Mini Quests: Thoughts on Team Cohesion

You may have noticed that the mini quests mechanic discussed over the last few weeks has a pattern: two events are related to your patron/deity/faith/god/house, two events are "team player" type things that help out the group, and two have the potential to get a bit angsty. For example, the air events to help friends survive darkest fears (whether they survive or not), the earthy tendency to be a money-grubbing selfish person, the water quests to go investigate places that a character of your level has no right to be, and the fire rewards for rivalry and bossiness could all spur some conflict.

That's intentional.

I get sick of the "special ops commando team" style of D&D play. This is a natural outgrowth of D&D: the game eventually becomes about high-stakes exploration and combat. The consequences for failure are character death, failure to earn XP, and loss of magic items. The mechanical rewards are all driven by being a bunch of ninja-esque badasses who can dungeon crawl as efficiently as possible. Loose cannons, intraparty squabbling, and dissent have no role in such a game. Yes, a good DM can work around those tendencies by rewarding other behaviors, but still, that sort of thing is kind of hardwired into the system.

Septimus explicitly rewards players for dabbling in behaviors that could be considered somewhat disruptive to group cohesion. It gives people reasons to lie or have hidden agendas. Most importantly, it allows them to do so without sacrificing advancement. The players can indulge in some less-than-optimized sessions where they develop their characters and relationships and still get rewarded and make progress towards their metagame goals.

Of course, you don't want too much of that. So, none of the miniquests require you to be a selfish jerk. They just open the door to allow the possibility from time to time. Even that small opening might be enough though to generate a bit of healthy paranoia that then spurs genuine roleplaying as the players feel out each of their character's hidden agendas.

Mini Quests: Sanguines

Our last and final quest set belongs to the Airey Sanguines. Air types are like Cholerics in that they prefer to deal with other players rather than the game world, but they are also like phlegmatics in that they prefer interaction to action. These were the hardest for me to come up with; traditional RPGs tend to not do a great job of rewarding out of character and in character interactions between players, and this mindset is also opposite of my own (I am more of an Earth "Act on Game World" type, so this approach is very foreign to me).

In the below quests, a "Friend" has a specific game mechanic meaning another player or an important NPC often controlled by another player (henchmen, familiars, and so on).

Roll	Quest Idea
1	Help a Friend complete a minor quest successfully
2	Discover something about a Friend that they didn't even know
3	Help a Friend face a darkest fear (whether or not they succeed... or survive...)
4	Discover something about a Friend that they don't want anyone to know
5	Complete task in accordance with your ruling planet or patron
6	Complete task in accordance with your exalted planet or patron

Note that the air type gets a lot of mileage out of helping the other players be forthcoming about their characters, as well as from fleshing out the other character's backstory. The Air character also has a lot of influence over the story; some of the quests revolve around essentially adding elements to the backstory of others. That serves as a potent check on the "acting" types who might otherwise be bossy.

Mini Quests: Cholerics

Fire characters -- or cholerics -- are similar to the earthy types in that they both like direct action. Unlike the earth types who focus on the game world, however, cholerics focus on their fellow players. These are the players who enjoy hatching the team plan, being a leader, or just plain being a bit bossy.

Roll	Quest Idea
1	Convince your allies to try to complete a major quest using your own plan
2	Identify another player who has misled others about a personal minor quest or objective, exploiting their allies for personal gain
3	Beat one of your Friends in a competition, duel, or wager of consequence
4	Complete another open minor quest of your own with help from your Friends
5	Complete task in accordance with your ruling planet or patron
6	Complete task in accordance with your exalted planet or patron

As such, their requests reward them for taking a proactive role. Note that there is no requirement to be open about your mini-quests. For example, the water person could get rewarded for researching Nosnra then lie to the party about the danger, spinning a 9 HD hill giant off as some lame 4 HD ogre. Either way it goes do, the water person gets their reward.

However, the fire types will end up with a quest to call out someone who has been misleading 1/6 of the time, so there is a minor "inquisition effect." That will serve as a check to keep the intrigue somewhat honest as well as reward the fire person for getting in the other player's chili from time to time.

Note that the fire person gets rewarded for being bossy, not just success: for example, quest #1 results in reward for the fire person whether the overall plan succeeds or not. However, in the long run, the fire person will probably be best off developing positive leadership techniques -- if they continually exploit the other players, they will find it hard to get the cooperation and competition that they need for further advancement.

Mini Quests: Phlegmatics

Water-prime characters or phlegmatics interact with the environment. Whereas melancholics are interested in dominating the game world, water-types want to understand and explore.

Roll	Quest Idea
1	Explore a unique terrain feature (steps down, mountain peak, magic pool, etc)
2	Solve a puzzle, riddle, or conspiracy
3	Discover and research a specific monster at least two tiers higher than you
4	Gain access to a forbidden, secret, or hidden area
5	Complete task in accordance with your ruling planet or patron
6	Complete task in accordance with your exalted planet or patron

As such, the water quests are all about exploration. You don't have to defeat a hill giant as a level 2 character; you just have to find out everything interesting there is to know about some big dude named Nosnra who lives back in the woods. Unlike the earth quest to blaze a path and secure a trail/area, the water quest is just to explore or find a new feature. These types of topics should be familiar to D&D players as the core D&D rewards system focuses pretty heavily on these sorts of activities.

Mini Quests: Melancholics

Earthy Melancholic characters should be played by players who like to act on the game world. Your standard "world builder" player who loves strongholds, dominating monsters, and hiring flunkies fits this mold.

The mini-quest table looks like this:

Roll	Quest Idea
1	Be the first to reach or secure a terrain feature (ascend to the peak of Mt. Doom, clear the NE quadrant of level 3 of the dungeon)
2	Defeat a specific monster
3	Blaze a trail between two locations (discover, clear, map, and escort)
4	Accumulate at least 3 coins of the tier higher than yours
5	Complete task in accordance with your ruling planet or patron
6	Complete task in accordance with your exalted planet or patron

The last two items would be related to your faith/god/patron. So if your character works for Poseidon, he might ask you to go do some stuff related to horses or the ocean. Pretty straightforward.

The DM should be expected to fill in the details of the quests. They should be level appropriate but not too easy, either. For example, it would be appropriate to have the second quest be, "Defeat Ragnar the Ogre," for a first or second level fighter. It is something that the character could feasibly do on their own, but it will be a lot easier if they can get some teamwork to help them out.

Notice that the quests all involve acting on the environment or dominating it in some way. The player is taming the wilderness, overcoming NPCs, or hoarding resources. If a player enjoys those tasks, then the system will reward them for doing them.

Mini Quests

In Septimus, one of the ability scores/traits is related to the classical elements or humours which were said to have defined a person's disposition. These traits affect the character but they're intended to be selected based on player preference; there should be little in game detriment to a group that fails to "cover all the bases" as far as the four humours go, unlike, say, playing a party with no cleric.

Part of this subsystem involves rewarding players for doing things that they find fun and interesting. One of the problems in traditional D&D is that the reward system revolves around interacting with and usually dominating the game world. You get XP for exploring dungeons and eventually for building strongholds. You do not get XP for helping your fellow players develop the story or for sowing interesting and dramatic strife among the team. You're basically leaving out rewards for half of your players out there.

Hence, the idea of mini-quests. Mini-quests are tied to one's humour. You get to open one quest for free in your primary humour. You can spend a perk (you'll have 1 to 3 perks if you have an above-average score in a trait) in any trait to open more if you like. Completing a quest yields XP (or perhaps some other benefit, like "Fate Points" if you care to use them). However, if you abandon a quest, however, there's a chance you'll lose an ability score point (you can get them back upon level up), similar to the effects of a grievous wound or major defeat.

Over the next few days I'll post my tables for each of the four humours.