Regarding Quests

[Razor One]

Hello everyone! Your local absentee overlo-... err, Administrator **cough** would like to discuss an idea to import to the RPG forums and I'd like to gauge everyone's thoughts.

In regions of the wide world interwebs both near and far is a different RPG format called Questing. It's essentially roleplay by committee, with a quest master writing story and dialogue. Involvement for players can be low or high depending on the style, and quality can vary depending on the quest master proper.

The most basic format is sort of a choose your own adventure kind of deal. The difference lies in that you're not railroaded down to one or two particular choices every now and then that branch off. Player freedom, and consequences, are a big thing with questing.

As a quick demonstration, I'll throw in an example:

You level your pistol at the traitors head.Again and again he's betrayed you, betrayed everyone! Sure, he may have his reasons, even good ones, but every time you feel like you can trust him he plants the knife in again and again and again. Holding your pistol tightly do you...

[] Demand he explain his actions. Again.
[] Pull the trigger. He'll never betray you again.
[] Disable him and leave.
[] Write in.

The first three choices are provided in the usual choose your own adventure style, the write in is where player freedom comes in, where you can discuss, argue, and agree to certain courses of action that are outside the usual choices. These can wind up being very very good if they're well thought out, researched and discussed, or very very bad if you decide to derp around and do silly things. Once a consensus or majority is reached, the quest master then updates with the consequences of your choice, and provides new choices. The quest is 'won' when the QM decides they have or the players have no further challenges to overcome. You can also of course lose. Win or loss conditions are up to the quest master, but choices can have far reaching consequences...

Anyway, voting usually takes place by pasting in the appropriate choice with an X, followed or preceded by reasoning to sway others to vote your way, like so:

[X] Disable him and leave.

Yeah, he's has betrayed us too many times already, but our char isn't evil and wouldn't kill him.

An example of a write in would be:

[X] Join the traitor!
-[X] Tell him we're sick of this slag. It's time to get some real work done.
--[X] And by real work you mean scrapping bots.
-[X] Provide proof of our newfound allegiance. He'll probably need it.
--[X] If necessary, beat it into him.
---[X]If truly necessary, sing it to him.
-[X] Don't ever let him behind us though. Our backplate has too many open holes. It's time he trusted us.

The sub options modify the vote to be increasingly specific. This is good if you want to really direct how things go, but it can also be bad, because if you're too specific, you leave yourself very little wiggle room. Bear in mind some votes might have the option for write ins disabled on the discretion of the QM.

I think I've managed to give a basic rundown, so onto the reason I started this thread up.

I've had an idea for a quest I'd like to run. I've never run a quest, so I'd like to give it a shot with a small audience who may also be interested and will be patient as I fumble about trying to see how things work. The basic rundown is that you're in command of Cybertron's forces during a dastardly invasion by an alien menace... or was it Predacons? Or worse? Take control of the military and fight them off! Spearhead research and development into the alien menace! Balance the treacherous... treachery that is Cybertronian politics! Gain trusted confidantes to boost your ability to make a difference in the world! Engage in shadowy secret wars between intelligence agencies! Make your choices in harrowing dilemmas, or break those dilemmas with your force of will! Develop your character your way! Will you be a force for good in the world? Will you be a conqueror? The choices are yours!

Sales pitch aside, I'd like to give this a shot, both for those who are unfamiliar with the quest format as much as for me to get my feet wet in being a quest master. I think it'd enrich the forum and would get people thinking about running their own quests, which could be very very good or very very bad.

In any case, thoughts? Questions? General interest?

[Phoenix]

Eh.. I dunno. Seems like something like this would limit the player's involvement in the story progression. As things are there's generally one or two people guiding the rpg episodes along a path, but each character is still free to interact any way their player should choose. I fear if I wasn't able to use my imagination much in the rpg, I would end up losing interest very quickly. Having someone dictating a story to me and giving me a few select answer options just wouldn't offer me much challenge in terms of coming up with my own ideas.

[Razor One]

The write-in option does exist for a reason.

You can also modify the existing options with the subvotes to add your own particular spin if you wish. The main challenge is in convincing other players to vote with you, since not everyone may agree with one particular course of action.

One particular thrust of what I'm thinking of doing is allowing the players to develop the character as they go, everything from allegiance to guiding moral principles (honorable predacon? dastardly maximal? Possible!). Even relationships with the PC and the NPC's are possibilities, though you could just as easily opt not to go down that route, and the general idea is to keep things fresh, interesting and challenging for the player.

Do keep in mind that what I showcased in the OP was a very quick and barebones example of what I have in mind. Actual posts would be a bit more storied and detailed, though things may be a bit simple early on until the character is properly fleshed out and the story elements get on the road.

Essentially, the story hinges entirely on the players decisions. It won't move forward unless a decision is made, and decisions are intended to be harrowing. For instance, do you save a vital military depot or a cluster of refugees? What is the reasoning that goes into that? How would you characterise things? I'd take my cues from the discussion and majority vote and write from there. The consequences of the decision would also affect the outcome. Not saving the depot makes fighting the war harder, not saving the refugees could have certain results, from the very personal to the very public depending on how things are played. You could also just as well devise a brilliant battle strategy that saves both and earn the undying adoration and love of Cybertron.

Players can choose how involved they are, from simply putting up a vote now and then, to discussing things in significant depth in order to hash out a vote that everyone, or at least a majority, can get behind.

{Edit}

To drive the point home regarding the refugee / supply depot dilemma, you could also just as easily choose to run away from it all. If you got the thread to agree to it, that would change the story quite drastically. Freedom of choice, and the consequences, are a big deal in quests. You get to choose what the player character does in a given set of circumstances. The only things that get vetoed from the QM are things that would break the setting (IE, invent infinite energy machine, win.) or stuff that is completely out of place, such as summoning dragons into a reasonably science fiction setting.