As expected throwing a Questing event is very different than running a Tourney or Feast event. Here are a few ideas to help in this endeavor.
What is your target audience?
There is a wide range of type of player that goes to a Quest event. Quest events are the one style of event where you get the full gamut of player types .You get the stick jocks looking for a good fight. You get the role-players eager to play their characters to the hilt. You get the thinkers and social types as well. This makes the Questing event one of the most difficult kinds to throw; you have to entertain a wide variety of player.
How will magic affect your event?
With a questing event this is a majorly important question. If you provide powerful magics to your casters this may impact the fighting players, either by affecting pvp or reducing the need for fighters. Not powerful enough magic and the casters become marginalized.
The same goes for magic items. Players usually expect items to be down powered or not allowed at Tourney events and at Feast events there is little need for magic items, but players expect magic items to be passed and allowed at Questing events. The only problem is that not all magic items are created equal and some can seriously disrupt an event if not planned for.
One way to handle magic items is to set a maximum cap of power. This could be as simple as allowing only one ability with each item, even if the item normally has more than one ability, or only allowing an effect up to a certain spell level. You could also allow all the magic items as they are written and then deal with them later as their affect begins to be felt, though sometimes this can lead to problems that will be difficult to fix after the fact.
Rule #2 – Keep the Players Busy!
As already mentioned in a previous article, one of your primary goals as an eventholder is to keep the players busy and active. This is hard to do at a Questing event but essential to its success. Because you will see such a wide range of player types it is important to remember each of them. Making an all thinking encounter will lose the role-players and stick jocks. Likewise running nothing but a series of fights will lose you the role-players.
The trick here is to try and design encounters that will appeal to all types in the same encounter.
Some ideas of how to integrate the different play styles are…
-Let the role-players and thinkers do their thing while the stick jocks protect them from some enemy.
-Isolate each type of player and have them each do their thing separately (essentially running two encounters at the same time).
-The stick jocks need to gather materials off dead enemies so the role-players/thinkers can complete their task.
-Whenever the thinkers fail at their task, enemies appear for the stick jocks to fight.
As already mentioned you do not want to commit a large amount of time to one style of player. If the players need to solve a rune set or puzzle you need to make sure it does not take an extended period of time. You can do this by making the challenge easy (set a time limit for the challenge in your mind and build the challenge to end by that time) or can make the challenge not needed in order to move the quest forward at this time (i.e. move to the next encounter and let the players finish the challenge later). Large elaborate challenges are fine as long as it does not stop the event until it is completed.
Overprepare
One thing I always try to do is prepare more encounters than can ever be used. Often adventures feature a series of encounters, such as the “journey” or “gathering”. For these, it is easy to write up an extra two or three encounters. Then the day of the event you can use them, or also not use them, as the time constraints of your event dictate. If the players are blowing through your encounters and you need to fill an extra hour or so, throw in one of the extra encounters. If they are bogged down on something you expected to take much less time, cut one of the weaker encounters.
It is easier to cut encounters than to write new ones the day of the event.
There are a few steps I take after I have written the event out. One thing to do is run the event through your head from the beginning to the end. Then ask yourself some questions…
-What is the first thing the players will do after signing in at the reg desk? Will it be standing around for the reading of the rules? Will they immediately go into the quest?
-What is the first encounter and what will it look like?
-Where will that first encounter lead?
-Are there connections between all the encounters? If not what can be added to lead the players to another encounter?
-How will the players react to each encounter? Am I ready for each type of reaction?
-What do I do if the players fail the encounter?
-What can I do to make each encounter better?
What about the end of the event?
Just like other types of events there needs to be a wrap-up of the event. The best way is for an NPC to make an announcement about what has been accomplished (or still needs to be accomplished). This is also where you can recognize individual player characters for what they may have done to move your plot along. If you have any items or titles to hand out this is a good time to do it. The goal here is to bring the event to a definite conclusion, even if there is more the players can do in your overall plot.