More play of Elden Ring has led to more thinking about how it handles quests.

Elden Ring is not filled with quests in the same way that games like Skyrim,
The Witcher 3 or Baldur’s Gate are filled with quests. You can explore lots of locations, but mostly, you don’t have a reason to go into them except “because they’re there”. But Elden Ring does have some quests, and it doesn’t handle all of them the same way.

It has quests where it points you in a direction and says, “there’s something you must do there.” In that way, you learn where to find the main questline through the Sites of Grace. NPC conversations augment this, but not always effectively. I daresay many players will finish the game and not be entirely sure of the import of everything they did.

Elden Ring also uses quests which are “find this person; they’re somewhere in this region”. These can be problematic. You can spend hours looking for the one location where that NPC is standing. Are you aware of how Justin Alexander of the Alexandrian talks about the “three clues” rule? That rule is nowhere in sight, and it can lead to a lot of frustrating searching. Don’t get me wrong, Elden Ring has a lot of good exploration, but this is a time that I’m not a fan.

But the quests that frustrate me the most are when you don’t even know there’s a quest. I’m looking at you, Hyetta. These are typically characterised by meeting an NPC, then later meeting that NPC in a different location and their storyline (and the overall quest) progressing. Except, the map in Elden Ring is enormous, so you might have already explored that location. And even if you’re in the right area, the NPC doesn’t draw attention to themselves. I was using spoilers and knew where I had to go, and I still struggled for 20 minutes trying to find the NPC.

I don’t find this ideal. Occasionally – for example, with Roderika – there are alternative paths for the quest, so if you don’t do one thing, there’s another thing that progresses the plotline. Hooray!

The point here is not that “OMG, Elden Ring should have used quest markers!” but that there are times when its quests become too obscure for their own good. Many Elden Ring quests work perfectly well, and the lack of a checklist of things to do enhances their impact. But some are just an exercise in frustration.

When you get to a tabletop RPG such as Dungeons & Dragons, then the environment of adventure design changes significantly. It’s great to include secret areas and hidden progressions for the players to find, but if you only have one group playing through your adventures, then that’s a lot of extra effort that may not pay off. If I design a secret room that only one in six groups find, but run the adventure 20 times at a convention, then it’s a pay-off that the skilled explorers can shared amongst all the players afterwards. If I run it just for my home group and they don’t find it, then why did I spend the design time on it?

However, secrets are fun. As are puzzles, when done well.

I believe what makes secrets and puzzles very effective – for various playing styles – are additional ways of discovering or solving them.

Imagine a stone golem that only the Rock to Mud spell hurts. Taken on its own, this can be very frustrating for the players as they try method after method of damaging the golem, but all fail.

But, within the world of Dungeons & Dragons, you have other options:

• Spells such as legend lore or contact other plane that can reveal the information,
• NPCs such as sages, who you can contract to research the information,
• And old tomes and the like you might discover in the course of play that reveal the solution.

Now, all these solutions rely on the DM giving the answers and not just frustrating the players. I like that we can have alternatives, although it is okay not to make them automatic successes.

But the problem Dungeons & Dragons faces with these solutions is that you often want a check on players using them freely. And that check tends to be their gold cost. Guess what the weakest element of Dungeons & Dragons has been for ages? Yes, that’s right – its economy. Players typically end up with mounds of gold with nothing to spend it on.

(A secondary consideration is time, but again, how often has time mattered in your D&D games? It can, but it depends on the DM running a game where time is a limited resource).

Designing a working (player) economy for Dungeons & Dragons is not simple. You need to work on both how much gold the characters get and have enough competing things on which they can spend their money. As we discovered during the days of 3E, allowing free access to magic item purchases causes problems, but it’s about the only thing on which players reliably want to spend money.

Hirelings? Henchmen? Strongholds? Sages? Those are inconsistent at best. Training? Most of the D&D versions have been poor. (As opposed to training in Runequest, where spending money makes a significant difference).

Occasionally, Dungeons & Dragons has flirted with other costs apart from gold, such as specific parts of monsters. That’s something that Horizon Forbidden West does, and it adds significantly to that game, giving extra goals for the players. But, within the confines of the group activity of Dungeons & Dragons, how much time do you want to spend on finding a specific monster so you can use its brain to craft an item or pay for a service?

There are a lot of interlocking elements here, not all that are suitable for all groups. But, as you consider the game you want to play, it helps to be aware of the options.