The Quest Board Filled with Quests
It's Been Known to be Filled with Them
"Quests? You best believe I have Quests! On that board there I have plenty, there's so much damn paper nailed to that board it might actually be a fire hazard. Go do some of those Quests before the Inspector comes. Oh, they were already here? Well, then he must've taken up some Quests! What are you waiting for? Go do the Quests! In fact, I'll throw in a Quest just for you 'cause we're friends, you and I. Your new Quest is to do some of those Quests on the Quest Board filled with Quests! Now go on, get to Questing!"
Primer
How I Write Quests
At least to start off with, I want to focus on writing modular Quests and Questlines. Self-contained Arcs rather than large scale campaigns. A lot of them might start off pretty simple, perhaps even silly, but I pride myself on my ability to escalate the dumbest shit into some real epic moments. Essentially gaslighting the players into taking it seriously.
I may not have a lot of experience writing these, but I think I already have an idea of what I want to focus on. What you should expect from Oniran's Quests and Questlines are set pieces. Cool scenarios, climactic fights, epic player moments, roleplay situations, with just the faintest hint of connective tissue and maybe a nice sprinkling of the butterfly effect in the background.
For example, what finally convinced me to write The Hunt of Honeymeadow, and thus finally making this compendium, was finding a proper instrumental loop of my all time favorite song that I could use as boss music. As a result, every single aspect of this Quest serves the explicit purpose of making this music hit as hard as possible. Will it succeed? Who knows, it's not like I'll get to run a game anytime soon bfdvjkbfds.
The Ideal Game
If/when I ever get to run a game in this world, I know exactly what kind of game it'd be. "The Oniran Equivalent of Slice of Life". The party is a Guild living in Stonewood who frequent The Sleeping Squire and have made a career of taking on quests. The tavern would essentially be their hub, and the adventures they go on depend entirely on the quests they choose. Some might be one shots, some might be entire questlines that escalate from fetching a rare flower to overthrowing a crime syndicate or some shit. If I'm feeling extra adventurous the downtime might involve the players investing the rewards into their own keep.
With this style of quest also comes the question of what kind of party they're meant for. The kind of party I write for is either good aligned or at least focused on doing what they believe to be the right thing. They're motivated to complete these quests for reasons such as: It's literally their job, they like the NPCs and want to help them, maybe the quest just got a villain and now they get to invoke the "Adventurer's Tax", stuff like that. I consider my job as LM to be setting up the pieces to make the PCs feel as cool as physically possible, and to do that they gotta trust me and let me cook so they can feast.
This is just a lot of words to say "A party that actually plays what the DM prepared lmao". And I mean that in the most loving way possible, my friends are 100% cool with this and it's not just me fantasizing unhealthily bfkjhdfsb.
The Premise
So it's surprising to no one that Oniran isn't really a setting you can just jump into completely blind and start playing a game. A player who goes into it thinking "Oh yeah I know what Elves are and that's the only race name I recognize so I'll go with that" is gonna end up VERY confused dfbskjdb. At least I like to think that I've succeeded at intertwining everything to the point where it's not easy to translate. I'll try to keep this as brief as possible. The assumption I want you to make is, unless a Quest explicitly says otherwise, that all of these Quests are running with the same general premise.
There are three Ancestries that call Oniran home: Elves, Valkyr, and Knights. Elves are half-dragon/half-fae with an elemental connection to the world, they're known to be rather chaotic and value freedom and love above most things. Valkyr are exceptionally large vikings born from runestone, they're known to be stubborn but loyal as well as greatly value community. Knights are blank slates who evolve as they grow up to reflect their greatest passion, they're known to be incredibly passionate, unsurprisingly, and value stories and friendship.
The party is a Guild residing in Stonewood, the Southern End specifically. They're a group of lifelong friends who've decided to make a career out of adventuring, or at least out of taking up quests in The Sleeping Squire. While they aren't by any means new to the grind, there's still a lot of experience to be gained. Despite that, they've at least been questing enough to be considered regulars and the tavernkeeper, Tavern, considers them good friends.
The Sleeping Squire is one of the more well known and beloved taverns in this part of Stonewood, some would even say in the whole kingdom. It's known for it's hospitality and memorable staff, as well as boasting an irresponsibly massive quest board. Lovingly known as The Quest Board Filled with Quests. Adventurers and Quest takers stop by often looking for work, but it's surprisingly rare for them to become regulars like the party has. It's a big reason why Tavern is so fond of them.
Leading up to this the party have all decided it's time to graduate to some higher tier quests, knowing full well that it means more risk but more reward. Little do they know, they're about to experience what adventuring in Oniran really has to offer.
With all that being said....
Go on, Get to Questing!!!
Formatting Guide
The Quote boxes are for text you should probably read aloud to the players. I mean, no one is forcing you to, you can paraphrase if you want, but it'd be really based and epic if you did. It'll be stuff like descriptions, scenes, NPC dialogue, etc. Everything outside of the quote boxes can be described or witheld as the GM pleases, I'm not gonna put ALL the important stuff in these boxes since honestly that would defeat the purpose of DMing in the first place.
In some cases, these boxes can be accompanied by additional descriptions locked behind skill checks. Whether or not you tell the players what those skill checks are is up to you. These bonus descriptions will look like this:
(Perception - Easy) The only furniture of note is a plain wooden table. Perched on that table is a pristine blade.
The difficulties of these checks can change, the circumstances for doing so will be explained though so don't worry. Those skill checks will look like:
(Occultism - Medium/Easy if the player knows why they're here) The blade is your implement. You'll need it if you want to do this right.
The Aloud boxes are for out of context commentary from me to you, the DM. At least you better be the DM reading this right now, if you're a player then shoo you're gonna be spoiled. I feel like these are gonna be useful for further context into where my head is at when writing these. Might also suggest some music. I'm not gonna lie to you, it's a LOT of Sonic music. The blue rat just has something for like every genre and scenario.
Out of context commentary such as:
So what do I mean by self contained arcs that could either be one shots or full scale questlines? Well, have you ever seen One Piece? It's that. The players may have their big overarching goals but in actuality the story really is just "Hey look at these misfits sailing across the sea doing shit. They go to an island, stuff happens, they leave, they go to another island, they level up, now they're in a whole new region. Wash, rinse, and repeat." Now THAT'S my kinda story right there.
Also if it was up to me we'd be called Loremasters. Just sayin.
All the art is made by me unless labled otherwise!
Comments