Advice/Help What's The Deal With Quests?

[Jewel]

Hey RPN,

Jewel here. I've been on RPN for a little while now and I've always been intrigued by the quest-roleplay section. But I'm not sure I really understand it. I mean-- I get the literal mechanics-- people comment what they want to happen and then the host has the character follow (or not follow) those suggestions. But whenever I stalked those threads I'm always struggling to follow along. With all of the audience suggestions filling the threads it can be almost pages between story posts. And most of the threads are incredibly inactive/old.

Can anyone tell me what is considered a success in quest-style roleplay? Is the issue which results in them going stale caused by a lack of audience input? What is the attraction, especially if they are starring someone else's OCs? I have a feeling that the answers to these questions are incredibly opinion based and biased by personal experiences-- but I'd like to hear those opinions.

 

[Idea]

I will not give an answer to the success question (other than this of course) as I just don’t think there is a point to. What’s the point in the general notion of a “success”? It’s not like you can appeal to other appeal for something being a success in order to make it a success, and either way it won’t be satisfying unless it meets your notion of a success.

Now the first thing to note about quest roleplays is that most people aren't really familiar with them, from my experience. It's actually kind of rare when I bring up the topic that the other person can accurately describe what a quest RP is, though this sample is skewed by the fact I most often bring it up as an attempt of recommendation for someone who is trying to make a roleplay that would fit well in quest RP but they are trying to do it as a regular RP. In fact, the concept of quest RPs is so unfamiliar that perhaps due to the lack of clarity in the naming many people assume it's some kind of long campaign type RP, or some dice thing or even just RPs involving quests. These are all answers people have given me as to what it is, the last one without me even making the question of what a quest RP is. The fact that people don't even know what it is not only makes it harder for a lot of people to consider, but because it strays outside of what a normal RP is like is also bound to make people more apprehensive. Right from the start, there is a big hurdle when it comes to getting any attention for a quest RP, and current writers of quests don't even have the benefit of novelty since quest RPs have been a part of RPN for a while now.

So why go for a quest RP? Well, I think the benefits over a regular RP are different for the the writer (the person running the roleplay, who writes the entries) and the voters (the other players who make the choices in the quest RP).

For a writer:
> Quest RPs give you a much wider degree of control than even being the GM in a group roleplay. In effect, it's the closest thing to just writing your own story without sacrificing the interactive elements of roleplay completely.
> Quest RPs can gamify some things that would be hard to do in a normal RP. They can have a singular protagonist for instance, and players making choices concerning that protagonist. They can be focused on a story told through a choice of game mechanics like for instance some kingdom management story where you choose the paths the kingdom will follow Civ - style and the writer uses those choices as a prompt for where the story goes.
> A quest RP can be used to explore a story (openly or as a derivative) from a different angle, essentially making an AU without excessively deviating through too many new elements being introduced (AKA without so many characters walking around making decisions that could wildly change the story and its direction).
> While this isn't seen as much in practice, Quest RPs actually give the writer a lot of leeway when it comes to when they make the entries. Yeah people may be waiting for them, but it's not like they are disrupting those people's ability to make their own posts to further the roleplay, since only the writer's entry furthers the roleplay. In other words, there can be a far more relaxed pacing with quest roleplays as opposed to normal ones. That being said, from what few experiences I had with it, writers do tend to worry a little too much that they aren't posting regularly enough (can't say I'm blameless for this either).

For voters:
> You basically aren't required to give much input at any time. As far as commitment goes, its only comparable to maybe RPs based off one-liners, and even then unless you don't like reading (in which case I would seriously question why on Earth you'd take on forum roleplaying as a hobby) I think the fact that you need to manage your character and think about what they would do and how to write the post may actually make the one-liner RP need more work.
> Although it has not been the case for any quest RP I participated in, I know some quest RPs let you make OCs. Some voters may be interested in seeing how another person writes the character they made.
> Just having an interest in the story, characters, world etc... that the writer presented to you, the same way you might be interested in them from a book.

Both:
> An interest in choose-your-own-adventure style stories



As I think can be seen here, the benefits for the writers are significantly more concrete than those of voters. In fact the biggest benefit for voters is basically just "it doesn't take a lot of work" which helps but isn't really a reason to do something in of itself (still counts as a benefit because this is a comparison with normal roleplays). Writers are bound to have far more investment in the story, especially at first, and as time goes on depending on how much there is the players may not recall the details (unlike a book, you are reading the entries far more spaced out between them, thus making it easier to forget key details). In most cases, I think, you need a particularly interesting story and good writing to be able to retain the voters, which due to the aforementioned lack of familiarity of your average roleplayer with quest RPs, is already a small number from the start.

There are issues on the writer side too though. In a way, quest RPs are a lot more like writing a book than writing posts for a roleplay. There is more of an expectation that your entry advances the narrative in some way, less room for "this is how the character would act" type storytelling. This and other factors I'm less sure about (due to being A more feelings-based and B me not having enough of a sample size or deductive grounds to make an assessment) can just make it more dauting to write the entries consistently. Furthermore, the period when people start to lose interest is often close to when you start running out of the initial hype and juice, and as mentioned you have precious few people actually voting. In other words you end up in a spiral of stress that only makes it harder to write things.

I don't think I need to explain how all of this can culminate in the gradual or even sudden death of quest RPs.