3. Quests

Every adventurer has a reason to go down into the Underworld. This is called your quest.

Your quest is your adventurer’s motivating objective. It is discrete and achievable.

So, “Find the Grail of Mythrys” is a good quest, but “Get rich” is a bad quest. Yes, the Grail of Mythrys will make you rich, but riches is not what you're questing for.

Example quests

• Capture a cockatrice and haul it back to the City alive so that the Order of Alchemists can save your petrified brother.

• Kill the vampire who turned you into a thrall so that you can be restored to humanity.

• Find the Well of Lethe so that you can forget the terrible things you’ve done and have a chance at a happy life.

• Get a trophy from a dragon so that you can impress the pirate crew that mutinied against you.

• Pluck a nega-rose from the Grave of the First Dead so that the Witchmother accepts your proposal of marriage to her daughter.

Players and the GM should talk over their quests during session 0. The GM should set expectations for what’s reasonable to quest for. The players should talk about adventures that would be interesting to them.

It’s the GM’s job to place each player’s quest objectives into the Underworld and hedge them with interesting, open-ended challenges. They should pepper hints, rumors, and associated characters into the game world so that players have things to explore and paths towards victory. See Create a path to success for more information about how the GM does this.

Like rumors that you hear in the City, what you hear about your quest may or may not be correct. There might be twists. There might be competition. There might be trouble.