I'm doing quest design this week, and I'll get into the specific theme I'm working with below. But I thought I'd give this thread a more general focus and invite you all to share any tips or theories you have about how to design quests that feel meaningful to the player within the context of the game's world or the character's (racial or class) personality. Also feel free to ask any question you have about quests, theme, or anything related.


So the particular theme I am working with is this (you may recognize it from a previous thread about MMO story design): The player character belongs to a race which has a magical affinity for nature/life. The two opposing forces are entropy and chaos. Activities within the game include killing monsters, capturing monsters, breeding monsters, growing plants, repairing and constructing buildings, and helping out NPCs. The first post-tutorial area of the game is an area of the game which has fallen into disrepair. Anyone who has played some Harvest Moon games may recognize the set-up. The player's task is to clean up the messes and restore the area to a fruitful order. So what sort of specific quests would make good steps of this overall task? I'll post what I came up with later.

You all may, if you like, propose quests for this theme, and/or you may describe a theme of your own and discuss how you went about brainstorming quests for that theme, and what sort of help you would like for further quests related to that theme.

Hmm, I would say that you need to consider a lot in order to design the quests. From your example, I'd be curious what the rewards were for completing quests. That would probably have a big effect on it for me. So would the number of quests that you expect the players to complete.

If you're going for a somewhat traditional RPG style, then most quests reward you with one of three things: XP, gear, or unlocking content. I don't see why this wouldn't work for your game, even if it's not really an RPG. Players could complete quests for new equipment or abilities. This might unlock the ability to train / breed monsters after having captured one first, for example. Players might instead be forced to complete all of the quests in an area in order to advance to the next.

This may seem beside the point (you want to know what to make the quests about I presume), but I think it's a necessary part of designing the quests. If you want to force players to explore all of the aspects of the game at least once, then you might make required quests where the player kills a monster, then captures one, then kills a monster with their captured monster, then sets up a population of them for defense. Or something like that.

The Harvest Moon related aspects of the game are probably a little more clear cut. You could make a quest where the player spends X amount of resources (or time) repairing buildings, or maintains a certain value's worth of buildings (by repairing damaged ones and building new ones). What they get from doing this drives the in game explanation of it. If they're following orders, they might lose the game if they fail the quest. If they're doing it to survive, it could just be a means of giving them hints on how to survive in an area. If you get an optional quest to tame 10 pegasi for example, it might be in your best interest to do so...

So far I make sound more like level objectives from a game like Starcraft, but I suppose there's nothing wrong with rewarding the player with exp, money, new abilities, extra time, or just achievements for completing them.

(Oh, and what do you use to distinguish Chaos and Entropy?)

Hmm, I would say that you need to consider a lot in order to design the quests. From your example, I'd be curious what the rewards were for completing quests. That would probably have a big effect on it for me. So would the number of quests that you expect the players to complete.

\If you're going for a somewhat traditional RPG style, then most quests reward you with one of three things: XP, gear, or unlocking content. I don't see why this wouldn't work for your game, even if it's not really an RPG. Players could complete quests for new equipment or abilities. This might unlock the ability to train / breed monsters after having captured one first, for example. Players might instead be forced to complete all of the quests in an area in order to advance to the next.

I'm not sure whether this game is going to have player XP and levels, but it will certainly reward gear (probably gear recipes to feed into the crafting side of the game rather than premade gear), crafting materials, new abilities (combat skills as well as crafting/monster breeding/farming skills), and access to new areas. How many quests? Well, I want to make some whole types of gameplay optional, including any quests related to that gameplay. And the game progression is based around tech trees with a quest for each advancement up the tree, so many quests would be mandatory prerequisites to others The result of that combination would be something like, if the player doesn't take the first farming-related quest they aren't offered any more farming-related quests. And if they don't complete the quest to craft a dyeing cauldron, they can't dye clothes. But, they should be able to unlock access to the next area by completing a central quest chain which probably does not involve farming or dyeing clothes or expanding their initially limited backpack space or upgrading their initially limited ability to gather resources... all those typical things players do as part of an MMO teaching the player about it's functionality one area at a time.

This may seem beside the point (you want to know what to make the quests about I presume), but I think it's a necessary part of designing the quests. If you want to force players to explore all of the aspects of the game at least once, then you might make required quests where the player kills a monster, then captures one, then kills a monster with their captured monster, then sets up a population of them for defense. Or something like that.[/quote]
I don't think that's irrelevant at all, it's a great point that if you know what rewards you want to give the player then you can use that starting point to brainstorm quests for which such rewards seem like a natural and logical outcome. This is particularly relevant to early areas of the game. For example I would tentatively like the player to gain their first "house" (more like an empty piece of land at the start) somewhere around this point in the game. The house would be where they would be able to store captured and bred pets, as well as plants they were in the process of growing. I'd also like the player to gain some very limited ability to dye clothes different colors at this point, because that's the most basic part of in-game character customization which is going to be a big chunk of the player rewards throughout the game. On the other hand I want to save things like the player's first mount for a later area.

The Harvest Moon related aspects of the game are probably a little more clear cut. You could make a quest where the player spends X amount of resources (or time) repairing buildings, or maintains a certain value's worth of buildings (by repairing damaged ones and building new ones). What they get from doing this drives the in game explanation of it. If they're following orders, they might lose the game if they fail the quest. If they're doing it to survive, it could just be a means of giving them hints on how to survive in an area. If you get an optional quest to tame 10 pegasi for example, it might be in your best interest to do so...

So far I make sound more like level objectives from a game like Starcraft, but I suppose there's nothing wrong with rewarding the player with exp, money, new abilities, extra time, or just achievements for completing them.[/quote]
This game can't be lost, but I think it's very relevant to draw inspiration from a game like Starcraft because of the similar aspect where the game is teaching the player to climb the tech tree and what are the benefits of each new advancement. It's particularly necessary to point out not-so-obvious cross-benefits, such as the fact that once you can make clothing dye you may be able to use it to paint your house, dye your hair, or trade it to an NPC tattoo artist as part of the price of a tattoo.

(Oh, and what do you use to distinguish Chaos and Entropy?)
[/quote]
Entropy is basically decay, the natural tendency of everything to fall to a less complex, lower-energy state. Chaos is somewhat the opposite in that it can disrupt the complex order life builds up by introducing extra energy which pushes things in random directions. The clearest example of a chaos-related problem would be a plague of mutations which could totally disrupt an orderly and normally bountiful ecosystem. Another example might be a flood or hurricane which deposits random crap all over the ground - potentially useful but a disruptive mess. Chaos is allied with entropy because the disruptive boom of energy and complexity is typically followed by a crash to a lower level of energy and complexity.

Floods, hurricanes and plagues are all parts of nature. So are forest fires. A lot of forests have developed to assume the occurrence of fires and depend on them in their life cycles.

One with an affinity for nature should embrace and appreciate these things and see them as in The Oxbow, rich and green under the storm, rather than like in American Progress, smokey and black and running from a fugly giant brandishing telephone poles.

Following in that thought...

"[color="#1C2837"]killing monsters, capturing monsters, breeding monsters, growing plants, repairing and constructing buildings"

[color="#1C2837"]These are very on-point and on-theme, except that their theme is that of American Progress; your character's activities are about bending nature to her will. Especially breeding.

[color="#1c2837"]To what extent do you control the gameplay in this project?

Well, in this game the playable race's philosophy is not about embracing chaotic nature, it's about micromanaging nature better than the world does when left on its own. Like the antique idea of faeries who go around every day making each little flower bloom, but on a larger scale and with a more strategic/competitive attitude. Extreme members of this race are like a bio-magic version of mad scientists, creating armies or mutant monsters and viral plagues. Less extreme members of this race are doing things like reviving extinct species to give them a second chance and terraforming areas which have little or no life to turn them into anything from a lush jungle to a formal garden.

The game is basically an RPG so the player directly controls gameplay via an avatar. Or did you mean me within a game development project? There isn't a team, it's just me, so I have 100% say over everything at this point.

Yes, even though entropy and chaos are different things, they are somewhat difficult to separate for a layman. Also I agree with JoeCooper that a proponent of nature could possibly embrace chaos.

Another idea for an antagonistic force in addition to entropy and chaos could be order, in a totalitarian sense. Like there could be an enemy faction that likes planting flowers in straight rows. (Which would also increase the total entropy.)

See, my take on this is that 1. Humans enjoy planting flowers in straight rows, at least some of the time, 2. Players are humans, 3. A game is fun when it encourages and rewards players for doing what they like to do. So I don't want to make it 'bad' within the context of the game to plant flowers in straight rows, or other more formal kinds of arrangements. In this game players and the evolving culture/technology of the playable race are pretty much replacing biological evolution, so the goal for a player's ecological creations isn't for them to develop on their own, it's for them to stably self-perpetuate until the player, or some other player, feels like changing them.

Thanks, I'm glad it sounds interesting. What I want to do with the factions is have multiple NPC factions which the player can choose whether to align themselves with as interactive story gameplay. Earning reputation with a faction would make available to the player the uniform(s) the faction wears, higher level quests exploring that faction's philosophy, etc. There would probably be 6 or so of these factions, and at least one pair would hate each other and send the player to attack the other.