So I run an RPG publishing gig that makes RPG supplements, and I’m working on one with modern missions for modern RPGs. I’m also in a Facebook group looking at how the Star Wars Starcruiser LARP works. There are technical people who can tell you how parts of the datapad app work, but in digesting the missions on the cruise I found we didn’t really have a common vocabulary to describe these activities.

Anyone who has ever played an MMO knows what a Fetch quest is. The Quest Giver is a high-level NPC that is too busy to gather their own herbs, wolf pelts, and other crafting materials, So the objective of a fetch quest is very straightforward and some might even say boring but usually, they serve the double purpose of teaching you the system and the setting. Sometimes the herbs are growing near dangerous animals or the wolves guard their pelts jealously. So maybe we have to overcome an inherent danger or the target or its location to complete the quest.

I’veTotal reductionists will say there are only three quest types in fantasy RPGs: Fetch, Kill and Discover. Even if that were true, there are a lot of variations, maybe we could call them complications. In researching the post I saw some posters say that an Escort quest is just a Delivery, another name for a Fetch quest. Escort quests usually involve finding a character that is lost or a prisoner in a dangerous location, incapacitating any guards, and Defend the target from any attackers while they simultaneously seek out every opponent on the way home and walk as slowly as possible. I think it’s the slow walking that really gives escort quests a bad rap.

So what if my target were wanted by another faction, my Fetch and Deliver quest now has a Stealth complication and you could say I’m Smuggling the target past the other faction. Hopefully, the target isn’t walking slow or picking fights along the way. If my Fetch and Deliver quest involves breaking into a secure location and stealing something instead of someone, then it’s still Smuggling on the delivery end, and still Fetch, on the front end, but at some level of complexity it becomes a Heist.

So right now Kill quests are both self-explanatory and not entirely relevant to my modern missions which aren’t too murder hobo focused. Discover quests though, I have a lot of missing persons, investigations, and detective stories that will use that keyword.

More research turned up additional keywords Push The Button, Mystery, and Lore Quests. In the pile of storylines I was trying to sort, and the fiction they come from there are a number of push the button style quests which include; turn off the defense shield, and deactivate the hyperdrive. Variations on the theme exist where the button is a person and push the button becomes distract the guards. If you’re playing with the datapad in the starcruiser or Batuu there are a lot of literal push the button jobs.

Mystery seems like it could be a variation on Discover, but are more likely either a skill challenge or a quest chain full of Discover missions that give you enough information to solve the puzzle.

Lore Quests seem like setting specific Discover, ooh you learned a little hidden thing about the world unless that information is later used as a clue to solve the mystery or the information itself is the subject of a Discover and Delivery quest it had better trigger an emotional response because not all players are lore nerds and the hardcore lore nerds already know your easter eggs.

Escort and Delivery Quests (the only difference is that an Escort Quest is the delivery of a person, not an object, which doesn’t seem enough to warrant a unique label)

Push the Button Quests seem like something you would do in order to complete a Kill quest, for example, rather than an ultimate mission goal.

Similarly, the definition of a Lore Quest doesn’t sound like a reason to go on an adventure, so much as something that happens while the players are on an adventure.

More research gets me more quest types and a little more explanation of each one.

1. Fetch Quests

This category covers any mission where the players have to go get something from another location. Targets can include an object, information, or a person, who was kidnapped or held hostage. Also includes Prison Breaks, or intercepting a prisoner/witness/scientist transport. Sometimes a Heist is also a Revenge quest because the way to hurt the BBEG is not to kill them but to take their money. Sometimes a fetch quest is to Recover something that was lost or stolen.

• Arthur Pendragon pulled the sword from the stone in the original fetch quest.
• Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table sought the Holy Grail, so they kind of ended on a fetch quest too.
• The characters of The Monuments Men had to both fetch stolen pieces of art and deliver them to the allies.
• Snake Plisken had a fetch quest to save the president in Escape from New York.
• Darth Vader had a fetch quest for the Death Star plans
• Greedo had a fetch quest for Han Solo
• Boba Fett had a fetch quest for Han Solo
• In Army of the Dead, the characters had a fetch quest to retrieve $200 million from Tanaka’s vault, in a dangerous location before the time complication runs out.
• In the Ocean’s 11 movies the characters need to pull off a Heist which seems like a fetch quest that also has a Stealth complication of not getting caught.

2. Delivery Quests

The players have the object, person, or piece of information, and they must deliver it to someone or a specific location.

• Pheidippides is said to have run from Marathon to Athens to deliver news of the victory of the battle of Marathon.
• Steve Trevor has to deliver Doctor Poison’s secret research notebook to the allied commanders in London during the Great War.
• Smokey and the Bandit had to deliver Coors beer to their quest giver at a certain location by a time complication in Smokey and the Bandit.
• Max had a delivery quest to get the survivors out of the compound past Humungous’ raiders in The Road Warrior.
• Max had a delivery quest to get the kids out in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
• Max Rockatansky had a delivery quest to get the Five Wives away from Immortan Joe in Mad Max Fury Road
• Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon deliver Padme to Coruscant so she can petition the galactic senate to intervene on Naboo’s behalf.
• Luke, Han, Leia, and R2-D2 deliver the Death Star plans to the rebels.
• Shadowrun players often have to Deliver the Netrunner inside the Corp tower where they can push the button.

2. Destination Quests, journeys of Discovery

Sometimes it’s the journey and not the destination, but you need to go somewhere to do another thing, the destination isn’t always the goal, but enables some other part of a longer questline.

• Odysseus getting home after the Trojan war is a destination quest.
• Queen Padme has a destination quest to reach Coruscant to convince the Republic Senate to intervene in the Trade Federation blockade of Naboo.
• Obi-Wan has a discovery quest to find out more about Camino, and that begins a destination quest to go to Camino.
• Luke has a destination quest to find Obi-Wan out in the dune sea.
• Obi-Wan has a Destination Quest to Alderaan. Myself, the boy, two droids, and no questions asked. The destination quest is all Han and Chewie initially sign on for.
• Luke has a destination quest to go to Dagobah and find Master Yoda.
• Rey and Kylo have destination quests to find Holocrons so they can locate the mystery star system.
• Rey has a destination quest linked to finding Luke Skywalker.

3. Protect/Defend Quests

If you are bringing a thing or a person to a second location, you’re on a Delivery Quest. If you’re supposed to protect the person or thing at an event, a secret prototype or state witness, or you’re hungry masterless samurai defending a town full of farmers for a few bowls of rice, you’re on a Protect/Defend Quest.

• Stop the assassination attempt on the princess’s life?
• Stop the BBEG from destroying the dam and flooding the town.
• Fly to Alderaan, find the princess, and deliver Ben and the droids to her. Plan B, enter the death star, find/discover the detention block, locate/rescue the princess, or the princess rescues herself and your team. lower the shields, or tractor beams, whatever.
• Obi-Wan has to Defend the rescue team while they get away, and get the plans to the death star to the rebel forces.
• James Bond has to stop Goldfinger from irradiating all the gold in Fort Knox and upending the world financial markets in Goldfinger.
• Kyle Reese/Johnny Ringo was sent back to the past to protect Sarah Connor from Schwarzenegger’s T-800 Terminator in Terminator.
• Schwarzenegger’s T-800 Terminator was sent back to the past to protect John Connor in Terminator 2.
• Destiny 2 fireteams often have to Defend their Ghost while it works on computer problems in a related push the button quest.
• Shadowrun players often have to Defend the Netrunner while they push the button.
• Destiny 2 Guardians Defend the Tower of the Last City from their enemies as they come pouring through the defenses.

4. Push the Button Quests

• R2-D2 has a push the button mission to stop the trash compactor from killing the rescue team along with the target of their fetch quest.
• Obi-Wan Kenobi has a push the button mission to deactivate the tractor beam or the Millenium Falcon can’t leave with the princess, the droids, and the death star plans.
• James Bond has to push the button to deactivate the GoldenEye before Europe’s banking system is wiped out. James Bond often blurs the line between push the button and destroy the MacGuffin.
• Characters in Fast Furious 9 had to push the button on the MacGuffin in space before it took over every computer on earth. Destroying the MacGuffin was the same as pushing the button.
• James Bond had to push the button to destroy the MacGuffin at the end of No Time to Die.
• Fulfill the prophecy. Is this a push the button quest?
• Keep the prophecy from fulfilling. Is this a stop someone from pushing the button quest?
• Zero Cool, Crash Override Hacking the Gibson is a push the button quest in Hackers.
• Are any skill check challenges just push the button quests?

4. Kill a Person, Destroy the MacGuffin Quests

Expanding the Kill Quest, to Destroy MacGuffin, or even Remove the Obstacle Quest. Most Fantasy RPGs are heavy on Kill Quests, but you could be asked to destroy an evil artifact or a bridge to stop an invasion. Some hobbits return a piece of jewelry for instance. Revenge quests are most often Kill quests, the GM can set the table for this, and give them a Motive, but only the players can decide if they are on a revenge quest, they might decide to capture the BBEG and ensure they go to jail.

• The characters were sent to destroy the MacGuffin in The Guns of Navarone.
• Max Rockatansky had a personal Kill quest, let’s call it Revenge against the Toe Cutter’s gang in Mad Max.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 Terminator was sent back to the past to kill Sarah Connor in Terminator.
• T-1000 was sent back to the past to kill John Connor in Terminator 2.
• Schwarzenegger’s T-800 Terminator had to stop the T-1000 and destroy all of the Cyberdyne systems chips that lead to the creation of Skynet Terminator 2.

5. Investigation Quests

The players have to investigate a mystery or solve a crime.

• Brother William investigates murders in Name of the Rose (which inspired Candlekeep Murders). I never knew that.
• Sherlock Holmes investigates the crimes of London’s underworld with Doctor Watson.
• Ellen Ripley and the Space Marines have a Discover/Investigation quest to find out why the company lost communications with the colonists on LV-426 in Aliens.
• Obi-Wan investigates the assassination attempt and mysterious orders from a dead Jedi to the cloners on Camino.
• Accused of something. Proving your innocence is an Investigation quest because you have to solve the mystery in order to prove that you aren’t the criminal.
• Diseased/cursed. The players must Discover the cure for a disease or curse. If the cure is known then it’s just a fetch quest that may have later complications.
• Missing Persons. Discover the location of the missing person, while the end result may be a fetch quest to bring the person back to the quest giver for a reward, it will start as a Discover quest that could become an Investigation if the person is missing for nefarious reasons. Two young kids that ran away are a Discover quest, a missing scientist being forced to build a MacGuffin for the BBEG is an Investigation.
• Hide or make secret something that could hurt someone if it got out. This is an anti-Discover quest, sometimes achieved by destroying evidence or records. It falls under Discover because most times you have to find the evidence or ironically solve the mystery before you can keep the secret from getting out.
• If you have been tasked with frustrating the efforts of the First Order to find the Resistance you’re on a Hide or Stealth quest.
• Rumors are possibly both true and false until someone discovers the truth.

6. Negotiation, Persuasion Quests

Negotiation Quests often involve diplomacy, intrigue, and trade as well as complications.

• The *Spoiler* on Batuu needs you to do a thing for them because you can’t afford their regular rates so you exchange your willingness to push a button for them so that they will give you the MacGuffin to complete your fetch quest, and they can only do that because you discovered something earlier in the quest chain.
• A lot of negotiation quests end up with the player completing a different quest for the other party because they have some form of Blocker they cannot eliminate by themselves. The trick with these quests is to keep the complications fresh enough they don’t feel repetitive.
  • I just sold my last one, maybe you can convince the buyer to sell it to you.
  • I have another interested party in the MacGuffin, instead of bidding against them, beat them in a game of chance.
  • The MacGuffin was stolen from my workshop before you arrived, steal it back and ensure the thief never crosses me again.
• Moral Decision/Quandry sometimes the players negotiate with themselves over how they will deal with a decision, they find a reformed murderer and have to decide if redemption is real and whether they should let them go or the murder can never be undone and take them in. Morally ambiguous quandaries that split the party along alignment lines forthright paladins and live and let live rogues never seeing eye to eye on lawbreakers.

6. Reputation Check

Sometimes you need to have a reputation before people trust you or will ask you to do something. MMOs have had faction-based reputation for a long time, you earn a reputation by doing things for the faction or based on choices that you made. Star Wars Bluetooth-based reputation readers were added to some cash registers in the Galaxy’s Edge parks to reflect the reputation you gained in the datapad and doing Smuggler’s Run FAL missions.

• Resistance, Smuggler and First Order missions may or may not be available to you based on choices you made, missions you accomplished, or actions you took.
• Even if Jack Sparrow is the worst pirate you’ve ever heard of, he is a pirate and you have heard of him.
• You’ve never heard of the Millennium Falcon? Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi: Should I have? Han Solo: It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.

7. Survive Quests

You be strong, you survive… You stay alive, no matter what occurs! I will find you. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far, I will find you! The players encounter a dangerous situation natural disaster, an invading army, or inhospitable terrain. Survive. Someone or something will kill you if you don’t act fast, smart, or both. I think the canny or skilled play of the players is necessary to make a good Survive quest, it should not just be a bunch of skill rolls.

• The crew and passengers in Flight of the Pheonix have to survive the desert, dwindling supplies, and lack of trust in each other long enough to build a new plane and escape.
• Luke and Han have to survive the deadly elements and the Wampa on Hoth just long enough to have to survive the Imperial assault on the rebel base.
• Ellen Ripley has to survive the movie, Alien.

8. Attain Quests

Seriously thinking about ditching this category of Fetch quests as the original writer obviously wanted another word for a Fetch quest when the means to an end were not the end itself?

9. Combination Quests

Many times a story is a combination of two or more types of quests, that’s a feature, not a bug.

First Roll:
The action of the quest is to:
1. Liberate/Recover/Intercept
2. Destroy/Kill
3. Guard/Defend
4. Transport/Escort/Journey To
5. Create/Build/Summon
6. Gather Information About

Second Roll:
The object of the quest is:
1. Item
2. NPC
3. Message/Data
4. Secret or Dangerous Location
5. Magical Equipment/Technology
6. Monster

Non Quest things that make Quests and Stories tick

Personal Fulfillment quests like Revenge have to be decided on by the players, the GM can only create the conditions necessary such as Motive for the quest to happen. There is something more viscerally satisfying about self-selected quests when players move beyond the low-tier missions and pick a direction for themselves informed by their experience that will be different from any other tables.

Complications

Obstacles and Complications such as Time Pressure or Stealth where you must achieve the goal without being caught. Alexander the Great taught us that obstacles such as the Gordian Knot don’t have to be solved like puzzles if you can just destroy them. Sometimes you get things like kinds of Hydras that have secrets to their destruction that are also a logic puzzle all its own. Fighting Medusa without looking at her, Cassandra was always right but nobody would listen to her.

Storylines

Not all quests are in themselves storylines, so we will want to categorize some storylines outside of the quest pieces that make them up. Betrayal is a storyline, not a quest.

Locations

Location-Based Adventures are sort of RPG Design speak for Dungeons, a place with a lot of things to do in a very small space. The Starcruiser and Batuu could both be seen as LBAs and I mention this here because there’s probably a lot of info we use from 50 years of TTRPG LBA publishing. Locations can be characters unto themselves, was it Shadowrun that had city spirits that sometimes influenced events within their domains?

Quest Giving NPCs and non-NPC quest givers

The main characters on the Starcruiser are good examples of Quest Givers, anyone in MMOs with punctuation over their heads was likely a quest giver.

• A lost dog with a tag on its collar that says return to owner is a delivery quest with no quest giver present.
• A note on a dead body telling whoever finds them to tell their next of kin the manner in which they died is a deliver quest with no living quest giver. The note might be the only way to satisfy the family’s recover our lost loved one or discover what happened to them quest.
• A message in a bottle washed up on a beach for a destination quest to a desert island and recover the lost castaway has a quest giver with a non-standard long shot of a delivery mechanism.

I’m going to strip out the Fantasy baggage from these, but the formulas from an online adventure generator were:

• [Quest Giving NPC] seeks adventurers to [Verbreflexive] This will require traveling to [Adventure Location]
• The PCs have heard that if they [Verb] they will become rich. This will require traveling to [Adventure Locations]
• It seems [Object] will grant great power to any who possesses it. This will require exploring [Adventure Locations]
• ”They say..”[Adventure Locations]…contains [Object] of great value.”
• Rumors suggest clever and ambitious souls will find great riches if they investigate [Adventure Locations]

Verbs:

• free: [People]
• assassinate: [People]
• capture [CapturableThingsPeople]
• safely transport [TransportableThingsPeople] of special importance
• locate [TransportableThing] of special importance
• acquire [Object] of special importance
• destroy [Object] of special importance
• slay [Weird Fantasy Monster]
• seduce [People]
• frame [People] for a crime

The shorthand I use is “Object”–>”Action”—>”Location” like “Kill the dragon in the woods” or “Help the people in the village” etc.

One thing noticeably missing (or at least easy to overlook) from the above is quests that begin with the PCs being pursued for reasons unknown.

I also notice “investigate crimes” is missing from the template.

<sgdisplay iterations=”10″>[main]

</sgdisplay>

<sgtable>main

1,[Intro]
Intro

3,A [Fantasy NPC (Basic).main] seeks adventurers to [Verbreflexive] This will require traveling to [Fantasy Adventure Locations.main] 1,The PCs have heard that if they [Verb] they will become rich. This will require traveling to [Fantasy Adventure Locations.main] 1,It seems [Object] will grant great power to any who possess it. This will require exploring [Fantasy Adventure Locations.main] 1,They say..[Fantasy Adventure Locations.main]
…contains [Object] of great value. 1,Rumors suggest clever and ambitious souls will find great riches if they investigate [Fantasy Adventure Locations.main]Verbreflexive

15,free: [People] 15,assassinate: [People] 15,capture [Capturablereflexive] 15,safely transport [Transportablereflexive] of special importance 15,locate [Transportablereflexive] of special importance 15,acquire [Object] of special importance 15,destroy [Object] of special importance 15,slay [Weird Fantasy Monster.main] 1,seduce [People] 1,frame [People] for a crimeVerb

15,free: [Fantasy Person Of Interest.Main] 15,assassinate: [Fantasy Person Of Interest.Main] 15,capture [Capturable] 15,safely transport [Transportable] of special importance 15,locate [Transportable] of special importance 15,acquire [Object] of special importance 15,destroy [Object] of special importance 15,slay [Weird Fantasy Monster.main] 1,seduce [Fantasy Person Of Interest.Main] 1,frame [Fantasy Person Of Interest.Main] for a crimePeople

15,[Fantasy Person Of Interest.Main] 1,his/her sibling, [Fantasy NPC (Basic).main] 1,his/her spouse, [Fantasy NPC (Basic).main] 1,his/her mortal enemy, [Fantasy NPC (Basic).main] 1,his/her child, [Fantasy NPC (Basic).main]Capturable

1,: [Fantasy Person Of Interest.Main] 1,[Weird Fantasy Monster.main]Capturablereflexive

1,: [People] 1,[Weird Fantasy Monster.main]Transportable

1,: [Fantasy Person Of Interest.Main] 1,[Weird Fantasy Monster.main] 1,[Object]Transportablereflexive

1,: [People] 1,[Weird Fantasy Monster.main] 1,[Object]Object

5,[Found in a crate.main] 1,a weasel 1,an idol 1,a disc 1,a book 1,a skull 1,a crown 1,a tiara 1,a mask 1,a teacup 1,a pair of gloves 1,a cloak 1,a hat 1,an emerald 1,a pearl 1,a diamond 1,a sapphire 1,a jade 1,a shield 1,a sword 1,a staff 1,a mace 1,a morningstar 1,a scythe 1,a warhammer 1,a war axe 1,a dagger 1,a ring 1,an egg 1,a torch 1,a bracelet 1,a grape 1,a jewel 1,a lamp 1,a ruby 1,a child 1,a pet 1,a dog 1,a virgin

</sgtable>

If you have any feedback about this post or our books please feel free to contact us.

Paul

Evilrobotgames at Gmail.com