The ICness of Quests

[Peanuts]

It's possible this topic has been done to death, but I'm not seeing more than a couple of casual references to it searching the boards; if I'm bringing out the whip over a dead horse, I apologize     I've been musing about this a lot in the last few days, and I'm really curious what other people think.

Questing is one of my favorite parts of the game, and I love having the opportunity to hare off on little prepackaged dramas when good RP is scarce on the ground.   One of the things I've noticed, though, is that most of the quests have a small issue: it doesn't make total IC sense for them to be done by multiple people.  Unless the poor NPCs are stuck in some Groundhog Day scenario, they're asking multiple people to fetch the same exact book, or carry the same exact message, or whatever, over . . . and over . . . and over.   How many times can the same person steal the same dagger?  How often can some poor sap get investigated for the murdering the same person?   

This isn't a complaint on my part, nor a request that the quests be changed, either - for starters, pretty much all of my favorite quests have this issue and I would be a sad panda if they had to be scrapped.   Quests would be painfully boring if they had to be limited to events which could happen many many times!  But I am curious how other people handle the obvious problem this creates re: working quest events into a character's personal canon.   Do you assume they did them anyway and have them reference having done X for Y, screw the discrepancy if they meet another PC who's done the same quest?  Do you treat all questing as OOC? 

[Prolix]

The only time I refer to them at all is when I am having a problem advancing to the next stage or when someone asks about them IC. In those cases I will say so and so asked such and such fairly generally so that someone who has done it might be able to identify which task I am about and yet not give too much information to someone who hasn't done it. I do talk about it occasionally OOC if asked in that manner. If someone asks me where an item comes from I'll say "I did a favor for x."

[Ralleyon]

That is a very good question...

It's not about being IC or OOC, because they are all IC, but we can't refer to them in normal speech most of the time because of their nature.

The are two types of quests - single player and multi-player. Ever since the beginning, PS was not designed to have multi-player quests, so as beautiful as the ones we already have are, they only make sense when playing alone.

[Peanuts]

It's not about being IC or OOC, because they are all IC, but we can't refer to them in normal speech most of the time because of their nature.

I dunno.  I mean, obviously you should endeavor to have your character choose the most in-character actions you can within the quest mechanics, so they're IC in that sense.  But for something to be really IC (at least imho) it needs to be able to remain part of the character's memories and shape their future reactions, and therein lies the issue.

By way of example, if my main happened to do a quest where she got an inkling that So-and-so had a Dastardly Scheme That Could Doom Us All, she wouldn't keep quiet.  Being a law-abiding and rather sensible person, the first thing she'd do would be to report it to the proper authorities, and then she'd be sure to spread the word amongst her friends and acquaintances.   For me to keep her IC but not spoil the quest or cause weird continuity issues for others, "this happened, but she just doesn't mention it" doesn't work; there has to be some retconning involved.

[Zan]

To be honest, I consider almost all quests to be OOC by some of my characters. The main reason is that they often simply can't be explained away ICly because they can be done by everyone individually. With a bit of vagueness and creativity you can work around that though. Another reason is that a lot of quests in PS revolve around NPCs and us players are merely errand boys or servants in them. I doubt there are many servant characters around. Luckily the newer quests are already moving away from that and turning the NPCs into the servants, so that the players can feel important.

My suggestion .. do involve NPCs into your RP, bring the world alive but stay vague when it comes to quests. Don't start shouting "Mr. X made me do bad things!" but instead mention something like "I heard that Mr. X is often involved in shady deals." Things like that make the world more alive and even though npcs are untouchable, they can still participate in RPs to populate them.

[Shaman]

I do find it annoying when I see two people talking about quests ICly.

"The other day, Mr. X had me look for a book that he lost."

"I found the book up on the cliffside, and he gave me a spiked helmet as a reward."

That's a terrible example, but basically when someone's already done it and someone else hasn't, it creates a scenario where I want to punch them in the mouths. It's ridiculously unrealistic and, personally, I think every quest should be considered OOC. This is one reason why I can't roleplay on WoW, because everyone does the same quests, and if you include any of that in your roleplay, you can be assured everyone around you has already done it and it'll create a disaster of a roleplay.

[Mythryndel]

Personally... I can't really see quests as anything other than OOC. I am sure that in some instances I can justify my actions in a quest with my character, but more often than not it is simply for the reward or to kill time when mobs are inactive. What kind of person wants a complete stranger to deliver a letter to the far side of the galaxy? What kind of person wants a complete stranger to return a book they borrowed from a friend? These are just two examples, but either everyone in Yliakum is trustworthy (which isn't the case with all the posts about evil characters) or the quests are just another part of making this game enjoyable for players.

The way i look at it, is that it gives players a way to bond (reminiscing over the greuling tasks they performed) and allows the characters to learn about the setting and locations of things without having to turn into a book worm in the library.