, both my PCs wanted more of D&D feel, but decided that this campaigned worked better in modern times nonetheless. So the campaign I plan on running is a modern fantasy romp, as much, if not more inclined to classic D&D fantasy (With modern technologies) as to a modern plot, intertwined with a plot related to Evolved Humans. Not exactly traditional D20 Modern.
Does that help?
#6
trappedslider
Jan 11, 2009 21:24:40
The all purpose short answer would be action movies and newspapers.

-"Israeli Forces Advance Deep Into Gaza Urban Areas"
Not much to say here, except that military campaigns are pretty popular around here.

Real reason the Ark or any other Religious artifact has been located by mossad agents....
#7
korik1
Jan 11, 2009 21:50:17 So your players are metahumans. I can help you, my previous campaign was a metahuman campaign (http://metahumanity.wikispaces.com/ feel free to use the wiki for inspiration) though not d20.

Are their powers natural? Government/Corporate experiment (BBEG source)? Magical?
Do they develop during the campaign (could be a great starter) or beforehand?

If your players don't watch/read Heroes, Xmen, or any number of similar fictions then you can pull stuff from the fictions almost directly. Or better yet, take what you like about each, and change them to a degree so that they aren't entirely recognizable. If the players say "This reminds me of the sentinels from Xmen," that's fine, so long as they don't get that they ARE the sentinels.

An example of this from my own 4th City campaign. I had my players face off against Francis Keep, an ex-military badass with a penchant for traps, and a hate on for the party's profession. None of them figured out that they were fighting Frank Castle, the Punisher.
#8
layla_minogue
Jan 11, 2009 21:55:08
Yes, of course. Well, it's a mutant campaign, largely based on Heroes and X-Men. I have two slight problems though, in addition to my initial, large one of being unable to competently make a quest: I only have 2 PCs, and as of this moment neither have made their characters or given me the vaguest idea (Beyond which ability each has) of what they will be.
In any case, you see, both my PCs wanted more of D&D feel, but decided that this campaigned worked better in modern times nonetheless. So the campaign I plan on running is a modern fantasy romp, as much, if not more inclined to classic D&D fantasy (With modern technologies) as to a modern plot, intertwined with a plot related to Evolved Humans. Not exactly traditional D20 Modern.
Does that help?

Well, I think it's imperative that you know what sort of characters they're going to play. When I make adventures, I always have the PCs' abilities and motives in the back of my mind, to make sure that they're truly central to the action. A brainstorming session with your players should help.
And since you're working with only two other players, you might try playing a character yourself. I call this a GMPC (Game Master Player Character.) It's tricky to balance roles as a PC and as the GM at the same time, especially to avoid metagaming yourself, but it can be done and it can help flesh out a small party. Figure out what role is missing in the party, and fill it yourself. When I use a GMPC, they get an average of the other two character's XP, and an equal share of loot. The GMPC levels up as a regular PC. If for any reason the GMPC attains a level higher than the highest PC, the GMPC stops earning experience until a regular PC surpasses them again; this ensures that the PCs remain in the focus of the game.
#9
schizoveen
Jan 12, 2009 9:44:05 before i type just wanted to say i love NCLanceman's post. I think it's a great idea to get inspiration from the newspapers.

i'm just starting DM'ing an apocalypse game with mutant and modern setting so i could share my way.

i do some brainstorming by writing terms down that jump out in this campaign. things like, mutants, robots, radiation, desert, scarcity of food and water, scarcity of bullets, raids, abandoned cities, futuristic technologies...

after that i pick an item and come up with a small paragraph or even a one-line story.
robots: a robot has gone rogue.... or is it programmed?
mutants: mutants start demonstration against mutant rights
scarcity of food: a village hasn't got any trucks comming in anymore...

the point is after that to look for the consequences of the happenings. it's the same as DnD, except things have more political or economical impact. so the rogue robot might be kept a secret by the goverment or maybe the media is hyping it out of proportion, scaring the public.
Mutants in demonstration could have an impact on the whole democratie, maybe there are no mutant politics and the mutants feel dicriminated.
food scarcity is always a problem.

i would always start out with smaller villages as the consequences are easier to think of. If you don't know any good consequences, look something up on the internet... wikipedia can sometimes tell you information that can really help the creativity going.

anyway, i also like working in layers.. maybe the players don't know anything about the rogue robot but do notice some consequences and start working on that before they find the true reason for things. this gives a longer story and also a feeling of a living world.
#10
senko
Jan 16, 2009 7:31:15 Also remember the real world isn't as settled/populated on a local scale as you might think from looking at the overall picture. Take Japan not that long ago a villiage sold its land to a local waste disposal company (there were only 8 people still living there the youngest of which was in their 70's I think), it was part of a larger piece on the decline of rural population in Japan.

But there's a hook right there the small villiage of X has just stopped talking people so the groups been sent in to find out what's happened was it just population decline? Did the company who purchased it do so oppenly as stated or are they planning to use the land for some other purpose (hidden experimentation)? or even just the standard small villiage was wiped out find out what did it and eliminate it.

Similiarly in a major city there's a score of things out there, forgotten tunnels collapsing and destroying buildings (why?), disused levels of a railway station (a local here has around a dozen levels just closed off and disused) what could be lurking down there in the dark?

More specifically for your campaign think about the role of the PC's are they accepted, tolerated, being hunted down by fanatics and government? How do they keep their existence/actions hidden (need to break into a reporters house to steal incriminating photo's he took of them using their powers), are they heroes fighting for mutant rights (rescue a vemenant anti-mutant from a cabal of criminal mutants before they kill/experiment on him), villains using their powers to take what they want (break out of jail, rob a bank, take a prominant government figure captive) or just poor souls trying to make a living (track down rogue mutants hiding in the slums which leads to the revoluation [from said mutant] that the whole recent upsurge in mutations is due to secret government experiments. Do they turn the rogue in or try to break into a "secret facility" to try and aquire some evidence that this is really going on).

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 matthias_kelvine Jan 11, 2009 18:03:18	I have just recently moved from DMing D&D 3.5 to becoming a D20 Modern GM and I find myself at a loss for quest ideas and how exactly to implement them. It is different, creating a quest for D20 Modern, I cannot simply say "The town you are in is attacked by Orcs" then have the PCs help repel them and offer them a job to track down the Orcs to their lair, thus giving them a small dungeon crawl. The Modern world simply isn't structured like that. So to you all I ask, how do you make your quests? How do you get your ideas and how do you implement them in a way that gives your PCs a good time?
#2 layla_minogue Jan 11, 2009 19:08:33	The modern world still has locations that can be used for a good crawl. Abandoned buildings, forests, caves, war-torn locales, and other such places can be used to pepper with bad guys and loot. I try to use organizations or specific enemies to center the campaign around. Anybody who does espionage, organized crime, or needs some rare thing is a perfect candidate.
#3 korik1 Jan 11, 2009 19:33:30	A disclaimer first: I have not ever run a modern campaign, I just use d20 Modern for my Steampunk game. However, some thing still apply. It largely depends on the type of game you want to run. If the party are professionals than they can work for an agency, either being hired or drafted. Drafted also works if the party are amateurs who happen to be in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time. If there are status quo breaking secrets (think MIB) then the party learning these secrets thrusts them into the secret world, and the weirdness finds them. So, in short tell us what kind of game you want to run, and we can better help you with how to make quests.
#4 nclanceman Jan 11, 2009 21:11:25	The all purpose short answer would be action movies and newspapers. The long answer is basically take inspiration from almost any modern setting story or movie. Sure, there aren't any orcs to chase from village to village, but surely the big city has a gang problem, right? Or if you're running an Urban Arcana game, it could actually be a gang of orcs in the big city. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Make sure you're aware of the stock modern bad guys. You know how D&D has bandits, evil wizards, and so on (I'm guessing, I didn't stay with D&D too long before converting to Modern)? Well here we have corrupt politicians, drug lords, gangs, terrorists, foreign spies and so forth. Usually, if the characters become involved, they're there from the first, rather than second unless they're government agents or police. No one hires the group to play vigilante and hunt down the gang, they were there when a gas station or bank got robbed. Maybe if the big bad is a serial killer, then someone they knew got murdered, and maybe they were even the first to discover the body. I mentioned action movies and newspapers a while back, so allow me to elaborate. Newspapers (especially for games set locally) help tremendously to come up with a plot. For example, let's take a trip to ABCNews.com, shall we? Once you're there, pick an interesting sounding headline. For the purposes of this post (which is already longer than I thought it'd be), I'll pick three. -"Somali Pirate's Body Washes Ashore With $153,000" Hell, this one almost writes itself, and I've barely read the first paragraph. For your campaign, it doesn't even have to be pirates, the basic story can work for just about anything: a group of criminals or terrorists hold something fantastically valuable for ransom. With the setup they have, this can last for months, and due to an unfortunate mishap, the negotiations could be setback for a while. What happens next is a rather good question. Maybe the terrorists don't see it as a mishap and things get more tense. The hostages lives could get worse and the deadline could be drastically shortened. Perhaps the heroes have to act immediately, kicking down the door and saving everyone. Or maybe that's not the problem at all. Where are the terrorists getting all their supplies? If they were cut off from them, could we end this peacefully? Is the cargo really what the news says it is, or is it much more important? -"Israeli Forces Advance Deep Into Gaza Urban Areas" Not much to say here, except that military campaigns are pretty popular around here. -"Storm Blankets Snow Across Midwest, New England" Weather is a wonderful tool to use. The Exit 23 adventure in the DarkMatter sourcebook wouldn't work without that snowstorm, for instance. Aside from being a hindrance to movement and Spot and Listen checks, it also grants a reprieve from the Emergency Services system, which can lead to all sorts of mayhem the heroes can get involved in. Sometimes it pays for the heroes to have a showdown with the big bad when the police response time gets over thirty minutes. Of course, the ambulance and fire truck response time also suffers... but hey, that's what I call drama! And since that Gaza Strip one didn't have much advice... -"Sleepwalking Domestic Violence?"* Adventure gold, right here. Why did this man choke his wife in his sleep? Ignoring for the moment that that question is a bit up in the air, why? Any number of answers could work for this. Maybe he's unknowingly part of an experimental treatment by a major drug company, and that flu shot he got at his last physical wasn't really a flu shot at all. Or maybe he's under the effect of an actual spell by a voodoo witch or something. Maybe there really are government mind control rays and he just wasn't wearing his tin foil hat. And aside from that, why would someone else want her dead? Is it just an accident, just to see what this new drug or spell does, or is she carrying a secret that someone would kill for? And that about does it. Hope you find this helpful.
#5 matthias_kelvine Jan 11, 2009 21:16:48	Yes, of course. Well, it's a mutant campaign, largely based on Heroes and X-Men. I have two slight problems though, in addition to my initial, large one of being unable to competently make a quest: I only have 2 PCs, and as of this moment neither have made their characters or given me the vaguest idea (Beyond which ability each has) of what they will be. In any case, you see, both my PCs wanted more of D&D feel, but decided that this campaigned worked better in modern times nonetheless. So the campaign I plan on running is a modern fantasy romp, as much, if not more inclined to classic D&D fantasy (With modern technologies) as to a modern plot, intertwined with a plot related to Evolved Humans. Not exactly traditional D20 Modern. Does that help?
#6 trappedslider Jan 11, 2009 21:24:40	The all purpose short answer would be action movies and newspapers. -"Israeli Forces Advance Deep Into Gaza Urban Areas" Not much to say here, except that military campaigns are pretty popular around here. Real reason the Ark or any other Religious artifact has been located by mossad agents....
#7 korik1 Jan 11, 2009 21:50:17	So your players are metahumans. I can help you, my previous campaign was a metahuman campaign (http://metahumanity.wikispaces.com/ feel free to use the wiki for inspiration) though not d20. Are their powers natural? Government/Corporate experiment (BBEG source)? Magical? Do they develop during the campaign (could be a great starter) or beforehand? If your players don't watch/read Heroes, Xmen, or any number of similar fictions then you can pull stuff from the fictions almost directly. Or better yet, take what you like about each, and change them to a degree so that they aren't entirely recognizable. If the players say "This reminds me of the sentinels from Xmen," that's fine, so long as they don't get that they ARE the sentinels. An example of this from my own 4th City campaign. I had my players face off against Francis Keep, an ex-military badass with a penchant for traps, and a hate on for the party's profession. None of them figured out that they were fighting Frank Castle, the Punisher.
#8 layla_minogue Jan 11, 2009 21:55:08	Yes, of course. Well, it's a mutant campaign, largely based on Heroes and X-Men. I have two slight problems though, in addition to my initial, large one of being unable to competently make a quest: I only have 2 PCs, and as of this moment neither have made their characters or given me the vaguest idea (Beyond which ability each has) of what they will be. In any case, you see, both my PCs wanted more of D&D feel, but decided that this campaigned worked better in modern times nonetheless. So the campaign I plan on running is a modern fantasy romp, as much, if not more inclined to classic D&D fantasy (With modern technologies) as to a modern plot, intertwined with a plot related to Evolved Humans. Not exactly traditional D20 Modern. Does that help? Well, I think it's imperative that you know what sort of characters they're going to play. When I make adventures, I always have the PCs' abilities and motives in the back of my mind, to make sure that they're truly central to the action. A brainstorming session with your players should help. And since you're working with only two other players, you might try playing a character yourself. I call this a GMPC (Game Master Player Character.) It's tricky to balance roles as a PC and as the GM at the same time, especially to avoid metagaming yourself, but it can be done and it can help flesh out a small party. Figure out what role is missing in the party, and fill it yourself. When I use a GMPC, they get an average of the other two character's XP, and an equal share of loot. The GMPC levels up as a regular PC. If for any reason the GMPC attains a level higher than the highest PC, the GMPC stops earning experience until a regular PC surpasses them again; this ensures that the PCs remain in the focus of the game.
#9 schizoveen Jan 12, 2009 9:44:05	before i type just wanted to say i love NCLanceman's post. I think it's a great idea to get inspiration from the newspapers. i'm just starting DM'ing an apocalypse game with mutant and modern setting so i could share my way. i do some brainstorming by writing terms down that jump out in this campaign. things like, mutants, robots, radiation, desert, scarcity of food and water, scarcity of bullets, raids, abandoned cities, futuristic technologies... after that i pick an item and come up with a small paragraph or even a one-line story. robots: a robot has gone rogue.... or is it programmed? mutants: mutants start demonstration against mutant rights scarcity of food: a village hasn't got any trucks comming in anymore... the point is after that to look for the consequences of the happenings. it's the same as DnD, except things have more political or economical impact. so the rogue robot might be kept a secret by the goverment or maybe the media is hyping it out of proportion, scaring the public. Mutants in demonstration could have an impact on the whole democratie, maybe there are no mutant politics and the mutants feel dicriminated. food scarcity is always a problem. i would always start out with smaller villages as the consequences are easier to think of. If you don't know any good consequences, look something up on the internet... wikipedia can sometimes tell you information that can really help the creativity going. anyway, i also like working in layers.. maybe the players don't know anything about the rogue robot but do notice some consequences and start working on that before they find the true reason for things. this gives a longer story and also a feeling of a living world.
#10 senko Jan 16, 2009 7:31:15	Also remember the real world isn't as settled/populated on a local scale as you might think from looking at the overall picture. Take Japan not that long ago a villiage sold its land to a local waste disposal company (there were only 8 people still living there the youngest of which was in their 70's I think), it was part of a larger piece on the decline of rural population in Japan. But there's a hook right there the small villiage of X has just stopped talking people so the groups been sent in to find out what's happened was it just population decline? Did the company who purchased it do so oppenly as stated or are they planning to use the land for some other purpose (hidden experimentation)? or even just the standard small villiage was wiped out find out what did it and eliminate it. Similiarly in a major city there's a score of things out there, forgotten tunnels collapsing and destroying buildings (why?), disused levels of a railway station (a local here has around a dozen levels just closed off and disused) what could be lurking down there in the dark? More specifically for your campaign think about the role of the PC's are they accepted, tolerated, being hunted down by fanatics and government? How do they keep their existence/actions hidden (need to break into a reporters house to steal incriminating photo's he took of them using their powers), are they heroes fighting for mutant rights (rescue a vemenant anti-mutant from a cabal of criminal mutants before they kill/experiment on him), villains using their powers to take what they want (break out of jail, rob a bank, take a prominant government figure captive) or just poor souls trying to make a living (track down rogue mutants hiding in the slums which leads to the revoluation [from said mutant] that the whole recent upsurge in mutations is due to secret government experiments. Do they turn the rogue in or try to break into a "secret facility" to try and aquire some evidence that this is really going on).