Your opinions on Questing.
- Thread starter Derpmind
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- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
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One observation I made about Quests on Discord that's worth repeating here is that, when Completed or Dropped, they're the only interactive medium I know of that eventually stops being interactive (without becoming Lost Media, like say a ton of Flash games). Games can be replayed and CYOA books can be reread, but once a QM's no longer running a Quest, that's it
Which I think is one part* of why a lot of big-name Quests run so long, to keep the interactivity going as long as possible. Though more narrative-centred Quests do tend to survive the transition to non-interactivity better than mechanics-centred Quests, which are more reliant upon said interactivity
*Another is serial fiction usually running longer than non-serial, for the same reason TV seasons run a lot longer than movies
Which I think is one part* of why a lot of big-name Quests run so long, to keep the interactivity going as long as possible. Though more narrative-centred Quests do tend to survive the transition to non-interactivity better than mechanics-centred Quests, which are more reliant upon said interactivity
*Another is serial fiction usually running longer than non-serial, for the same reason TV seasons run a lot longer than movies
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Newbie QM here jus commenting that I am now aware of this thread and will be raiding it for advice (and I'm glad to know that putting vote results at the top of a new post is appreciated.)
Also gonna comment that any kind of bell curve is gonna be better in the long run than a large, linear dice number in terms of not producing outlier results at inconvenient times. I use opposed d10s (or a single d10 with a sliding target, which is at least a pretty constrained linear curve) and it's been going well so far. Fate dice are also good. Rolling a separate d100 for 40 checks during one turn just seems like a recipe for weird disasters. Now if you want weird disasters, that's something else entirely.
Also gonna comment that any kind of bell curve is gonna be better in the long run than a large, linear dice number in terms of not producing outlier results at inconvenient times. I use opposed d10s (or a single d10 with a sliding target, which is at least a pretty constrained linear curve) and it's been going well so far. Fate dice are also good. Rolling a separate d100 for 40 checks during one turn just seems like a recipe for weird disasters. Now if you want weird disasters, that's something else entirely.
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- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
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By the way, I feel this video is relevant to this thread as, even though the review isn't about Quests or even CYOA books (not that ISOT hasn't inspired a few Quests), I'd say the 'Drama of Solving Problems' (as opposed to stories that have more clear-cut solutions) is basically what Quests are, or at least it's something inherent to them, be they narrative- or mechanics-driven:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCyDi3AVouY
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCyDi3AVouY
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- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
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Yeah, my usual minimum for Quest updates is 400 to 500 words (a less narrative-centred Quest might have it even lower), whereas with getting back into regular writing I've been trying to get used to slower and longer updates again (though I still try to go for at least one chapter a week)
On another topic, I'd been advised that QMs should try to focus on narrative or mechanics rather than trying to do both at once. This was a criticism I remember Persona: Another Calling getting: that people there for the narrative just skimmed over the mechanics-centred battles, while people there for mechanics didn't find them well-integrated enough
Obviously I'm not saying a narrative Quest should have zero mechanics, after all votes themselves are a mechanic, or that a mechanical Quest should have zero narrative. More that it helps to pick one and stick with it rather than try to nail both. Not that there haven't been Quests that put a lot of focus on both narrative and mechanics and made it work, but they're definitely not the norm
On another topic, I'd been advised that QMs should try to focus on narrative or mechanics rather than trying to do both at once. This was a criticism I remember Persona: Another Calling getting: that people there for the narrative just skimmed over the mechanics-centred battles, while people there for mechanics didn't find them well-integrated enough
Obviously I'm not saying a narrative Quest should have zero mechanics, after all votes themselves are a mechanic, or that a mechanical Quest should have zero narrative. More that it helps to pick one and stick with it rather than try to nail both. Not that there haven't been Quests that put a lot of focus on both narrative and mechanics and made it work, but they're definitely not the norm
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Personally I aim between 2k-4k words per update part unless it makes sense to be longer. This style of writing works very well with my ADHD, where I can push out progress and farm reactions relatively more regularly. (its not glamorous I know, but it works)
Players should fail at roughly one in five non-routine actions they attempt. The failure doesn't even need to carry permanent consequences, it just needs to create the sense that the viewpoint character/faction isn't playing on godmode.
The biggest offenders are quests that offer mechanical bonuses to dice rolls for omakes (without that being the central quest mechanic).
The biggest offenders are quests that offer mechanical bonuses to dice rolls for omakes (without that being the central quest mechanic).
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Just do like me: use the PbtA system.
Just 2d6+stat and the "DC" are always fixed: 6- is a failure, 7-9 is a partial success and 10+ is a full success.
Then you can add to the system what you want, but I think it's the most barebone resolution mechanic that exists.
Entropy Judge
Recurring Bouts of Misanthropy
You don't have to use dice.
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This. Just give people narrative options and resolve them according to what makes for the best story.
Unfortunately, I enjoy random chance, and I enjoy making simple systems to run my games on, so dice it is, for now.
But more seriously, there is some use in it. For one, it makes decision making a lot easier. I don't have to decide every step of a fire spreading, the path of every arrow, whether or not sea travel ends in a boring shunt or a bizarre adventure.
(I can also laugh at the results.)
Second, it appeals to my pedantic, somewhat simulationist side not to let what is, necessarily, narratively convenient slide (even if it saves me work). Luck is the king of many endeavours, and washing my hands of certain courses of events is just enjoyable to watch, imagine, then write.
Plus, sometimes the dice are even more creative than me, as chance would have it!
However… I normally run games (and one quest) with characters of mortal abilities, or slightly enhanced mortal abilities, on fantastical and periodically violent adventures.
If I were using a different power scale or a different premise- say, if I were running for vampires, or very young deities ala Dad of Boi Ragnarok, or running a game about being Ace Attorney Lawyers, I'd probably be using less dice, or none at all, as many things that would be difficult become easy, or less truly risky, and important junctions are less about picking the most likely option, and more about what you're willing to trade to make things occur.
Being an entertainer needs thinking about, is all.
But more seriously, there is some use in it. For one, it makes decision making a lot easier. I don't have to decide every step of a fire spreading, the path of every arrow, whether or not sea travel ends in a boring shunt or a bizarre adventure.
(I can also laugh at the results.)
Second, it appeals to my pedantic, somewhat simulationist side not to let what is, necessarily, narratively convenient slide (even if it saves me work). Luck is the king of many endeavours, and washing my hands of certain courses of events is just enjoyable to watch, imagine, then write.
Plus, sometimes the dice are even more creative than me, as chance would have it!
However… I normally run games (and one quest) with characters of mortal abilities, or slightly enhanced mortal abilities, on fantastical and periodically violent adventures.
If I were using a different power scale or a different premise- say, if I were running for vampires, or very young deities ala Dad of Boi Ragnarok, or running a game about being Ace Attorney Lawyers, I'd probably be using less dice, or none at all, as many things that would be difficult become easy, or less truly risky, and important junctions are less about picking the most likely option, and more about what you're willing to trade to make things occur.
Being an entertainer needs thinking about, is all.
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I've been playing and running tabletop games for about twenty years now, so dice mechanics appeal to me as a means to inject some surprise and tension into a story with audience participation (or where the "audience", "actors", and 5/6 of the "writers" are the same people, in the case of tabletop). Of course, it does depend on the quest - I'm running one that's explicitly video game inspired, so I want it to feel at least a bit like the video game that inspired it, which is a tactical RPG with plenty of random hit chances. If I was running, I don't know, a superhero quest based on golden age comics, I'd probably run it off of narrative vibes.
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- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
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- She/Her
While I have occasionally experimented with dice (mostly fudge dice), I'm kinda the opposite. I'm mostly someone who read up on RPGs, mainly certain D&D settings like Planescape and Spelljammer and also the World of Darkness, but never really got around to playing them much (which for certain WoD lines like oWoD Mage or Geist I'm told is the better way to experience them anyway), hence why my Quests tend to be mainly narrative
I've heard some people don't like narrative Quests because there's no safety net to prevent the QM from screwing players over, but on top of me feeling like that's kind of a paranoid attitude to take, getting dicked over by the QM is still something that can easily happen in a mechanics-driven Quest (I mean, cheating GMs are still a thing in ttRPGs). Plus, there is still a safety net in narrative Quests (if a reactive one), voters calling the QM out
I've heard some people don't like narrative Quests because there's no safety net to prevent the QM from screwing players over, but on top of me feeling like that's kind of a paranoid attitude to take, getting dicked over by the QM is still something that can easily happen in a mechanics-driven Quest (I mean, cheating GMs are still a thing in ttRPGs). Plus, there is still a safety net in narrative Quests (if a reactive one), voters calling the QM out
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That route lies decision paralysis I'm afraid. Maybe I'd do better in a collaborative multi-QM quest, I dunno.
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Here's a hot take for y'all: Players are never going to get get better at blank write-in votes. N E V E R. When you end your update with nothing but a-
[ ] Write-in:
You're almost always going to be disappointed. I can go back to quests in the late 2010s and see players make and vote for write-ins that have all the problems you still see today: Massive over-inflated paragraphs. Grandstanding clumsy and OOC speeches. Super specific instructions that expect everything to work exactly as written. Doing things that players have been explicitly told not to do. Or just write-ins that are, bluntly, stupid. QMs can give as many warnings as they want, they can slap players in the face with massive penalties time and time again, but the write-ins won't get better. They haven't gotten better since Questing as we know it started.
I'm not saying write-ins in general are bad. Players sometimes have cool ideas that the QM didn't even consider. But when you give your players a blank write-in vote, you're basically requiring them to do something smart or clever on demand. And that rarely works. Like, you're not asking a question of one person in a TTRPG. You're asking an entire crowd of people to decide what to do next. Where one person can embody a single character and their decisions, a quest's voters have a lot more trouble doing the same thing, especially without some kind of structured vote to work off of. (And as the QM, you're the one in the driver's seat for most of the character's actions and personality, regardless of what the players vote for.) There's good reason blank write-in votes have become a lot less common over the years.
Sidenote: Anyone remember Stunts in quests? Stunts were when the QM asked players to append a free-form write-in to a voted action, basically to write some kind of cool flavor for that vote, and the QM would reward a variable bonus (or not) depending on how much they liked the Stunt. Basically adding a blank write-in section to every vote. (Or worse, multiple stunts in a larger plan vote.) It sucked! It was really rare that players actually both made and voted for a Stunt that a QM thought was genuinely good, for basically the same reasons that blank write-in votes have the same issues. People would argue about which write in to use and how exactly to word them for ages, only for the vote to end and the QM to smack the Stunt down for being bad or unsuitable. I'm glad I haven't seen Stunts around in a long time.
[ ] Write-in:
You're almost always going to be disappointed. I can go back to quests in the late 2010s and see players make and vote for write-ins that have all the problems you still see today: Massive over-inflated paragraphs. Grandstanding clumsy and OOC speeches. Super specific instructions that expect everything to work exactly as written. Doing things that players have been explicitly told not to do. Or just write-ins that are, bluntly, stupid. QMs can give as many warnings as they want, they can slap players in the face with massive penalties time and time again, but the write-ins won't get better. They haven't gotten better since Questing as we know it started.
I'm not saying write-ins in general are bad. Players sometimes have cool ideas that the QM didn't even consider. But when you give your players a blank write-in vote, you're basically requiring them to do something smart or clever on demand. And that rarely works. Like, you're not asking a question of one person in a TTRPG. You're asking an entire crowd of people to decide what to do next. Where one person can embody a single character and their decisions, a quest's voters have a lot more trouble doing the same thing, especially without some kind of structured vote to work off of. (And as the QM, you're the one in the driver's seat for most of the character's actions and personality, regardless of what the players vote for.) There's good reason blank write-in votes have become a lot less common over the years.
Sidenote: Anyone remember Stunts in quests? Stunts were when the QM asked players to append a free-form write-in to a voted action, basically to write some kind of cool flavor for that vote, and the QM would reward a variable bonus (or not) depending on how much they liked the Stunt. Basically adding a blank write-in section to every vote. (Or worse, multiple stunts in a larger plan vote.) It sucked! It was really rare that players actually both made and voted for a Stunt that a QM thought was genuinely good, for basically the same reasons that blank write-in votes have the same issues. People would argue about which write in to use and how exactly to word them for ages, only for the vote to end and the QM to smack the Stunt down for being bad or unsuitable. I'm glad I haven't seen Stunts around in a long time.
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- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
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- She/Her
There was at least one time I gave readers nothing but a write-in vote for Persona: The Beautiful, and for a funeral eulogy no less (link for reference), and it actually worked out well. Same with another Persona Quest, Another Calling, during part of the Aeon S. Link (reference). Spoilers in both cases though.
That said, I will agree that these are still exceptions, not the rule, when it comes to 'Nothing but a write-in'
As an aside, I also think this touches on the problem with a lot of 80s text parser games, that since they were all built on what we'd call write-ins, it was often difficult to know what you even needed to input. So you could say history repeats here. The Ultima series (eventually) tried to fix this by highlighting keywords in red
That said, I will agree that these are still exceptions, not the rule, when it comes to 'Nothing but a write-in'
As an aside, I also think this touches on the problem with a lot of 80s text parser games, that since they were all built on what we'd call write-ins, it was often difficult to know what you even needed to input. So you could say history repeats here. The Ultima series (eventually) tried to fix this by highlighting keywords in red
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- Mid-Atlantic
Coming back to this later:
"Action hell" can very easily become this avalanche-like consequence of the QM being creative enough to think of three or four new actions every turn but only letting the player carry out two of them. Which is fine in theory, but then as QM you need to be... tactful... because you have to know full well that you're creating a situation in which the players can't do everything. And keeping up player morale ("this is supposed to be a fun game") while constantly reminding them of all the missed rewards and opportunity costs they incur by their inability to do everything is a tricky balance.
Mmm, idk. Those kinds of exclusive vote options are sort of the most basic form of vote in quests - vote for one reward, do you go left or right, do you attack or defend etc. - and I feel like they don't tend to be that problematic?
The action hell I've seen I feel is more a consequence of quests accumulating "obligations" over time. Early on in a quest using plan vote systems the actions operate as pseudo Path votes because they're being used to establish the PC and their place in the world. What is their character? Who are their friends? What do they do?
As the quest matures though you shift away from that early establishment, and now vote options can often feel much more like things you're obliged to do rather than optional paths to take. If you've got a job it could feel like all the activities are things you should be doing in character. If your friends have invited you to things then of course you should be going to them. If your best friend has set herself on fire of course you should be helping her out. And so it feels like there's never time to do anything other than put out fires and handle the highest priorities and that can wear on everyone.
On top of that then you'll have more and more plot threads and characters accumulating over time and there isn't room in the story for even more options. At the same time, in order to keep the plan vote options populated the QM keeps introducing new things to do every turn and then those things in turn might spawn their own subplots... it's basically the narrative version of the thing where the quest mechanics grow increasingly complicated as the quest develops and eventually eat themselves.
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- Mid-Atlantic
Absolutely. It's the sense of things overloading over time and never getting on top of a situation.
There's a need to strike a balance between "it feels like we're making progress and resolving things" and "there are always new things to do" and it can be hard to do that. Especially since players are often quite willing to open up new event/plot chains faster than they can resolve them.
Yeah, part of the issue is that the entire purpose of these kind of plan systems is essentially to create time management gameplay. If you can do everything then frankly it's just boring. Interesting decisions come from not being able to do everything, but this breaks down when the action slots start getting full of things it feels like you have to do.
...
The annoyance with time management can also be exacerbated by the fact that not being able to do things often doesn't make sense in universe. The limitations on actions are often more a product of out of universe constraints on pacing and word count than how much time the character would really have. But this can get irritating when we're unable to just do an action that should be like a 30 minute conversation and easy to get done in universe but out of universe is being limited because that could be a whole update by itself.
This then creates pressure from the players to increase the number of available actions to try to deal with the backlog which doesn't actually help long term. The main outcome is that updates get larger and turns start taking longer and pacing slows down, and then the action backlog fills up again because the drivers that produced the problem in the first place are still there.
As someone who has many half finished ideas of quests running around in his head and even more in his noteboo one big problem in my opinion is character generation.It's a bit hard to write all the options and my creative juices basically dry up having to figure out which options are needed and which options are not.
Mechasaurian
Big Bossu
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You can just pick a specific character with a specific characterization, and commit to the bit. That's what I did.