Advice for Running a Quest
A basic guide on how to do run a Quest correctly, with advice written by various successful Quest Authors. These are all rules of thumb, and as such, can be broken when necessary, but following these is a good start.
Important Note: If you feel like you have any advice to give, go right ahead and add it! We are all ears.
Always Present Options
This is most important. There always needs to be something for the players to suggest, or else nothing can happen. So, do your best to give them something to work with. If they don't bite and do something entirely different, that's fine too, but at least they had options. There are a few guidelines to help ensure you are doing this, which can be tl;dr'd as follows:
TestPattern: Yelling at PCs < Faffing about < Boring exposition < Interesting exposition < Stuff that reveals new options
Don't Present Options That Are Not Actually Options
There is a path going left or right. >Go left The left passage ends in a locked door! Nothing else is here. >...Go right I guess
Don't do this. If you present options to them that don't actually affect anything if they are taken, don't present them. The locked door above could have easily been right at the intersection, and it would have worked just as well. Making people waste time doing things that aren't actually doing things directly relates to the guideline below this one.
However, in the above example, if we already happen to have the key for the door on the left, then it's not a false option. We could then use the key and proceed. If the key is actually down the right door, however, then the left door was never an option, and going right first was the only choice.
Don't Waste Updates
Don't have an update not actually update anything. If it doesn't present new information, new choices, or new stuff to work with, then it isn't really an update. For example, yelling at the players for being stupid is a waste of an update. Yelling at the players for being stupid and then pointing out information that they seem to have overlooked is not great, but better.
