Against "Quests"

The little terms we use in this game culture always seem to trip me up. Something has convinced me that roleplaying games will somehow be better if the jargon of each game fits naturally into whatever is being depicted. I want specific terms for capabilities and resent using a term like "powers" to describe something someone can do, no matter how mundane or otherwise unfitting. I resent "stealthing" and "doing a maneuver" instead of "sneaking" or "maneuvering." And while most of this must surely be navel-gazing and gall, the feeling persists. And while you may think it a small point, one of the examples I am keenest to advocate against is the way the term "quest" is used in fantasy roleplaying.

Cover, Fires of Heaven

I will not be pretentious with you, or try to prescribe a strict definition based traditional English and French literature. I think if we search are hearts, we all sort of get that hunting for the holy grail or journeying to defeat an archdemon is a proper quest, a "quest-quest", and massacreing a ruin full of violent strangers for $2,000 just isnt.

For some reason, perhaps as an inherited convention from video games, the term "quest" has been used around some of the tables I played at as a blanket term, describing plots and situations the DM had prepared for the other players to complete. Having spoken to other people, this is not unique to my experience.

If someone outside the culture that uses the term "quest" in its gamist sense joined a table whose characters spent their time exploring haunted houses, breaking into crypts, busting up random cults, and other mercenary actions, all for pay, they may well come to enjoy that time-honored game genre, but I don't think they would be likely to call these actions quest unless slicked with sardonic irony. The use of the term is vestigial in games with such crusty subject matter, and ill suit that genre.

In games appropriate to eventually reach the heights of a grand undertaking, overusing the name of Quest still hampers the aim. A quest is a beautiful, romantic concept. It is a weighty thing. But it often comes to pass that by the time a table has begun a quest-quest, they've fulfilled ten contracts on mundane "quests" and may well treat this awesome quest with little awe because of it.

Where this format of creating situations becomes the essence of the game, players often lack a meaningful way to set personal ambitions in motion on their own. Even in "OSR" games where it really does behoove the table for the players to be able to discover myriad methods of achieving a goal, the classic method of consulting an oracle who will give you a "quest" can streamline the fun out of attaining that goal.

Ultimately, my suggestion for DMs is to dispense with the framework of hard objective-based story framing. It's better if rather than a "quest-giver" the PCs have friends or allies or especially competing interests. It's especially good when the reward for some major achievement is intrinsic to it, since this encourages players to be self-motivated. From an adventure-simulation standpoint, there's nothing wrong with people offering to pay the PCs to deal with some problem, but things just work so much smoother if they decide there is something to be gained in a calculated risk and take it.

Twelve Non-Quests

1. As you come into town, a goblin wagon laden treasure is galloped away, rebuffed by a local mob.
2. The lame king of a wasteland guards a cup said to make you immortal.
3. A wealthy and eligible suitor seeks your hand in marriage, but the patriarch of their family distrusts you.
4. The exiled heir of a neighboring dwarven kingdom sings for pennies at the saloon.
5. Homesteading laws offer free land within three miles of a dungeon entrance.
6. You know the ruler of the metropolis only keeps power on the basis of their fraudulent magical powers.
7. A famous warrior with unfinished business was buried with her famous magic sword.
8. It is known that with the right magic, one can create a stone which will make gold from nothing. What's more, most magicians of the land have some scrap of the knowledge.
9. Your uncle has passed away and left you his summer home and the curios it contains.
10. Fruit stolen from a dryad's tree is poison to your enemy.
11. Your prodigal brother has convinced the neighboring empire to support his claim to your throne.
12. A wealthy wizard is bullying you.

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