A variant of the saving a loved one quest could be that you have a loved one that's either petrified by abnormal means and needs a special reagent or item to reverse the effect. Alternatively they're under the effects of a potent curse, magical effect, or disease, and they've been either petrified or put under the effects of the Sequester spell, or otherwise contained to give you time to find the cure, takes away the time pressure of not wanting them to be dead before you complete the quest.
Another fun one could be the Estate. A wealthy person has gone missing, possibly a relation, and it is your task to find them. Either they are alive and well, and you get the glory of bringing them back, or they're dead and the persons Estate can then be settled, maybe leading to a rich reward.
I had a character who was turned to stone. I took over her NPC best friend and quested for about 1.5 years to return the original PC. Then the original PC died in the subsequent session. 😢
Another variant: Seeking one to love! I had a character who was a stonemason. He was itinerant, but from a renowned family, and since the extended family lived in a secluded river valley when not on a major project, he had to seek both employment and a mate outside of his home village (Japanese setting). A bolt of silk was a particular treasure, because he was basically gathering bride-gifts to impress some family, for when he met the right girl. (As an adventurer he uncovered mysteries, weakened structures, and wielded a sledge hammer when necessary!)
Another Variant: rescuing a loved one from a previous life. The pc made it out of an impoverished life and wants to return to their origins and bring their lover/family/etc out of that life (think A Knights Tale)
I have only been running games for about 5 years but there has always been something missing and this was it. Thank you for covering this topic, your insights are invaluable!
I’ve always incorporated a a personal quest into my own character’s backstories, and was baffled when I realized how many players just come to the table with no set goals. Definitely using this advice when I run my next campaign!
I was the same until I realized that literally none of my DMs ever used anything in my backstory, especially not when I finally got an arc supposedly written around my character. If that were truly the case, my DM managed to remember every single detail wrong... So now I only keep things as detailed as I need for roleplay purposes these days. 😅
@@TheMightyBattleSquidSame here, backstories are all for me to get a better grasp on my Character now and I just give my DM some bullet points of my backstory/npc from my last
One thing to consider is to make sure that the personal quest doesn't make the character feel like they no longer need to adventure. For example, if they find their missing loved one and get them to safety, will they continue on with the main story with the rest of the party, or go home now that they have what they went adventuring for in the first place. Probably something that would need to be discussed at session zero, also. 😉
Flipside to this: this is a great way to retire a character if the story is about to move on to another phase and the player is the type to be happy to have resolved their PC's adventure and wants to try a new PC. As above though, to be discussed beforehand.
My DM is absolutely bonkers good at this. Vyse, if you’re reading this, you’re a god damned king and I love you. My fiancée’s character came into the game somewhat late (a player dropped out and my fiancée stepped in) and she found her long-lost (kidnapped/enslaved) sister. After the rescue it wasn’t just a “You found her! Hooray!” kind of thing. Now they’re hunted, as Genasi of any form are “rare curiosities” in this world. Now my fiancée’s goal is to find not only a way to protect her sister, but to protect every Genasi in existence. A *really* good story doesn’t stop at the first goal met. Life’s not like that. When I was a teenager my goal was to go on a date. I did that and then my goals changed. D&D is the same. Goals change, they evolve. One success (or failure) might lead to another goal, and so on and so forth. And a good DM/GM knows that. They know that a story doesn’t just end when you succeed… that’s when it really starts to unfold.
My Grave Cleric was devoted to Kelevmor. In the particular monastery they were from on rising in rank each acolyte received a tattoo to dedicate them to him. During the tattoo ceremony the artist making the tattoo was overcome and they received a tattoo of another God and my Cleric is now on a quest to find out why this god they had never heard of has called them. DM loved it as it gives him so much to be able to play with
My son's hexblade is searching for fragments of the shattered blade, similar to the broken Yamato blade from the Devil May Cry franchise. Finding fragments to rebuild helps him level and progress the story. The artificier wants to build the first airship in millenia, so searching for ancient magitech manuals. Fighter is trying to rebuild his clan. I didn't know personal quests weren't a thing lol.
@andrewpeli9019 Well, I'm blessed that my family plays together, three generations. I grew up with my father as the DM, now I am the DM for my mother, my Wife, my son, and my cousins.
Heck yeah! I grabbed the ancestral weapon supplement on DM’s guild that Ginny D mentioned a while back. Gave me a bunch of ideas for incrementally leveling up the magic weapon I built for my son in our game
I tend to build a personal quest into most of my characters, but my table isn't really roleplay centric so I sometimes feel like the effort I put into my characters is wasted on this style of play. It's still fun, but I wish the other players were more willing to engage in roleplay and character interaction
I've been playing in a 5e D&D game for going on five years now. We are now level 20 and heading into epic play. When we first created our characters, I provided a fairly comprehensive backstory for my GM which included parents, family, close friends, a manor house, guild relationships, etc.. (Note: 'nothing' in that backstory 'required' that the GM follow up on it.) My character had basically just finished his 50 year apprenticeship as a dwarven smith and had basically been 'set free' of his forge. The other players had provided virtually nothing. Suffice to say my character's family, their manor, my friends, my guild relationships, all of it featured very strongly all through the game, even now at level 20. 'Many' quests were tied to those background characters, from the masterwork dwarven armor my dwarven father smith had spent the last ten years forging for me being stolen, to my older brother being kidnapped by our arch enemies. Quests were personally generated by my character simply because, for instance, I wanted to procure two potions of rejuvination for my parents and it required ingredients. (I am expecting new siblings.)
This was literally just perfect timing my dudes! I have the session zero for Rime of the Frostmaiden coming up on the weekend and you can bet I am going to use personal quests in addition to the character secrets! Thanks for the great inspiration!
The secrets are also a great starting point for these. For example, I had a player who chose the reincarnated secret whose personal quest was to restore himself to his human form.
I just started DMing a Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign too. I love the secrets mechanic. I knew my gaming group pretty well and most of them were pretty easy to work with, so I had a surprisingly easy time working the secrets cards into very personalized backgrounds. I even assigned two cards per player, so lots of secrets will pop up. Basically I had each player give me a rough run down on what they wanted the background to be and I worked with them to incorporate the secrets into their background rather than randomly drawing from the deck. This gave them agency over their own background but still kept the cards pretty much intact in their intent and function. For example, I gave my barbarian the Reghed Heir card and the Owlbear whisperer, but instead of Owlbears it's Sabertooth Tigers since he's from the Tiger Tribe and has a natural bond with sabertooths. And to make the secret even better, he (the player) was raised by one of the other tribes and has no idea his mother is a psychotic Auril worshiper. I have another player who really wanted to play a dragon, which I was like, sorry no on but I worked out a compromise. Altering the Doppelganger card, he's instead a dragon who was turned into a human by Bahamut in order to fufill a very specific mission that only a humanoid could do (destroying the chardyln mockery of a dragon and it's dragon-heart fueled forge). Rime is great for innately tying the characters to the story, and the secrets probably weren't intended for players with... such specific background ideas. But with liberal doses of creativity and planning, I managed to make everyone's backstories work, tie into the existing cards and still somehow not be overly game breaking.
This is absolutely my favorite part of DND. To me, if someone can run the game decently well, interweaving personal stories and quests into and among the main thread can take a good DM to a great one. Well done dudes!
My dm gave each of our characters two side quests in between sessions that related to our character backgrounds. It was a ton of fun and really helped me out with my first character because I learned how to play one on one with my dm rather than a whole crew.
Love having the added depth of personal quests in my Drakkenheim campaign. I did one additional step during session 0 that really helped my players and I plan to repeat for any future campaigns. I laid out a very high-level list of the major themes/tensions that we were likely to explore and then suggested that if they were especially drawn to one or more of those topics, making it the foundation of their personal quest was a great way to make sure we spent time on it in the narrative. One player really wasn't certain what kind of quest they wanted to pursue, so knowing the themes that interested them also gave me a good starting point for some suggestions.
Another timeless contribution to the hobby 👌 thanks, Dudes. Even "pregen" backstories or cards can be a huge help and save a ton of time and headaches.
I just discovered this channel the other day and I love how you guys really go into specific examples and the insights you have for each of them! I really like the idea of specifically incorporating a quest of some sort in the beginning to really tie in a character into the world in some way- I try to really talk through the backstory with my DMs, but this is a great tool to bring to the table early on! One of my DMs is really good at weaving in individual personal quests and goals within the story, and one thing she's been great at is actually peppering in personal character quests throughout the game! For instance, my bladesinger ended up trading her memories for information to a group of fey, not realizing it involved all of her memories of her family. So now she has a new personal quest of rediscovering and retrieving those memories, and the DM has been able to through other NPCs and hints give my character clues as to first what she lost, and now starting to get clues as to ways she may be able to get those memories back. This is a personal quest that I wouldn't have had in the beginning since my character had never encountered fey, but has been really integral to her growth and evolution.
None of my players got together to talk about their backstories, but every single one of them has a very similar backstory of all of them being the sole survivor of something. One of them has a missing wife in it as well, so normally that concept of having only 1 revenge story would work, but in my case now I can pit an entire organization against them. So far I have tied 2 character backstories together. It's going to be great, they are hunting after someone who only has a title and no name or face yet, so I can weave in so many story beats in this concept.
I love those quests that involve collecting a bunch of smaller things to make one big one, like collecting parts of a magic relic or the wizard collecting all the spells. I have one character I hope to play some day whose entire goal is to gather unique ingredients for a potion that will cure a unique disease they have!
I’m playing in a Westmarch-style campaign and my artificer’s a battle-smith with a “robot” from ancient times. The Steel Defender (his name’s Mark… Like Mark I, Mark II, Mark III) is his pride and joy. He spends hours every night tinkering on him and having conversation with him. His entire goal is to have Mark be capable of full survival and autonomy by the time he (my character) passes on. He sees the innate “life” within the creation and feels it is something beautiful and should be it’s own thing. I don’t think any Warforged exist in the campaign so far, so I think the DM(s) are piecing a story together to have my character and Mark become the sort of “birth” of warforged in our campaign.
I had a party where one character had the personal goal of always being drunk. So for them I wrote a Feywild prison break / heist! PCs needed to infiltrate an Archfey’s Grand Ball to find a legendary brew master (a halfling or gnome). Who was made immortal then trapped by the Archfey so that they always had the best parties with the best mead, brews and wines in all of the Feywild. The brew master knew how to make a mead that took longer than others to be metabolized. So it caused anyone who drank it to stay buzzed for half a tenday!
A player in my game was an Aasimar whose adopted human father paraded her around and started a cult because of her abilities. Her backstory explained how she got away but she started the campaign by resolving to go back and break the people free from bondage to the cult.
The advice about asking about player expectations with personal quests is really important, much more important than many might think. I've had players before who seemed really unengaged in terms of coming up with backstories and trying to pursue things from them in the game, but when I tried to engage them by giving them quests that tied in to what little they gave me but didn't meet their (apparently solidified) expectations, they were really upset. Some players have expectations and never tell you until you ask.
Here are some notes from my campaign guide on personal quests. The first two main bullets were for me, while the last two were shared with the players. Maybe this could be useful to someone. Personal quest ideas * Initial arc or completion should occur in the first 2-4 levels * An arc is part of a multi-part story that has 2-4 parts * If the personal quest can be completed in the early stages, a secondary quest will develop from the story or the character will discover what they thought was the finish was the first part * Each locations or areas, organizations, or other game element tied to a personal quest should link to quests for one or more other players * Ideas * Emotional * Revenge / Kill * Rescue / Save * Find/locate someone * Racial / Religious * Pay off debt * Knowledge * Solve a puzzle * Gain skill / spell * Lorekeeper * Lost relic * Find a master * Achievement * First to … * Title or Role * Land / Home / Stronghold * Item or ability * Conflict / Resolution * Save people / location * Remove curse * Destroy/disable organization * Stop / start war * Confront nemesis * Why is just as important as What, so that DM can insert obstacles and craft rewards tied to quest * Why is what makes it personal and not just “a quest”
I really like the "paying debt to Hexblade patron," "break a curse," and "duel for inheritance" personal quests. Looking forward to seeing them play out in a campaign some day
One revenge plot and one love story plot, but players can have the same one. The loved one is either family or funny 2 lovers. The revenge plot having two characters want to get revenge on the same character is an instant bond and powerful side quest.
One of the player's I dm for got the Drakenhiem books and convinced our group to do a campaign. I am excited to play because I workshop my character and his backstory with him. I gave him the ideas of the people involved in my character's backstory and gave him the leeway involve them how he sees fit, with the possibility that my character may turn evil with whatever he discovers.
One I have in my ongoing game right now is one of my players character is slowly learning to read the ancient language of the area they found themselves involved in. I'm giving him notes and things he can't read and slowly allow him chances to study and gather more of the keys to deciphering it! When he finishes, or even shortly before, when he has enough letters, that in turn will move plot forwards and the party begins to understand the scripts, runes and books they find!
One of the characters in my Drakkenheim game has the personal quest to kill a faction leader. We decided his only brother was killed and he is holding the faction leader personally responsible. Because the player gave me agency to initiate this motivation, it was a powerful moment at the table when it was revealed the brother was dead. It also gave me some interesting twists to play with when the party finally met the faction leader he was after.
Still running this campaign but its first time I have been DM and it's all new players that are my coworkers. One of them wanted to be a ranger with a bear companion but the bear is his brother that got turned by a witch in a forest. His brother bear has been a fantastic part of the group dynamic as the whole party knows and they work towards finding a way to turn him back.
Just got done with a campaign where I was able to tie all the players back stories together and to the main quest. Being able to do this is very rewarding not just for the players but also the DM.
I'm about 8 minutes but I couldn't stop thinking about Joe and Wrath when talking about this subject. Even if his thing with Bruce and all that kinda seemed like a meme at first, he has been so invested that I find it amazing. Wrath always goes like: "Am I about to ruin the whole multiverse just because my cat told me to do it? Of course", "Should I stick my hand in there in order to understand the secrets of the cosmos? You bet!", "Do I care about my cat than about my own health? Duuuhh" and so on. I would love it if someday you guy took the time to explore that with him on a video like this. I feel like Joe is THE player every DM should have in their table.
I think something I saw on RUclips could be a great personal quest for my lore bard character: She would need the Magic Mouth spell, achieving fourth level to do it (she wouldn't jeopardize her allies by making that almost "useless" second level spell her first one at Level 3 but take Invisibility or something similar first, THEN take Magic Mouth). The purpose? To create the equivalent of a "computer" for her town. She would need lots of gold since the spell costs money, the approval of the king since she'd need to place these Magic Mouths all over town, etc. This is a nice, achievable, incremental, quantifiable goal.
In my current campaign, we were told to create a person as part of our background that was important to us but was lost to us. This was only shared with the DM and we've worked 2 out of 3 players stories into the campaign so far.
I remember one campaign my brother ran where I had a personal quest tied to my Inheritor background. There is this tiny cage with no door containing a small creature something like one of the fairies from the Zelda games. My family has been pacing this cage down and trying to release this thing for generations, and now it's my turn. He also really did rather well hooking it into the main plot by revealing at some point that my cage contains a goddess my family worships, who is also one of the BBEG's targets that we will need to help take the BBEG down.
The first campaign I ever played in (4e) did this naturally. All of us had a quest embedded in our backstory. This wasn't something demanded by the DM, we just did this naturally. The DM broke the campaign into 3 arcs that spanned the Heroic, Paragon, and Epic tiers of the 4e game. During the Heroic tier, our backstories didn't come up as the DM wanted to take the first 10 levels to get familiar with the world and it overall narrative, but it was during the Paragon tier that all of our backstories started to come out and all 6 of our stories were woven together into the main narrative. Only a few seemed like mere side quests; most were integral to the main plot. I loved the hell out of that first campaign! It made me a D&D player for life. When I DMed the next campaign following that one (my first), i did the same thing and wove the players' backstories into the narrative. I don't know any other way to do it, honestly.
It's really funny that Kelly mentioned A Link to the Past in the Lost Loved One section, for a Curse of Strahd character my character pretty much borrowed heavily from Zelda II in that she was safe in a mausoleum but I needed to find a way to save her. Great plot device but like Monty said it can go pretty sour without the proper expectations
Oh wow, this is some great food for thought. I've had some sessions that spotlight a player, and I try to spread that around, but a full on quest? This is going to be added to my next campaign for sure! (Level 17 right now in my current campaign, a bit late to wedge this in.)
This is great. I have a player who's maternal figure, a dragon, was kidnapped by cultists and these tips will help me tie in that quest. Bonus that I think this rescue can be at odds with the quest of another player acting as a dilemma.
Since running Drakkenheim I have introduced personal quests for my campaigns. It's a stroke of genius and gives the players significantly more 'skin in the game'.
It is so tricky to do this with a group. The reward is great but it is not so easy to bind all this together. If you are lucky you as a DM have easy backstorys links that intertwine several players in there own quests (like the antagonist has links to player 1 and 2, player 3's backstory has a link somewhere down the road). In my latest campaign I got lucky and the linking-points in the backstorys where quite easy to figure out. A better session zero on my side can fix this 😅 All in all a great way of bonding the party together and give the players more agency in your campaigns. Great that you shined a light on the topic ❤
I don't use this exact method, but I do always start a campaign by giving the players the first quest hook in advance and having them develop a motivation to go on it and also to keep questing afterwards. The most successful use of this was in my Ancient Aliens campaign. The starting quest was investigating an island that had been hit by a meteor, and a few previous groups had gone there but not reported back. The PC motivations went as follows: - One wanted to find her long-estranged brother, who she believed had been recruited into a criminal gang who sent an expedition to the island. This was correct, but he had already left the island before the party arrived. She used connections made on the island to find him, but by that point it had become clear that the cult they had both fled as children was a key part of the main plot, and she devoted herself to taking them down. - One was a security guard for a wizard college who had also sent an expedition to the island. Even though he could only sort of cast spells, he wanted to get the respect of the academics. He was able to rescue the expedition leader and then continued with the party to research the ancient alien stuff, uncovering lots of secrets to report back to the wizard college and gain a reputation despite his lack of magical ability. - One was a veteran of the anti-demon crusades who thought there might be demons on the island due to rumors of monsters. There weren't any demons, but the player deliberately played his character (a DoomGuy knockoff) as delusional, and he quickly decided that aliens are demons and anyone working with them are demon-worshippers, and therefore continued on the quest to slay them all. - One was searching for his father figure, who ran off without a word on the night the meteor fell, leaving behind a medallion with a strange symbol on it. He had learned that his father had gotten on a boat and speculated that it was to the island. This was incorrect, and the PC has still failed to find his father after a pretty long campaign (I probably shouldn't have stretched it this long, but there's a really fun reveal for him at the end), but he has found the symbol from that medallion several times, so the ancient aliens definitely have something to do with the disappearance. - One just wanted money and was hoping to harvest valuable skymetals from the meteor. He actually did get some, but he's a spendthrift, so he decided to keep questing with the party to find more ancient alien artifacts and materials to sell.
I’m a first time DM, 2nd time playing DnD (played one 15 session campaign last year). I spent 6 months planning my campaign which is a Lovecraftian horror adventure set in Faerun specifically the North-west portion of the map which encompasses Waterdeep, High Forest, Neverwinter and much more. The map is 650 miles North to South and 600 miles East to West so a lot of room to play with… spent about 2 months learning most of the lore of the locales and history of that part of the world so as not contradict pre-established lore (2 members of the group are kind of DnD buffs) and then planted Lovecraft Country locations within, Miskatonic Uni, Dunwich, Innsmouth etc. I wrote 30+ side quests with branching narratives and multiple endings with more than enough wiggle room for the players to do whatever they wanted to gain different endings. Hours and hours coming up with certain “random” encounters that feel natural due to location and time of day. Homebrewed several pages worth of armours, weapons and trinkets… really difficult when you think you’ve come up with a great idea only to realise it’s already been made 😂 I started off by having the adventurers be at Level 3 due to the main quest needing “people of some reputation”. In Session 0, I said to the group “come up with a story that’s put you within earshot of several people of interest”, I then said that personal quests and stories would be fantastic if they wanted to have backstories that tell tales…go nuts. One personal quest has been completed (the group are Level 8 now) with 2 other personal quests in the early stages. Lastly, they’ve recently acquired a large stagecoach which is now an on the road home which is upgradable by visiting wainwrights which are located in different settlements mostly cities. Even though I’m a first time DM, I’m having an absolute blast telling stories every weekend and I must say that you guys gave me a lot of inspiration as I was V nervous when beginning and wished to be as descriptive as possible but allowing for theatre of the mind to take over. All in all, I’m loving my time DMing and have ideas for other campaigns too… one at a time though 😅
When I began a new campaign last summer, I offered my players an introductory 1-on-1 session (about 2 hours apiece) prior to the first proper session. It took a few weeks to coordinate the moving parts, but each PC had their own mini-adventure as a prelude to them getting together as a party. One was investigating a murder, one was entrapped into a plot to assassinate a noble, another protecting a holy relic, a fourth checking out curious earth tremors, etc. My players got to really get a feel for their new PCs, making decisions which would have ramifications later in the campaign. They also got a chance to act out their PCs' respective behaviors and personalities without the pressure of other players viewing those interactions. The net effect was that each of the players were *super* bought-in to the campaign come session 1! I'd never had everyone at the table simultaneously raring to go like that before. It fell apart due to reasons outside my control, but it was a blast for the ~6 months it lasted.
Great advice. You mention you go over the personal quests during session zero. I think this is fine for experienced players or those enthusiastic about jumping in. I caution asking players new to ttrpgs to do this in session zero. Give them time to adjust to the game and circle back if needed to work personal quests in.
My group was split due to scheduling issues, one of the players picked up DMing a side quest for them, meanwhile I DMed only for him. He had to stay in town due to a curse -fight with specters left him with 4max HP and we decided this is permanent. He reached out to few people and said something that really shaped this small personal arc: if this changes anything, I'm an echo knight. That one line gave birth to mentor NPC, someone who he knew but did not trust, and that led to amazing Bleach-esque Ichigo-Urahara training arc, defeating your inner self to learn a bit more about it, that echo is not only a tool. What started as a filler downtime quest, ended up as a tear-squeezing epic personal arc.
in "ye olden days" of past editions, I would tie personal quests to the gain of significant class skills. With 5E, they gain most of the major things by L3 so it's tough to squeeze those gains into a quest form. But you should still be able to weave higher level class skill gains into personal quests.
I love this, and now with the BG3 being out, I love how they are linked to both inspiration and backgrounds So the backgrounds have to be linked to the personal quest, and then making a step directly towards it - you gain inspiration.
From the offset, I told my DM that my character's parents had left on a quest when she was a child and never returned. I set the expectation that I wanted to find out what happened to them with the understanding that I was fine with them being long dead and I just wanted solving the mystery of what happened as my personal quest. The DM realized that if he made my character be from a certain location on the map, he could tie my backstory to another player's backstory and helping him with his quest would solve my mystery. Events unfolded and we never resolved things the way I had hoped due to a third player character throwing a wrench into the system, but I still love what my DM did with my character's goal and how he worked it into something I could bond with another player over.
This got me thinking, and now I have a more achievable side goal to the main personal quest(which I actually intended to not be resolved completely, only getting a temporary solution as long as the character is alive). Thinking about where that side path could lead might make it something aboutvas hard to fully accomplish, but there are many milestones along the way. Like Spirit Shroud specifically being my Patron finally accepting enough of my character to show herself. And the thing that gets me to tear up just thinking about it, the realization that my patron is still suffering from the shared trauma of what she freed our Clan from, but even more so from her suffering through something similar, alone, right before that. I think the ultimate goal is to add my patron to my family, and bring her back from death; possibly one being a needed catalyst for the other. She needs a good hug. Every day. For the rest of her life. And significantly more often, if possible.
Great video guys, I always love seeing advice that's applicable to any setting and system. Personal quests have always been a huge part of how I run campaigns. It's free content and free player engagement. My current campaign has lasted for more than 8 years now just by asking, "What would you like to do now?" and finding hooks that tie the plot back to things they're already invested in.
I hit the "urgency" brick wall immediately in a West Marches Campaign where my personal quest was "find the loved one." I didn't play often enough for my character to take action searching for them. XD
I had a character with a bucket list of 100 things he wanted to do. Some of them were like kiss a princess, ride a dragon or cast a spell (he was a fighter). The best part was I let the game master and the other players pick 15 each of the goals. They came up with some great ideas and got them invested. Most of th were small and got handled during downtime. Most of the time when we had downtime the players would grab the bucket list and see what we as a group could accomplish. So much fun.
Funny that you drop this just as I'm about to start playing in a Drakkenheim campaign and the party just finished picking their personal goals. Having that list was a big help, whether we picked one or used it to make our own. I'll be playing a Clockwork Soul Aasimar wants to study the contamination so they can contain it and cleanse it from the rest of the country.
Been doing the solos since the 80s. They aren't always necessary, depends on the group, but they really can add a lot. Gets players really into it and Player (not PC) buy-in matters more in RPGs than say a game of Axis and Allies or Monopoly. First one I did for a player was in 8th grade so circa '81 and he wanted to raise the ship's bell of the boat his friend died on. It helped me a lot as new and learning DM and it's still a great way to extra fun to a full campaign. Player had a blast too, so I kept it as an option for players that liked that kind of thing ever since.
Our DM is giving us some unique personal quest backstory resolution stuff. Our cleric took control of their inherited manor in the feywild. Everyone is essentially getting a custom weapon/spell/feat tailored to their story and character. Right now we're in the midst of a major political intrigue subplot involving my character's home city and her revolutionary ideals set against the historical trend of the town. It's been spectacular both to witness other characters shine and to be the main character for an arc, and our DM has done such a delightful job bringing all of this together for us
First time I have backed one of the products you guys highlight at the beginning of the episode. Nimble sounds like it could benefit any 5E game and it's affordable!
The "save the loved one" quest works well with some kind of magical stasis IMO, it removes direct mortal danger and time limits, but still keeps them trapped and in need of saving Maybe they are stuck in a pocket dimension or another plane, maybe they've been petrified, maybe they got Deck-of-Many-Things'd and are now in a magical cryotube thingy, maybe they've been polymorphed and kept in a cage, maybe they've been sucked into/turned into a (possibly now sentient) magic item... this also works with them being captured and kept as a prisoner or slave by some villain, or even an esoteric creature like a Fae who isn't evil per se but very much has still trapped the loved one forever for their own weird reasons
I have all my players with a personal quest a family heirloom magic item that fits their class and story. I add abilities to the magic item when they complete parts of their quest line through game play. It let's me give unique rewards to the players and get around the attunement rules. My players love it because they are seeing their family's power and history come to life.
As soon as you said 'specific' goals, I thought of SMART objectives: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time Based. I know it's a cheesy personal development tool, but making sure a goal relates to these five aspects could help the players keep focussed on the campaign.
Thank you for the help! I am trying VERY hard to engage my players through personal quests. My monastery-raised-all-out-sacred-flame-zealot monk was very heavily skewing the direction of the story towards the Silver Order. I knew there was no way any of the party were going to get through to him. So I thought, hey, why not let him talk to the St. Vitruvio personally? Enter a vampire spell caster boss (yeah, at lvl 2 XD) under St. Brenna and a “miraculous” Deus-Ex Machina save from a “simple mercenary” NPC who was tagging along, only to turn out to be St. Vitruvio in the flesh (planetar XD). So yeah, after an epic fight, resurrection of his sister (who was killed outright in the fight) and the ceremony to pass the Sceptre of St. V. to the monk, he is now much more humble, reasonable and even willing to speak to Lucretia Mathias))) Oh, and BTW, our Delirium Soul Sorcerer? Well that guy was the spell focus and the material component for a ritual performed by the arch mage of Drakkenheim that went awry and literally summoned the Meteor 15 years ago XD I wonder how my party will react to this)))
I love my players PCs, and throwing things into the campaign that allow for opportunities for character growth or change is just the icing on the cake.
Love the videos as always!!!! Helping me grow as a player and dungeon master! On the topic one of my players has a missing person personal goal and her family member isn't dead just yet lost there only hints were a few letters about his upcoming journeys and so far she's enjoying the hunt I can't wait to reveal him as an unwilling villain
You can center the personal quest on one of your character’s flaws such as the hermit flaw of becoming a hermit to escape people hunting you, the personal quest is now to face them either as a means of revenge or redemption. You could leave that one open so that when the time comes the character’s development throughout the campaign will determine whether its redemption or revenge.
Personal quest to find the "Riddle of Fire." Made a Cleric of Kossuth. I was like 14 tears old and my 26 yr old brother was very strict with lore. I picked Kossuth because he had very limited lore and my brother couldn't tell me I was playing him wrongly. My best friend played a Barbarian named Magma. We were both zealots with a personal quest for the answer to the Riddle of Fire (Conan). "Magma, tell them your testimony." 😂 ❤ This was very easy for the DM to let run for half the campaign and let us use a wish to unlock how the Riddle of Fire works. 🎉
My favorite personal quest to give a new player that can't come up with one on their own that they are satisfied with, is them being in debt to the mob. Always so fun.
One of the first times I saw something similar to this was in The Odyssey of The Dragonlords that was on Kickstarter. It was so fun for players to make choices that impacted the game in meaningful ways and yank the rug out for some of the choices they made during the campaign.
I think this is what one of my DM does that has made that game the one game I genuinely can not wait for. In my case i laid out the frame work for many directions with my character's backstory. Now her biological father may be one of our BBEGs along side another player's former rival who is also our boss that we have been forced to work with. Honestly getting this right changes the table because not only are we more invested in our characters but also eachothers
I've always thought that searching for a magic item for the wrong reason was a fun idea. For example a dwarf who can't grow a beard goes searching for the Belt of Dwarvenkind because of its beard growing property.
In my homebrew world, the ruling regarding the procreation of changelings is that the baby will always share the same race as the mother (with the only exception if both parents are changelings, which then the baby will be a doppelganger). So, I had all of the players be half-siblings. The NPC, being a changeling, who gathered the players for a funeral ceremony. They were given their heritage which was a homebrew MacGuffin and were tasked to retrieve it. The campaign led into Storm King's Thunder, and there was a moment when it was hinted that the party's father may still be alive. They discovered that he was indeed dead, when they found Harshnag, paying respects to the burial site of the characters' father.
One of my DMs made me a personal quest. My character was just away from his family, as a noble, travelling and experiencing the world. Then a Greatwyrm attacks the neighbouring country that he’s travelling in. Now there needs to be unity but his country and this one are having some military tension. His family controls one section of the country which is a republic of states. And his mother is running against his family’s more paranoid rival Lord for overall leadership. So now he has to go home to resolve the tension. Sadly his mother died but he, now Lord as his father also died, managed to come to an accord with the rival Lord. Sadly due to the becoming a Lord I retired the character but gave the party another Ranger from his country as a replacement. Different subclass though.
I unfortunately don't have a group to play with:( But I have created 12 different Lvl 1 Characters in case I found a group. 1 is a Chaotic Neutral Female High Elf Sage background Ranger planning Drakewarden Sub-Class. Her long-term end game quest is to Master all Languages and establish an educational Library/Museum back in her Homeland. 1 is a Chaotic Neutral Female Astral Elf Anthropologist background Paladin planning Oath of Conquest Sub-Class. Her long-term end game quest is to Conquer part of the Mortal/Material Plane establishing a new Queendom & new Pantheon made up of primarily Dead/Lost/Weakened Deities. 1 of them is a Chaotic Neutral Male Mountain Dwarf Runecarver background Wizard planning School of Necromancy Sub-Class. His long-term end game quest is to reclaim his ancestral Homeland & achieve Apotheosis/Immortality so he can eternally guard his people. The other 9 characters have some other quests/goals but they are too detailed for posting here.
A personal quest i used was that my twin was missing whilst investigation a terrifying orginastion and left me a panicked message before disappearing. Eventually it turned out to be that she had become the leader of that orginisation and left me with the choice of destroying the organisation including her or persuade her to leave it
Princess Bride references appreciated. It would be wonderful if somehow two PCs had personal quests that were actually two sides of the same story. Buttercup the Pirate Hunter seeking revenge for her beloved Wesley. Just an idea.
The last personal quest I had run for my character was a mix of revenge and missing person. A mad scientist killed my character's wife and kidnapped his daughter. Midway through, he was forced to decide between saving his daughter and getting revenge. He opted to do both with a twinned Vortex Warp. He got his daughter away from the aboleth cell and warped the villain into it. The aboleth killed the scientist, and we had to fight it.
The best part is, this concept is literally the memorable moments of BG3. Karlach's engine, Cazador, Shadowheart's memories, Wyll's pact, etc etc etc.
A variant of the saving a loved one quest could be that you have a loved one that's either petrified by abnormal means and needs a special reagent or item to reverse the effect.
Alternatively they're under the effects of a potent curse, magical effect, or disease, and they've been either petrified or put under the effects of the Sequester spell, or otherwise contained to give you time to find the cure, takes away the time pressure of not wanting them to be dead before you complete the quest.
Another fun one could be the Estate. A wealthy person has gone missing, possibly a relation, and it is your task to find them. Either they are alive and well, and you get the glory of bringing them back, or they're dead and the persons Estate can then be settled, maybe leading to a rich reward.
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure?
I had a character who was turned to stone. I took over her NPC best friend and quested for about 1.5 years to return the original PC. Then the original PC died in the subsequent session. 😢
Another variant: Seeking one to love! I had a character who was a stonemason. He was itinerant, but from a renowned family, and since the extended family lived in a secluded river valley when not on a major project, he had to seek both employment and a mate outside of his home village (Japanese setting). A bolt of silk was a particular treasure, because he was basically gathering bride-gifts to impress some family, for when he met the right girl. (As an adventurer he uncovered mysteries, weakened structures, and wielded a sledge hammer when necessary!)
Another Variant: rescuing a loved one from a previous life. The pc made it out of an impoverished life and wants to return to their origins and bring their lover/family/etc out of that life (think A Knights Tale)
I have only been running games for about 5 years but there has always been something missing and this was it. Thank you for covering this topic, your insights are invaluable!
22 years of GMing and I feel the same
I’ve always incorporated a a personal quest into my own character’s backstories, and was baffled when I realized how many players just come to the table with no set goals. Definitely using this advice when I run my next campaign!
I was the same until I realized that literally none of my DMs ever used anything in my backstory, especially not when I finally got an arc supposedly written around my character. If that were truly the case, my DM managed to remember every single detail wrong...
So now I only keep things as detailed as I need for roleplay purposes these days. 😅
@@TheMightyBattleSquidSame here, backstories are all for me to get a better grasp on my Character now and I just give my DM some bullet points of my backstory/npc from my last
One thing to consider is to make sure that the personal quest doesn't make the character feel like they no longer need to adventure. For example, if they find their missing loved one and get them to safety, will they continue on with the main story with the rest of the party, or go home now that they have what they went adventuring for in the first place. Probably something that would need to be discussed at session zero, also. 😉
Flipside to this: this is a great way to retire a character if the story is about to move on to another phase and the player is the type to be happy to have resolved their PC's adventure and wants to try a new PC. As above though, to be discussed beforehand.
My DM is absolutely bonkers good at this.
Vyse, if you’re reading this, you’re a god damned king and I love you.
My fiancée’s character came into the game somewhat late (a player dropped out and my fiancée stepped in) and she found her long-lost (kidnapped/enslaved) sister. After the rescue it wasn’t just a “You found her! Hooray!” kind of thing. Now they’re hunted, as Genasi of any form are “rare curiosities” in this world. Now my fiancée’s goal is to find not only a way to protect her sister, but to protect every Genasi in existence.
A *really* good story doesn’t stop at the first goal met. Life’s not like that. When I was a teenager my goal was to go on a date. I did that and then my goals changed. D&D is the same. Goals change, they evolve. One success (or failure) might lead to another goal, and so on and so forth. And a good DM/GM knows that. They know that a story doesn’t just end when you succeed… that’s when it really starts to unfold.
My Grave Cleric was devoted to Kelevmor. In the particular monastery they were from on rising in rank each acolyte received a tattoo to dedicate them to him. During the tattoo ceremony the artist making the tattoo was overcome and they received a tattoo of another God and my Cleric is now on a quest to find out why this god they had never heard of has called them. DM loved it as it gives him so much to be able to play with
Love this idea.
My son's hexblade is searching for fragments of the shattered blade, similar to the broken Yamato blade from the Devil May Cry franchise. Finding fragments to rebuild helps him level and progress the story.
The artificier wants to build the first airship in millenia, so searching for ancient magitech manuals.
Fighter is trying to rebuild his clan.
I didn't know personal quests weren't a thing lol.
Sounds like you have motivated players! Things do often flow organically when everyone is invested into the game.
@andrewpeli9019 Well, I'm blessed that my family plays together, three generations. I grew up with my father as the DM, now I am the DM for my mother, my Wife, my son, and my cousins.
Heck yeah! I grabbed the ancestral weapon supplement on DM’s guild that Ginny D mentioned a while back. Gave me a bunch of ideas for incrementally leveling up the magic weapon I built for my son in our game
@waltflood3224 sounds awesome. I might have to look at it. I like to home brew a lot, but inspiration can be found everywhere!
I tend to build a personal quest into most of my characters, but my table isn't really roleplay centric so I sometimes feel like the effort I put into my characters is wasted on this style of play. It's still fun, but I wish the other players were more willing to engage in roleplay and character interaction
“I want to rescue a loved one” = “now they must be a villain” got me good and I love it 😂😂
I've been playing in a 5e D&D game for going on five years now. We are now level 20 and heading into epic play. When we first created our characters, I provided a fairly comprehensive backstory for my GM which included parents, family, close friends, a manor house, guild relationships, etc.. (Note: 'nothing' in that backstory 'required' that the GM follow up on it.) My character had basically just finished his 50 year apprenticeship as a dwarven smith and had basically been 'set free' of his forge. The other players had provided virtually nothing. Suffice to say my character's family, their manor, my friends, my guild relationships, all of it featured very strongly all through the game, even now at level 20. 'Many' quests were tied to those background characters, from the masterwork dwarven armor my dwarven father smith had spent the last ten years forging for me being stolen, to my older brother being kidnapped by our arch enemies. Quests were personally generated by my character simply because, for instance, I wanted to procure two potions of rejuvination for my parents and it required ingredients. (I am expecting new siblings.)
This was literally just perfect timing my dudes! I have the session zero for Rime of the Frostmaiden coming up on the weekend and you can bet I am going to use personal quests in addition to the character secrets!
Thanks for the great inspiration!
The secrets are also a great starting point for these. For example, I had a player who chose the reincarnated secret whose personal quest was to restore himself to his human form.
I just started DMing a Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign too. I love the secrets mechanic. I knew my gaming group pretty well and most of them were pretty easy to work with, so I had a surprisingly easy time working the secrets cards into very personalized backgrounds. I even assigned two cards per player, so lots of secrets will pop up. Basically I had each player give me a rough run down on what they wanted the background to be and I worked with them to incorporate the secrets into their background rather than randomly drawing from the deck. This gave them agency over their own background but still kept the cards pretty much intact in their intent and function. For example, I gave my barbarian the Reghed Heir card and the Owlbear whisperer, but instead of Owlbears it's Sabertooth Tigers since he's from the Tiger Tribe and has a natural bond with sabertooths. And to make the secret even better, he (the player) was raised by one of the other tribes and has no idea his mother is a psychotic Auril worshiper. I have another player who really wanted to play a dragon, which I was like, sorry no on but I worked out a compromise. Altering the Doppelganger card, he's instead a dragon who was turned into a human by Bahamut in order to fufill a very specific mission that only a humanoid could do (destroying the chardyln mockery of a dragon and it's dragon-heart fueled forge). Rime is great for innately tying the characters to the story, and the secrets probably weren't intended for players with... such specific background ideas. But with liberal doses of creativity and planning, I managed to make everyone's backstories work, tie into the existing cards and still somehow not be overly game breaking.
This is absolutely my favorite part of DND. To me, if someone can run the game decently well, interweaving personal stories and quests into and among the main thread can take a good DM to a great one. Well done dudes!
My dm gave each of our characters two side quests in between sessions that related to our character backgrounds. It was a ton of fun and really helped me out with my first character because I learned how to play one on one with my dm rather than a whole crew.
Love having the added depth of personal quests in my Drakkenheim campaign. I did one additional step during session 0 that really helped my players and I plan to repeat for any future campaigns. I laid out a very high-level list of the major themes/tensions that we were likely to explore and then suggested that if they were especially drawn to one or more of those topics, making it the foundation of their personal quest was a great way to make sure we spent time on it in the narrative. One player really wasn't certain what kind of quest they wanted to pursue, so knowing the themes that interested them also gave me a good starting point for some suggestions.
Ooh, nice! *stealing*
These two are seriously the best. Legit youtube comfort food for me.
Another timeless contribution to the hobby 👌 thanks, Dudes. Even "pregen" backstories or cards can be a huge help and save a ton of time and headaches.
I just discovered this channel the other day and I love how you guys really go into specific examples and the insights you have for each of them! I really like the idea of specifically incorporating a quest of some sort in the beginning to really tie in a character into the world in some way- I try to really talk through the backstory with my DMs, but this is a great tool to bring to the table early on!
One of my DMs is really good at weaving in individual personal quests and goals within the story, and one thing she's been great at is actually peppering in personal character quests throughout the game! For instance, my bladesinger ended up trading her memories for information to a group of fey, not realizing it involved all of her memories of her family. So now she has a new personal quest of rediscovering and retrieving those memories, and the DM has been able to through other NPCs and hints give my character clues as to first what she lost, and now starting to get clues as to ways she may be able to get those memories back. This is a personal quest that I wouldn't have had in the beginning since my character had never encountered fey, but has been really integral to her growth and evolution.
I appreciate that this game advice is (99%) system agnostic. Good stuff.
None of my players got together to talk about their backstories, but every single one of them has a very similar backstory of all of them being the sole survivor of something. One of them has a missing wife in it as well, so normally that concept of having only 1 revenge story would work, but in my case now I can pit an entire organization against them. So far I have tied 2 character backstories together. It's going to be great, they are hunting after someone who only has a title and no name or face yet, so I can weave in so many story beats in this concept.
So bringing SMART goals to personal quests - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.
👍.
I love those quests that involve collecting a bunch of smaller things to make one big one, like collecting parts of a magic relic or the wizard collecting all the spells. I have one character I hope to play some day whose entire goal is to gather unique ingredients for a potion that will cure a unique disease they have!
I’m playing in a Westmarch-style campaign and my artificer’s a battle-smith with a “robot” from ancient times. The Steel Defender (his name’s Mark… Like Mark I, Mark II, Mark III) is his pride and joy. He spends hours every night tinkering on him and having conversation with him. His entire goal is to have Mark be capable of full survival and autonomy by the time he (my character) passes on. He sees the innate “life” within the creation and feels it is something beautiful and should be it’s own thing.
I don’t think any Warforged exist in the campaign so far, so I think the DM(s) are piecing a story together to have my character and Mark become the sort of “birth” of warforged in our campaign.
Awesome!
One of my characters is partially based off of Inigo Montoya so it’s very funny that you used his quest as the example
It's a classic! 😁
Funny enough, I was literally planning my next session to be part of a player's background story, so this is greatly timed!
I had a party where one character had the personal goal of always being drunk. So for them I wrote a Feywild prison break / heist!
PCs needed to infiltrate an Archfey’s Grand Ball to find a legendary brew master (a halfling or gnome). Who was made immortal then trapped by the Archfey so that they always had the best parties with the best mead, brews and wines in all of the Feywild. The brew master knew how to make a mead that took longer than others to be metabolized. So it caused anyone who drank it to stay buzzed for half a tenday!
Monty: My default is the debt.
Me: I see what you did there, Dr.
A player in my game was an Aasimar whose adopted human father paraded her around and started a cult because of her abilities. Her backstory explained how she got away but she started the campaign by resolving to go back and break the people free from bondage to the cult.
The advice about asking about player expectations with personal quests is really important, much more important than many might think. I've had players before who seemed really unengaged in terms of coming up with backstories and trying to pursue things from them in the game, but when I tried to engage them by giving them quests that tied in to what little they gave me but didn't meet their (apparently solidified) expectations, they were really upset. Some players have expectations and never tell you until you ask.
Here are some notes from my campaign guide on personal quests. The first two main bullets were for me, while the last two were shared with the players. Maybe this could be useful to someone.
Personal quest ideas
* Initial arc or completion should occur in the first 2-4 levels
* An arc is part of a multi-part story that has 2-4 parts
* If the personal quest can be completed in the early stages, a secondary quest will develop from the story or the character will discover what they thought was the finish was the first part
* Each locations or areas, organizations, or other game element tied to a personal quest should link to quests for one or more other players
* Ideas
* Emotional
* Revenge / Kill
* Rescue / Save
* Find/locate someone
* Racial / Religious
* Pay off debt
* Knowledge
* Solve a puzzle
* Gain skill / spell
* Lorekeeper
* Lost relic
* Find a master
* Achievement
* First to …
* Title or Role
* Land / Home / Stronghold
* Item or ability
* Conflict / Resolution
* Save people / location
* Remove curse
* Destroy/disable organization
* Stop / start war
* Confront nemesis
* Why is just as important as What, so that DM can insert obstacles and craft rewards tied to quest
* Why is what makes it personal and not just “a quest”
I really like the "paying debt to Hexblade patron," "break a curse," and "duel for inheritance" personal quests. Looking forward to seeing them play out in a campaign some day
One revenge plot and one love story plot, but players can have the same one. The loved one is either family or funny 2 lovers. The revenge plot having two characters want to get revenge on the same character is an instant bond and powerful side quest.
One of the player's I dm for got the Drakenhiem books and convinced our group to do a campaign.
I am excited to play because I workshop my character and his backstory with him. I gave him the ideas of the people involved in my character's backstory and gave him the leeway involve them how he sees fit, with the possibility that my character may turn evil with whatever he discovers.
For the Algorithm!
AMEN
For the algorithm!
+1
Quadruple that
All praise the algorithm
One I have in my ongoing game right now is one of my players character is slowly learning to read the ancient language of the area they found themselves involved in. I'm giving him notes and things he can't read and slowly allow him chances to study and gather more of the keys to deciphering it! When he finishes, or even shortly before, when he has enough letters, that in turn will move plot forwards and the party begins to understand the scripts, runes and books they find!
I'll use this video (just like many of your other ones) as one of my core reference videos! Thanks fir all the great work that you do!
One of the characters in my Drakkenheim game has the personal quest to kill a faction leader. We decided his only brother was killed and he is holding the faction leader personally responsible. Because the player gave me agency to initiate this motivation, it was a powerful moment at the table when it was revealed the brother was dead. It also gave me some interesting twists to play with when the party finally met the faction leader he was after.
Still running this campaign but its first time I have been DM and it's all new players that are my coworkers. One of them wanted to be a ranger with a bear companion but the bear is his brother that got turned by a witch in a forest. His brother bear has been a fantastic part of the group dynamic as the whole party knows and they work towards finding a way to turn him back.
Oh man, I’ve missed this kind of content from you Dudes! Excellent video!
I've watched several of your videos now, and I should know by now that I need to grab a pen and paper to take notes BEFORE starting the video. Thanks!
Just got done with a campaign where I was able to tie all the players back stories together and to the main quest. Being able to do this is very rewarding not just for the players but also the DM.
I'm about 8 minutes but I couldn't stop thinking about Joe and Wrath when talking about this subject. Even if his thing with Bruce and all that kinda seemed like a meme at first, he has been so invested that I find it amazing. Wrath always goes like: "Am I about to ruin the whole multiverse just because my cat told me to do it? Of course", "Should I stick my hand in there in order to understand the secrets of the cosmos? You bet!", "Do I care about my cat than about my own health? Duuuhh" and so on.
I would love it if someday you guy took the time to explore that with him on a video like this. I feel like Joe is THE player every DM should have in their table.
I think something I saw on RUclips could be a great personal quest for my lore bard character: She would need the Magic Mouth spell, achieving fourth level to do it (she wouldn't jeopardize her allies by making that almost "useless" second level spell her first one at Level 3 but take Invisibility or something similar first, THEN take Magic Mouth). The purpose? To create the equivalent of a "computer" for her town. She would need lots of gold since the spell costs money, the approval of the king since she'd need to place these Magic Mouths all over town, etc. This is a nice, achievable, incremental, quantifiable goal.
In my current campaign, we were told to create a person as part of our background that was important to us but was lost to us. This was only shared with the DM and we've worked 2 out of 3 players stories into the campaign so far.
I remember one campaign my brother ran where I had a personal quest tied to my Inheritor background. There is this tiny cage with no door containing a small creature something like one of the fairies from the Zelda games. My family has been pacing this cage down and trying to release this thing for generations, and now it's my turn.
He also really did rather well hooking it into the main plot by revealing at some point that my cage contains a goddess my family worships, who is also one of the BBEG's targets that we will need to help take the BBEG down.
The first campaign I ever played in (4e) did this naturally. All of us had a quest embedded in our backstory. This wasn't something demanded by the DM, we just did this naturally. The DM broke the campaign into 3 arcs that spanned the Heroic, Paragon, and Epic tiers of the 4e game. During the Heroic tier, our backstories didn't come up as the DM wanted to take the first 10 levels to get familiar with the world and it overall narrative, but it was during the Paragon tier that all of our backstories started to come out and all 6 of our stories were woven together into the main narrative. Only a few seemed like mere side quests; most were integral to the main plot.
I loved the hell out of that first campaign! It made me a D&D player for life. When I DMed the next campaign following that one (my first), i did the same thing and wove the players' backstories into the narrative. I don't know any other way to do it, honestly.
It's really funny that Kelly mentioned A Link to the Past in the Lost Loved One section, for a Curse of Strahd character my character pretty much borrowed heavily from Zelda II in that she was safe in a mausoleum but I needed to find a way to save her. Great plot device but like Monty said it can go pretty sour without the proper expectations
Oh wow, this is some great food for thought. I've had some sessions that spotlight a player, and I try to spread that around, but a full on quest? This is going to be added to my next campaign for sure! (Level 17 right now in my current campaign, a bit late to wedge this in.)
This is great. I have a player who's maternal figure, a dragon, was kidnapped by cultists and these tips will help me tie in that quest. Bonus that I think this rescue can be at odds with the quest of another player acting as a dilemma.
I literally just watched an episode of shadows where you guys were talking about personal quests.... perfect timing
You make amazing videos. It's gold for someone like me, who recently started playing D&D, and eventually want to DM 😊
Glad you enjoy it!
Rudi has a big personal quest at this point in the series, which is expertly tied to the current quest with Wilhelm and Wrath.
Damn I just finished shadows so I don’t know what it is yet. But excited to find out
@@kobeduhomie Take your time and enjoy it. 😁
Since running Drakkenheim I have introduced personal quests for my campaigns. It's a stroke of genius and gives the players significantly more 'skin in the game'.
It is so tricky to do this with a group. The reward is great but it is not so easy to bind all this together.
If you are lucky you as a DM have easy backstorys links that intertwine several players in there own quests (like the antagonist has links to player 1 and 2, player 3's backstory has a link somewhere down the road).
In my latest campaign I got lucky and the linking-points in the backstorys where quite easy to figure out.
A better session zero on my side can fix this 😅
All in all a great way of bonding the party together and give the players more agency in your campaigns.
Great that you shined a light on the topic ❤
I don't use this exact method, but I do always start a campaign by giving the players the first quest hook in advance and having them develop a motivation to go on it and also to keep questing afterwards.
The most successful use of this was in my Ancient Aliens campaign. The starting quest was investigating an island that had been hit by a meteor, and a few previous groups had gone there but not reported back. The PC motivations went as follows:
- One wanted to find her long-estranged brother, who she believed had been recruited into a criminal gang who sent an expedition to the island. This was correct, but he had already left the island before the party arrived. She used connections made on the island to find him, but by that point it had become clear that the cult they had both fled as children was a key part of the main plot, and she devoted herself to taking them down.
- One was a security guard for a wizard college who had also sent an expedition to the island. Even though he could only sort of cast spells, he wanted to get the respect of the academics. He was able to rescue the expedition leader and then continued with the party to research the ancient alien stuff, uncovering lots of secrets to report back to the wizard college and gain a reputation despite his lack of magical ability.
- One was a veteran of the anti-demon crusades who thought there might be demons on the island due to rumors of monsters. There weren't any demons, but the player deliberately played his character (a DoomGuy knockoff) as delusional, and he quickly decided that aliens are demons and anyone working with them are demon-worshippers, and therefore continued on the quest to slay them all.
- One was searching for his father figure, who ran off without a word on the night the meteor fell, leaving behind a medallion with a strange symbol on it. He had learned that his father had gotten on a boat and speculated that it was to the island. This was incorrect, and the PC has still failed to find his father after a pretty long campaign (I probably shouldn't have stretched it this long, but there's a really fun reveal for him at the end), but he has found the symbol from that medallion several times, so the ancient aliens definitely have something to do with the disappearance.
- One just wanted money and was hoping to harvest valuable skymetals from the meteor. He actually did get some, but he's a spendthrift, so he decided to keep questing with the party to find more ancient alien artifacts and materials to sell.
I’m a first time DM, 2nd time playing DnD (played one 15 session campaign last year). I spent 6 months planning my campaign which is a Lovecraftian horror adventure set in Faerun specifically the North-west portion of the map which encompasses Waterdeep, High Forest, Neverwinter and much more. The map is 650 miles North to South and 600 miles East to West so a lot of room to play with… spent about 2 months learning most of the lore of the locales and history of that part of the world so as not contradict pre-established lore (2 members of the group are kind of DnD buffs) and then planted Lovecraft Country locations within, Miskatonic Uni, Dunwich, Innsmouth etc. I wrote 30+ side quests with branching narratives and multiple endings with more than enough wiggle room for the players to do whatever they wanted to gain different endings. Hours and hours coming up with certain “random” encounters that feel natural due to location and time of day. Homebrewed several pages worth of armours, weapons and trinkets… really difficult when you think you’ve come up with a great idea only to realise it’s already been made 😂 I started off by having the adventurers be at Level 3 due to the main quest needing “people of some reputation”.
In Session 0, I said to the group “come up with a story that’s put you within earshot of several people of interest”, I then said that personal quests and stories would be fantastic if they wanted to have backstories that tell tales…go nuts. One personal quest has been completed (the group are Level 8 now) with 2 other personal quests in the early stages. Lastly, they’ve recently acquired a large stagecoach which is now an on the road home which is upgradable by visiting wainwrights which are located in different settlements mostly cities.
Even though I’m a first time DM, I’m having an absolute blast telling stories every weekend and I must say that you guys gave me a lot of inspiration as I was V nervous when beginning and wished to be as descriptive as possible but allowing for theatre of the mind to take over.
All in all, I’m loving my time DMing and have ideas for other campaigns too… one at a time though 😅
I am fortunate to have players of over 30 years who work well with me so personal quests become organic and follow these things you mention.
Awesome. Thanks for your amazing advice. This shows me how much effort my DM puts in for everyone's backstories.
Your content is good when the sponsor read flows into engaging topic seamlessly.
Monte Cook's Cypher System has something very similar called Character Arcs, which seem to be the main way to acquire XP.
When I began a new campaign last summer, I offered my players an introductory 1-on-1 session (about 2 hours apiece) prior to the first proper session. It took a few weeks to coordinate the moving parts, but each PC had their own mini-adventure as a prelude to them getting together as a party. One was investigating a murder, one was entrapped into a plot to assassinate a noble, another protecting a holy relic, a fourth checking out curious earth tremors, etc.
My players got to really get a feel for their new PCs, making decisions which would have ramifications later in the campaign. They also got a chance to act out their PCs' respective behaviors and personalities without the pressure of other players viewing those interactions. The net effect was that each of the players were *super* bought-in to the campaign come session 1! I'd never had everyone at the table simultaneously raring to go like that before. It fell apart due to reasons outside my control, but it was a blast for the ~6 months it lasted.
Great advice. You mention you go over the personal quests during session zero. I think this is fine for experienced players or those enthusiastic about jumping in. I caution asking players new to ttrpgs to do this in session zero. Give them time to adjust to the game and circle back if needed to work personal quests in.
My group was split due to scheduling issues, one of the players picked up DMing a side quest for them, meanwhile I DMed only for him. He had to stay in town due to a curse -fight with specters left him with 4max HP and we decided this is permanent. He reached out to few people and said something that really shaped this small personal arc: if this changes anything, I'm an echo knight.
That one line gave birth to mentor NPC, someone who he knew but did not trust, and that led to amazing Bleach-esque Ichigo-Urahara training arc, defeating your inner self to learn a bit more about it, that echo is not only a tool.
What started as a filler downtime quest, ended up as a tear-squeezing epic personal arc.
the quality of your videos just keeps getting better and better
in "ye olden days" of past editions, I would tie personal quests to the gain of significant class skills. With 5E, they gain most of the major things by L3 so it's tough to squeeze those gains into a quest form. But you should still be able to weave higher level class skill gains into personal quests.
I love this, and now with the BG3 being out, I love how they are linked to both inspiration and backgrounds
So the backgrounds have to be linked to the personal quest, and then making a step directly towards it - you gain inspiration.
From the offset, I told my DM that my character's parents had left on a quest when she was a child and never returned. I set the expectation that I wanted to find out what happened to them with the understanding that I was fine with them being long dead and I just wanted solving the mystery of what happened as my personal quest. The DM realized that if he made my character be from a certain location on the map, he could tie my backstory to another player's backstory and helping him with his quest would solve my mystery. Events unfolded and we never resolved things the way I had hoped due to a third player character throwing a wrench into the system, but I still love what my DM did with my character's goal and how he worked it into something I could bond with another player over.
This got me thinking, and now I have a more achievable side goal to the main personal quest(which I actually intended to not be resolved completely, only getting a temporary solution as long as the character is alive).
Thinking about where that side path could lead might make it something aboutvas hard to fully accomplish, but there are many milestones along the way.
Like Spirit Shroud specifically being my Patron finally accepting enough of my character to show herself.
And the thing that gets me to tear up just thinking about it, the realization that my patron is still suffering from the shared trauma of what she freed our Clan from, but even more so from her suffering through something similar, alone, right before that.
I think the ultimate goal is to add my patron to my family, and bring her back from death; possibly one being a needed catalyst for the other.
She needs a good hug. Every day. For the rest of her life. And significantly more often, if possible.
When you mentioned find the mysterious person that turns out to be you, reminded me of the movie Angel Heart staring Mickey Rourk.
Great video guys, I always love seeing advice that's applicable to any setting and system. Personal quests have always been a huge part of how I run campaigns. It's free content and free player engagement. My current campaign has lasted for more than 8 years now just by asking, "What would you like to do now?" and finding hooks that tie the plot back to things they're already invested in.
yay, thank you for sharing the helpful and inspiring advice about one of the most fun aspects of your livestream show (and the first book, too!)
I hit the "urgency" brick wall immediately in a West Marches Campaign where my personal quest was "find the loved one." I didn't play often enough for my character to take action searching for them. XD
I had a character with a bucket list of 100 things he wanted to do. Some of them were like kiss a princess, ride a dragon or cast a spell (he was a fighter). The best part was I let the game master and the other players pick 15 each of the goals. They came up with some great ideas and got them invested. Most of th were small and got handled during downtime. Most of the time when we had downtime the players would grab the bucket list and see what we as a group could accomplish. So much fun.
Fantastic, just the subject I have been thinking on for my campaign. Great advice, thanks Dudes!
Funny that you drop this just as I'm about to start playing in a Drakkenheim campaign and the party just finished picking their personal goals. Having that list was a big help, whether we picked one or used it to make our own.
I'll be playing a Clockwork Soul Aasimar wants to study the contamination so they can contain it and cleanse it from the rest of the country.
Been doing the solos since the 80s. They aren't always necessary, depends on the group, but they really can add a lot. Gets players really into it and Player (not PC) buy-in matters more in RPGs than say a game of Axis and Allies or Monopoly. First one I did for a player was in 8th grade so circa '81 and he wanted to raise the ship's bell of the boat his friend died on. It helped me a lot as new and learning DM and it's still a great way to extra fun to a full campaign. Player had a blast too, so I kept it as an option for players that liked that kind of thing ever since.
I think this is the most useful video you two have ever made. It's a great thing that could be added to any campaign.
Our DM is giving us some unique personal quest backstory resolution stuff. Our cleric took control of their inherited manor in the feywild. Everyone is essentially getting a custom weapon/spell/feat tailored to their story and character.
Right now we're in the midst of a major political intrigue subplot involving my character's home city and her revolutionary ideals set against the historical trend of the town. It's been spectacular both to witness other characters shine and to be the main character for an arc, and our DM has done such a delightful job bringing all of this together for us
Picked up GMing this summer, running Dungeons of Drakkenheim and we are having a lot of fun with it.
First time I have backed one of the products you guys highlight at the beginning of the episode. Nimble sounds like it could benefit any 5E game and it's affordable!
The "save the loved one" quest works well with some kind of magical stasis IMO, it removes direct mortal danger and time limits, but still keeps them trapped and in need of saving
Maybe they are stuck in a pocket dimension or another plane, maybe they've been petrified, maybe they got Deck-of-Many-Things'd and are now in a magical cryotube thingy, maybe they've been polymorphed and kept in a cage, maybe they've been sucked into/turned into a (possibly now sentient) magic item... this also works with them being captured and kept as a prisoner or slave by some villain, or even an esoteric creature like a Fae who isn't evil per se but very much has still trapped the loved one forever for their own weird reasons
I have all my players with a personal quest a family heirloom magic item that fits their class and story. I add abilities to the magic item when they complete parts of their quest line through game play. It let's me give unique rewards to the players and get around the attunement rules. My players love it because they are seeing their family's power and history come to life.
As soon as you said 'specific' goals, I thought of SMART objectives: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time Based. I know it's a cheesy personal development tool, but making sure a goal relates to these five aspects could help the players keep focussed on the campaign.
Thank you for the help!
I am trying VERY hard to engage my players through personal quests. My monastery-raised-all-out-sacred-flame-zealot monk was very heavily skewing the direction of the story towards the Silver Order. I knew there was no way any of the party were going to get through to him. So I thought, hey, why not let him talk to the St. Vitruvio personally? Enter a vampire spell caster boss (yeah, at lvl 2 XD) under St. Brenna and a “miraculous” Deus-Ex Machina save from a “simple mercenary” NPC who was tagging along, only to turn out to be St. Vitruvio in the flesh (planetar XD). So yeah, after an epic fight, resurrection of his sister (who was killed outright in the fight) and the ceremony to pass the Sceptre of St. V. to the monk, he is now much more humble, reasonable and even willing to speak to Lucretia Mathias)))
Oh, and BTW, our Delirium Soul Sorcerer? Well that guy was the spell focus and the material component for a ritual performed by the arch mage of Drakkenheim that went awry and literally summoned the Meteor 15 years ago XD I wonder how my party will react to this)))
I love my players PCs, and throwing things into the campaign that allow for opportunities for character growth or change is just the icing on the cake.
Love the videos as always!!!! Helping me grow as a player and dungeon master!
On the topic one of my players has a missing person personal goal and her family member isn't dead just yet lost there only hints were a few letters about his upcoming journeys and so far she's enjoying the hunt I can't wait to reveal him as an unwilling villain
You can center the personal quest on one of your character’s flaws such as the hermit flaw of becoming a hermit to escape people hunting you, the personal quest is now to face them either as a means of revenge or redemption. You could leave that one open so that when the time comes the character’s development throughout the campaign will determine whether its redemption or revenge.
Personal quest to find the "Riddle of Fire." Made a Cleric of Kossuth. I was like 14 tears old and my 26 yr old brother was very strict with lore. I picked Kossuth because he had very limited lore and my brother couldn't tell me I was playing him wrongly. My best friend played a Barbarian named Magma. We were both zealots with a personal quest for the answer to the Riddle of Fire (Conan). "Magma, tell them your testimony." 😂 ❤ This was very easy for the DM to let run for half the campaign and let us use a wish to unlock how the Riddle of Fire works. 🎉
My favorite personal quest to give a new player that can't come up with one on their own that they are satisfied with, is them being in debt to the mob. Always so fun.
Lol😅
Have been watching a lot of your stuff lately and just want to say thanks so much for putting it out there
Has been incredibly helpful and fun!
Thank you. Glad it’s helping :)
One of the first times I saw something similar to this was in The Odyssey of The Dragonlords that was on Kickstarter. It was so fun for players to make choices that impacted the game in meaningful ways and yank the rug out for some of the choices they made during the campaign.
I think this is what one of my DM does that has made that game the one game I genuinely can not wait for. In my case i laid out the frame work for many directions with my character's backstory. Now her biological father may be one of our BBEGs along side another player's former rival who is also our boss that we have been forced to work with. Honestly getting this right changes the table because not only are we more invested in our characters but also eachothers
I've always thought that searching for a magic item for the wrong reason was a fun idea. For example a dwarf who can't grow a beard goes searching for the Belt of Dwarvenkind because of its beard growing property.
In my homebrew world, the ruling regarding the procreation of changelings is that the baby will always share the same race as the mother (with the only exception if both parents are changelings, which then the baby will be a doppelganger). So, I had all of the players be half-siblings. The NPC, being a changeling, who gathered the players for a funeral ceremony. They were given their heritage which was a homebrew MacGuffin and were tasked to retrieve it. The campaign led into Storm King's Thunder, and there was a moment when it was hinted that the party's father may still be alive. They discovered that he was indeed dead, when they found Harshnag, paying respects to the burial site of the characters' father.
One of my DMs made me a personal quest. My character was just away from his family, as a noble, travelling and experiencing the world. Then a Greatwyrm attacks the neighbouring country that he’s travelling in.
Now there needs to be unity but his country and this one are having some military tension. His family controls one section of the country which is a republic of states. And his mother is running against his family’s more paranoid rival Lord for overall leadership. So now he has to go home to resolve the tension. Sadly his mother died but he, now Lord as his father also died, managed to come to an accord with the rival Lord.
Sadly due to the becoming a Lord I retired the character but gave the party another Ranger from his country as a replacement. Different subclass though.
Love the return of the guitar riff intro!!
I unfortunately don't have a group to play with:(
But I have created 12 different Lvl 1 Characters in case I found a group.
1 is a Chaotic Neutral Female High Elf Sage background Ranger planning Drakewarden Sub-Class. Her long-term end game quest is to Master all Languages and establish an educational Library/Museum back in her Homeland.
1 is a Chaotic Neutral Female Astral Elf Anthropologist background Paladin planning Oath of Conquest Sub-Class. Her long-term end game quest is to Conquer part of the Mortal/Material Plane establishing a new Queendom & new Pantheon made up of primarily Dead/Lost/Weakened Deities.
1 of them is a Chaotic Neutral Male Mountain Dwarf Runecarver background Wizard planning School of Necromancy Sub-Class. His long-term end game quest is to reclaim his ancestral Homeland & achieve Apotheosis/Immortality so he can eternally guard his people.
The other 9 characters have some other quests/goals but they are too detailed for posting here.
Kelly’s comment about the J in Homer’s name… AMAZING!!!
A personal quest i used was that my twin was missing whilst investigation a terrifying orginastion and left me a panicked message before disappearing.
Eventually it turned out to be that she had become the leader of that orginisation and left me with the choice of destroying the organisation including her or persuade her to leave it
Princess Bride references appreciated. It would be wonderful if somehow two PCs had personal quests that were actually two sides of the same story. Buttercup the Pirate Hunter seeking revenge for her beloved Wesley. Just an idea.
I love this also think this gives such a big help to the DM in terms of providing a natural structure for the plot which is super helpfil
River! I love seeing art from the Dungeons of Drakkenheim in the videos, makes a great Easter Egg!
The last personal quest I had run for my character was a mix of revenge and missing person. A mad scientist killed my character's wife and kidnapped his daughter. Midway through, he was forced to decide between saving his daughter and getting revenge. He opted to do both with a twinned Vortex Warp. He got his daughter away from the aboleth cell and warped the villain into it. The aboleth killed the scientist, and we had to fight it.