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Quest Idea Thread

Lapin Lune said:
Pokémon Dreams & Nightmares: Sinnoh Beginnings​

You awoke on a mildly chilly morning ('mild' for Sinnoh anyway) on a mid-90s day, knowing today would be the day you would get your first Pokémon! You were-

[ ] Evelyn (F)
[ ] Evelyn (M)
[ ] Evelyn (NB)
[ ] Write-in

-and on an occasion such as this, you couldn't help but feel a flurry of emotions, shifting from bursting with excitement, to admittedly nervous, to reasonable cautious optimism. Professor Edgar(?) Rowan you'd heard was kinda strict and not the most social, meaning he didn't give out Starters to just anyone.

For example, out of the two other Trainers he'd be meeting with today, one was Celestic's young yet promising folklorist Cynthia, who already had a Pokémon of her own. Then there was someone called Cyrus, who you knew much less about, save that he was some academic whiz from Sunyshore.
Your own accomplishments so far, the whole reason Rowan had picked you out, were-

[ ] An ace Trainer's School student.
[ ] Myths and legends, just like your peer Cynthia.
[ ] The science behind Pokémon, sort of like that Cyrus.
[ ] Spelunking in Sinnoh's Underground and Secret Base decorating.
[ ] Combee-keeping and Honey know-how.
[ ] A fast Internet adapter, in contact with other Pokémon fans in far away regions.
[ ] Clean energy with Pokémon, such as Wind or Solar.
[ ] Pokémon Riding, even if you'd never before had the opportunity to battle with them.
[ ] Write-in.

Hopping out of bed as the powder snow dusted your windows, bag already stuffed the night before, you wiped away the frost to glance out over your small town of-

[ ] Twinleaf.
[ ] Celestic.
[ ] Solaceon.
[ ] Floaroma.
[ ] Galestrom, a town on the very southern end of central Sinnoh, below the Coronet chain, known for its strong winds yet still considered something of a romantic getaway
[ ] Write-in.

-knowing may not be seeing it again for quite some time.



(Was wondering if @Astaroh-M wanted to be co-QM or backup QM, since he encouraged me to write this in the first place.

No idea if Rowan has any canon first name, like I know Oak is Samuel and Sycamore is Augustine, and I think Elm is Christopher and Birch is Timothy. Might've heard 'Edgar' floating around, but it kinda suits him.

Went with Evelyn for your default name as it resembles 'Evening', contrasting with Dawn, and is nicely gender-neutral.)
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This looks very good!

But sadly I don't the time to QM (or Co-QM) a quest at the moment (night shifts suck!), though I can totally help with brainstorming some ideas for worldbuilding and the like!
 
Gladsome said:
I'd love to try my hand at running a quest, but the problem is finding a good way to simulate combat which is going to be important in either of my ideas.

My previous efforts at devising my own system have been... less than successful. Anyone have any good ideas for how to roll for combat, specifically ground battles?
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Mm, this is something I'm working on at the moment, personally I'm leaning towards something quiet basic - I'm assuming you're talking about mass battles since you mentioned ground combat

Roll 1d100 for each area of battle, say you've got regiment storming a trench

Roll 1d100 for them, and add bonuses or subtract complications, e.g. good logistics, valuable intelligence, army specialisation - the closer or higher you get to 100, the better

For the enemy, roll 1d100 and add their bonuses, e.g. good morale, strong defence fortification, entrenched artillery, machine guns - the closer you get to 0 or less, the better for them

Compare the two numbers, lets say the attacking group got an attack of 70, and the enemy got a roll of 50 - overall, both sides did alright, but the attacking force won with an advantage of 20, and so made progress, but not to the extent that they completely threw out the enemy from their fortifications, but enough to have made a beachhead - neither side would have taken excess losses and can likely act again

Does anything else happen afterwards? Are reinforcements being brought in, is the enemy going to attempt a counterattack? Reroll again, and add/remove bonuses as you need - I would keep the system relatively open to interpretation as you need
 
Astaroh-M said:
though I can totally help with brainstorming some ideas for worldbuilding and the like!
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I actually have a thread all about worldbuilding for canon Pokemon reasons, if you'd like to check it out. And hey, not being co-QM means you'll be able to vote in it!

I should say that, due to being set more than a decade previously, Byron, Crasher Wake, and maybe Fantina would be the only returning Gym Leaders, though you might still see Flint or Lucian as up-and-comers. I'm also trying to come up with Sinnoese forms, particularly ones with a Russian or Ainu influence, provided they're not already in the Sinnoh Regional Dex of course.
 
kaeim said:
Mm, this is something I'm working on at the moment, personally I'm leaning towards something quiet basic - I'm assuming you're talking about mass battles since you mentioned ground combat
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This sounds like a good basis - the main issue is calculating how unit size and being outnumbered affects things, and how to figure out the number of losses each unit takes, how to roll for that, how to add vehicles like tanks and aircraft into the mix, etc, etc.
 
Gladsome said:
This sounds like a good basis - the main issue is calculating how unit size and being outnumbered affects things, and how to figure out the number of losses each unit takes, how to roll for that, how to add vehicles like tanks and aircraft into the mix, etc, etc.
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So again, I would add bonuses to the whole thing

Your guys outnumber the enemy two to one? Give them a 20+ bonus.

You have tanks, but your enemy has anti-tank weaponry? That cancels out the tank bonus

You can call air support? That gives you a plus 10 bonus

Like, its a basic system, but its one that does work, even if it is barebones. You can flesh it out over time, for example you could introduce HP into each 'army' that gradually gets used up - it doesn't mean the army is wiped out, but its no longer usable in a combat situation

Lets say for example, you use aircraft in a successful attack - you could detail that that causes 2HP damage to a enemy unit that has a HP of 10

Lets take my earlier example of the regiment attacking a trench system where you rolled a 70 and they rolled a 50 - there's a difference of twenty there, so divide it by 10 and add that damage to the enemy unit - if you're worried about a unit always succeeding and never taking damage because it keeps winning, you could add a hard rule where both sides no matter what always lose at least 1HP each turn to reflect combat losses on both sides
 
Bad idea time:

Does anyone want to take a stab at a TNO-verse quest set in China? The players could control either the PLA remnants under Peng Dehuai or the ROC shortly after Gao backstabs Tokyo.
 
Contenders to become an actual thing, all using similar abbreviated mechanics:

Planetary leadership in Star Wars... Slightly before the Fun starts. Take a somewhat minor world and try to make something of yourself in a rapidly liquefying environment. Old canon will be applied because it is more interesting than what we got.
Something pretty similar, but set in an alternate history of BattleTech. Start with little and work up.
State owned business front moving into a poorly developed region in an original scifi setting early in its history.
 
Fate of the World: A Climate Change Agency Quest​

The river was aflame, red fire licking at what was once called water. Fire roared up like the wrath of a nature left scorned and soiled, the tiniest seed of the great upheaval to come from the toll that humanity has extracted from mother Earth. The city nearby is a place of sirens and uniforms, emergency services pulling up en masse with barely enough gear to keep the dark chemical fires from licking away at the buildings on the shoreline.

From afar it's almost beautiful, the river's course carrying the slowly moving fires atop chemical sludge as the futile efforts of humanity fail to deal with it. There are faint flashes of uniforms, of ladders, the silvery trails of water launched from high pressure hoses – nothing works.

Instead, people watch. Windows are home to eyes and in some cases cameras, artists in the area write songs and stories, the newspapers write of industrial accidents and call for calm. The songs and the stories say one thing, the news another, and the government tacking a course towards calm and the status quo.
For that one incident, it held.

The fragile status quo of industry and the state acting in concert against a growing popular movement was broken when the silence came. The birds failed to sing for more than one summer, the red darting forms of sparrows and the varicolored forms of songbirds absent from the long summers of the decade.

Instead, they found eggshells. In the shells were the crumpled tiny forms dead from exposure and broken shelters, eggshells thinned by a diet of pesticide and insecticide leaving a wealth of stillborn songs.

This time the books and the songs and the scientists scored a bitterly contested victory. The books and the songs and the scientists managed to eke out an environmental agency, although it was a hampered one. Climate change was not on the table, mitigation was. Regulation was not on the table, cleanup was. While the new Environmental Protection Agency was to have an independent governing body and a mandate enshrined in Congressional legislation, the Presidency controlled the cabinet and its oversight authority - and more importantly the EPA's purse strings. Successive directors were appointed with the qualifications required by the foundational acts of the agency and a lack of political tact, desperately attempting to chart a course away from what many in the scientific community viewed as near certain catastrophe.

They were not entirely successful.

When did you fall into the hot seat of the EPA, to manage to secure a degree of control over America's runaway emissions habit?

Pick one:
[] 2000: A new millennium, a new President, a promised economic boom. The United States is a global behemoth, self-confident and cocksure in its status. The U.S. scientific establishment is one of the finest in the world, trusted by many, and both of the incoming Presidents seem to hew to its recommendations – at least on paper. In practice, though, they say different things.

-[] The Gore Presidency: The new Democratic administration of Al Gore will have a hard road to walk, considering the narrow victory that was won purely from a refusal to concede in Florida. While the Presidency will thus have to work with bipartisan legislation, they're more than willing to let the EPA off the leash… This is easy mode. A cooperative initial Presidency, decent initial funding and time to fix the worst of it.

-[] The Bush Presidency: President George W. Bush was elected in 2000, and followed through on his mandate almost immediately. Wider drilling rights, more oil being tapped, more subsidies for the majors, and a Vice President Cheney who had deep links to the oil industry. The EPA? Let them deal with school education and cleaning up the Superfund sites, that'll do for them. This is the hard-ish scenario. An uncooperative Presidency, a myriad of commitments, and inadequate funding.

[]2025: January 2025, after the 2024 election, a time of awareness of what was coming. The world in general was poised for impact after more than two decades of failing to address climate change, although with the United States still home to a substantial chunk of climate deniers things are not as easy as they seem. The beefed-up EPA will have problems in future…Moderate: Very hard climate mitigation and emission control tasks but popular and Presidential support initially.

Pick an origin:
[]The Scientist: With enough expertise, you can call bullshit on some of the pork projects and make sure the others are productive – while also coming in on time and under budget. A pity you have more scruples than to work for LockMart, you'd make more money there. +10 to all technical project dice.

[]The Politician: You came in through local politics, earned the required degree for the EPA through some fly-by-night college, and managed to corral enough grassroots support for climate legislation that you wound up dumped in the EPA. If you had federal connections, you could accomplish more than you can now, but you were pre-empted by the President. +10 to all political actions.

[]The Ex-Senator: A doctorate was a carefully covered up fact in your political career, often not alluded to and quietly ignored. When running the EPA you'd long since forgotten what you learned – but the connections you made in the Senate more than made up for that. After all, with enough federal money and Congressional support you can do damn near anything and buy the expertise you needed. +10 federal influence per turn.

Pick a secondary origin:
[]Scientific Hobby: You read about and learned about the climate after you'd read that book about the sparrows, after that eerie silence outside the house made you wake up trying to listen for what wasn't there anymore. You're not a true 'scientist', but your circle of connections and your knowledge base are in some places comparable. +5 to all technical project dice.

[]Lobbying: You didn't work for LockMart, but you did work for Schlumberger for a while on the Hill. They're more reasonable than Exxon, but not by much – they do, however, make for a useful set of connections. And the other connections you made on the Hill aren't that bad either. +5 to all political dice.

[]Politics: You've been a federal bureaucrat for quite some time now, and that's resulted in a deep well of connections across the civil service and among the staffers on the Hill. You're not someone who can lobby Congress easily, but you are someone who is very hard to fire. +5 federal influence per turn.

AN: Political dice are policy, technical dice are mitigation, adaptation, R&D and so on, federal influence is spent on unpopular policy, spent to exist as a department, spent to not be fired and so on. Similar to Five Year Plan Quest.
This is being written as a relatively optimistic quest after two weeks' depression and whatnot. I can't deal with much and I'm probably not doing much narrative for now, hence the 5YP scheme.
 
Hm.

GURPS is a fun system. I need to practice with it. I might actually do a Quest again for that, but I want something fun for it.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica sounds like a good setting to introduce some pretty solid drama, time pressure, etc. There's enough freedom to allow you to do what you want but there's also a ticking clock in the form of Walpurgisnacht that you'll need to deal with, which means I can actually set you up on a timer and have a defined length for the Quest, so I don't run out of steam because there's no end in sight and I can't figure out how to progress; I'd be passing the reins to the audience and running the game world like a clock, essentially. DCs are simple, I don't actually need to stat out most opponents, and I don't need to railroad you into doing Magical Girl things because you'll have a Soul Gem slowly filling up with that tasty, tasty Grief, and if I delineate a specific way of doing that at the beginning it ceases to be my fault if the quest Bad Ends from not hunting enough Witches.

So, what do we think? Generic Meguca Quest?
 
LaserGunPewPew said:
Speaking of, how popular are co-QM quests here?
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I don't think co-QM quests are more or less popular than other quests, however they tend to be rarer, probably because if you've got two people who are interested in writing stuff, most of the time they'd just do their own ones. And that makes twice the quests, so they'd out number non co-QM quests anyway in all likelihood.
 
I don't have a name for it yet, but I've been toying with it ever since I played Giga Wrecker. The main idea is that the heroine can manipulate inorganic matter and the main enemies are robots/artifical beings that have betrayed humanity.

So, to oversimplify, think Giga Wrecker plus Detroit Become Human.
 
So, some time ago I had an idea for a The World Ends With You quest, or rather two ideas, one where you start as a harrier and work your way up to composer.

But I'm going to be focusing more on the second idea of being a new composer and building your own area CKII style.

First, there's going to be the action types. Rather then Martial, Intrigue, Piety, etc. I'm thinking you have Reaper, Noise, Player, and Personal actions.

Reaper actions are managing your subordinates, working with your Conductor, choosing a Game Master, etc.

Noise actions would be gathering/generating Noise, perhaps making special Noise types (Bosses, secret treasure, other) making sure there isn't too many, etc.

Player actions involve selecting Players, dealing with their entry fees, their reincarnations/transmigration, etc.

Personal actions should be fairly obvious.

I'm thinking resources would be same as the action types (Reapers, Noise, Players) plus your own Vibe/Power.

Thoughts, ideas, criticisms?

Edit: Also, idea on what to call it? I'm no good with names/titles.
 
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LaserGunPewPew said:
What does being new have to do with a quoted post? My inquiry isn't valid due to time on forum? Interesting. Guess what I've heard about SV is true.
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they uh, they were pretty obviously saying 'as already said, I forget who'.

They're giving you slack for being new even though honestly being new shouldn't impact whether or not you understand the words 'I forget who', which are not actually particularly ambigous?

Whatever you may or may not have heard about SV being... elitist or whatever, I dunno, this is a pretty out of left field response.
 
LaserGunPewPew said:
Ah. I missed it. Wondering why they didn't simply point it out rather than going clown college mode. I have many windows and tabs open at any given time. I'm bound to miss something.


You're part of the problem.
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Sorry about that, I should have remembered that clown college assumes you know how to read when you apply and I knew that from the first exchange that you don't.
My mistake.

I'm going to side with Terrabrand here, I don't know what your impression of SV was coming in, but your behaviour seems like the problem as much as anyone else.
 
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