Building Quests

[Valamir]

Well, I didn't get a chance to play Friday...had my game nights mixed up...instead of roleplaying, I wound up crushing the opposition in El Grande.

But that gave me a chance to finish working on the quests.  Came up with some questions.
.

1)  There are 3 quests per island, right.  Its not one big quest in three parts.  Each god gives a primary objective which is its own seperate quest.  Each of those quests then has the 3-9 subobjectives.  I think I got this part right, but.

2) With respect to the quest budget...The Heroes x objectives x 5 Strife equation.  Is that a seperate budget for each of the 3 quests?  Or one big budget for the entire island?  i.e. if I have 3 quests with 3 subquests each and 4 players, is that 3 seperate quests of 60 Strife each...or is it 1 budget of 180 Strife. 

3) For the 3 quests with their own subobjectives...how much cross over between them is permitted.  Can you have a subobjective from Quest A that can't be completed until a certain subobjective from Quest B is completed?  Can you get an advantage in completing one of B's subobjectives based on action taken during Quest C?  Can you have a single subobjective that is actually part of more than one quest?  If you're keeping track of seperate Strife budgets, how do you allocate such crossovers.

[rafial]

For the 3 quests with their own subobjectives...how much cross over between them is permitted.

As much as you like I think.  The Island that I came up with on the plane to GenCon has two quests that are intertwined and mutually exclusive (at least barring something super clever that I haven't thought of yet, but doubtless players will :)  And John thought that was hoopy cool.

[John Harper]

Hey Ralph,

1) Yep, that's right.

2) The Strife budget is per quest -- a seperate budget for each.

3) The Antagonist is free to intertwine quest objectives in any way. I think this is where a lot of the fun of being the Antagonist comes in. You can keep things straightforward and video game-like, or you can set up some tough decisions for the heroes to face by carefully weaving objectives.

I hope Wilhelm will post the island he made on the plane. The two exclusive quests are very cool, and I came up with a couple solutions that would be fun to try in play.

[Darren Hill]

I hope Wilhelm does, too.

Given multiple quests and objectives, there may be a temptation for some groups to split up to handle different things. My players often split up, and in most games I encourage this. But I wonder if I should encourage them to stick together, in Agon. Any advice on ths subject?

[Darren Hill]

Thinking about this prompts another question:
Do you let the players know what you're current Strife is? I was thinking I'd have a pile of poker chips showing my current Strife, and let the players watch it fall and rise.
But that's complicated a bit if you're tracking the Strife for three quests sort-of simultaneously.
Mind you it could be a strong encouragement for the players to concentrate on one quest at a time. "Oh, so you two head over here after this objective. That means I get to draw from this new, big pile of tokens to hammer you with, while the other two Heroes deal with that dwindling pile over there."
Is that good or bad, or neither?

[John Harper]

I like the dwindling Strife pile. It's not supposed to be secret info, so that's a good way to handle it.