Learning to QM?

So, if you are currently running a quest or have done so in the past, how did you learn how to do so? What types of experience or theory were the most useful? Did you have a mentor for this or for some other relevant type of GMing or interactive storytelling?

If you've tried to run a quest but failed, what kind of knowledge or skill did you seem to be missing?

I kind of wish I could take an apprenticeship or online course in QMing.

 

There's far too little traffic in this part of the forum .

Um, not too sure how helpful I'll be for this.

I didn't really learn from anyone, just participated in a lot of quests and considered what I liked what was criticized.

The most important thought for me was probably: Just do it.

I considered making a quest long before I actually got around to making one. Actually starting it can be very helpful and some of my favorite QMs got a lot better through constructive criticism of their first quest.


Consistency in update speed helps with getting a good player base.


The way you structure votes can be important. Simple votes = More voters. Have a certain selection prepared for voters to pick from without having to think too much. This isn't necessary and there are many popular quests with more complicated votes, but it can easily increase the voter count.


Is there anything in particular you want to know about?

 

I wasn't sure this was the right part of the forums for this topic, rather than the quests subforum, but I guess the mods will move it if they want.

As for what I particularly want to know about, I guess the most confusing thing to me is, how do you decide what should happen next, especially fast enough to have a good update speed. Votes are going to determine some of what happens, but the QM still has to invent both the voting options and the details of the winning option.

Maybe that's one of those unanswerable questions, since deciding what happens next is a core part of writing, but it's the part I'm worst at. I really like novel-length stories, but I've never successfully written one.

 

Afraid I'm probably not that helpful with that. The only quest I've run was based on an already existing setting. It gave me a very easy framework to decide what was going on in the world.

I guess my answer for a more original setting would be: Whatever you want to happen.

You have the creative freedom to throw new things at the player, when you want to or when it feels appropriate. If you make a new setting, you probably have some kind of idea on what you want going on in it. Don't worry too much about making great literature. If you have character concepts or events fitting the setting that you want to use, put them in when you feel appropriate.

People generally assume you have some kind of plan even if you don't or only have a very loose one .

 

A couple of tips I've learned.

1) Players vote more when there's an incentive to vote. Basically if there're costs/rewards. Outline decisions in the vote clearly and thoroughly, even if you have to use OOC information.

2) A quest is a dictatorship disguised as a democracy. You have QM fiat, exercise it if your players are getting out of hand.

3) DO NOT overcomplicate the vote. Keep the vote simple and easy to follow.

4) Know where you're going with your quest. It's one thing to have an interesting idea, it's another if you're just swimming in circles with no idea where to take that interesting idea. A quest's a narrative as well. Beginning, middle, end. You might have to rework some things but keep a general idea of where you're going in mind at all times.

5) Never ever assume your players think like you do. That's a really really bad idea.

6) Above all else, write about something you want to write about.

I think that covers most everything I'd thought of.

 

To be perfectly honest, there's no hard and fast rules for any of this. How to decide what happens in a particular update depends a lot on your own writing/QMing style. It also depends a lot on the context of the update. If your quest is particularly crunchy (rules-heavy), then your update following the vote may very well consist in large part of describing the process through which the results determined via your rules happened.

Usually it's a good idea going in to have some thought on how you want your story to play out: where your story starts, how your story might end, and some of the major things that need to happen for you to get from the start to the end. The same thing applies to individual updates: you basically want to write until you get to a good stopping point, where the players have the chance to make a meaningful decision with clear choices. It's easiest if you don't allow write-in votes, since then you get to dictate the available options, and restrict the players to paths which you have planned out ahead of time. If you prefer a more free-form QM style though, then it's best to look at character motivations: how would the characters in the story respond to your players' actions? How does the game world change in response to the events that happen? Admittedly, this is not very easy to do, especially when it comes to actions that might have more far-reaching consequences, but at the very least, the immediate short-term effects should be fairly obvious.

Also, remember that you always have the option to use your position as the QM to guide how the story plays out. If the players do something dumb, you shouldn't be afraid to punish them, but you shouldn't feel obligated to put them into positions where it's impossible for them to recover, either, unless you're willing to let the quest end with a bad ending. No matter how awful the position that the players put themselves into might be, if you don't want the quest to end, you always have options at your disposal to allow the story to continue. It's often just a matter of creativity at that point.

As for a good update speed... It just comes down to being able and willing to dedicate the time to writing. Find somewhere where you can sit down without any distractions and just write. If you can't focus on just writing, you can try writing on paper, away from your internet connection or whatever electronic devices. Really, in the end, it's just a matter of being able to set aside the time to really focus. The reverse is true as well. If you don't have any way to spend time writing, you're not going to be able to magically churn out updates. Writing takes time - a lot of time - and you should be aware of this before you start a quest. If you know for sure that you don't have the time to run a quest, then don't run a quest until you can find the time.

And yes, as you've probably heard again and again, practice makes perfect. The more you write, the better you will become at writing. The more quests you run, the better you will get at running quests. As long as you're willing to learn from your mistakes and really listen to criticism, then you'll inevitably improve.

As for general advice on being a QM...

I have fairly strong opinions on the circumstances under which choices should be offered to players. This applies to narrative style quests specifically, and less to the more rules-heavy ones, but the general principles should still apply to any plot-important updates. I understand that my stance on this is more philosophical than anything else - I certainly don't have any empirical evidence for or against this approach either way - but I hope you'll find it helpful.

Any choice you offer to your players should have a few characteristics.

The decision your players make should be clearly meaningful. Every time you hold a vote, you're halting the flow of your narrative to ask you players what should happen next. If you stop to have a vote on whether or not the main character should stop to grab food, that decision should have an important impact on how the rest of the story plays out. If the results of the vote are only going to be changing a couple of sentences in the next update, you're better off just picking the option you like better yourself and continuing on until you find a better place to stop. Having too many meaningless votes stalls the flow of the story and drives your audience away. Even having votes spaced too closely apart is similarly a bad idea - I feel that rules-bound games with low potential for story between turns, card games and wargame/pen and paper RPG-like rulesets - make for poor quests for precisely this reason.

Similarly, don't offer choices where one option is clearly correct. When the vote is nothing more than a formality, you're not accomplishing anything by offering the choice.

The players should know what they're going to be voting for. If you have two options which offer the players two mutually exclusive outcomes, then the players had better know what exactly these two outcomes are. The important thing to remember is that the players only know as much as you tell them. If you give no indication within the text of your quest of what exactly your choices entail, then offering the choice to the players is effectively meaningless - from their perspective, there may as well be no differences between the two choices you're offering them. This information doesn't necessarily need to be spelled out in the text of the update. It can be something derived from previously provided information as well. Still, if the choice is particularly important, it's better if you spell out what the choice means as explicitly as you can. The players can and will miss things you might think of as being completely obvious.

You should only offer choices that you're willing to write. If you decide to allow write-ins, you should understand what you're getting into - sooner or later the players are going to vote for something that is going to potentially ruin your quest, and you should be prepared for it to happen. Moreover, don't feel obligated to provide options for the sake of providing options. If you want to write a quest with a female main character, then don't give the players the option to choose their character's gender. You're allowed to decide things about the story on your own. You're the one writing the story, not the voters. Only hold a vote on things where you actually want the players to make a decision. It's better for everyone.

 

This also seems like it would be challenging to decide, though at least I could take as much time as I wanted before starting the quest to get it figured out. It would be hard to research by looking at the ends of existing quests since many of them don't get to an end. I guess endings of anime or novels would be researchable though.

Thanks for your replies! Lots of good advice

 

Do none of QQ, SV, SB, or other forums that hosts quests have a bookmarked co-writer matchmaking thread??

 

*Looks left* *Looks right*

Would have expected someone to respond to this by now.

Wouldn't be aware of anything like what you're looking for. I think most people just ask other people directly, or ask in the quest idea thread.

You might also just ask here along with some details on what you want to run.

You could also try to start up a thread like that.

 

There isn't one specific quest that I want to run though. Half the fun of co-writing is trading ideas with someone else and developing a concept together, right? I have in the past posted some quest ideas, and I could collect those up to show to someone interested it co-writing. But, it seems like if one person proposes a concept then they are expected to be the leader or senior partner of the collaboration, which I really don't want to do. I feel like I need the educational experience of being a junior partner first.

 

What I learned so far about writing a quest is this:
(Keep in mind that I that I got most of this from reading quests, not writing them. I do write one, but its not very long yet. So take my advice with a grain of salt.)
Some of this has been said already, but its worth repeating.

- Writing is more fun and more work than I expected.
As others have said, writing takes time, and going over everything again for mistakes after you already worked on it for a while and read it over and over to get the style right is pretty exhausting for me. Sometimes I just skipped the proofreading, and looking over those parts is cringeworthy.
That being said, I have a lot of fun writing, since I put some work into preparing the quest (from mechanics to worldbuilding) and I finally get to show people.

- Its hard to get a decent balance between wordbuilding/exposition and plot.
In a quest players are supposed to make informed decisions. That means they need to know all the relevant things about the decision. Getting all that information across without it getting boring is hard. Maybe start with some smaller choices before moving on to the bigger ones when you have had time to worldbuild a little. Idk, I failed at this imho.

- Don't be disappointed when few people participate. We are a small forum, and if its your first story people will be hesitant to invest time into reading it. Especially if its a fandom that isn't well known or god forbid, original. Soldier on. People will come eventually.

- Choose the story you want to tell with the quest format in mind. Some formats do well with some types of story others with others. Is your quest turn based or narrative based? Are you rolling die or do you decide what happens depending on what furthers the plot? Are you going to have plan votes or are you tallying by line. Will you perhaps combine votes to reflect as many of the voting base's ideas as possible? Imho, knowing that is important.

- Also, as long as you credit people and you aren't directly copying them I see no harm in using other's ideas. Take a quest you like and move it to a different setting for example. That way, not only will you know what you can expect, you can show others what to expect just by pointing out the work you are basing it on because....

- It really helps if your readers and you are on the same page.
I suspect this is true for regular stories as well, but its even more important in a quest. Make sure your readers have enough information to make proper decisions. Nothing is worse for them than getting blindsided by something that they should have seen coming IC.
You as the author will always know a lot more about the world you are writing than any three readers put together. Its important to clearly lay out all the relevant information. Unfortunately, that's not too easy without getting boring, and plays into the whole exposition thing I mentioned above.
But it also helps if players know what kind of story you want to tell. If they know you are writing crack they will vote differently than if you are writing a hardcore number crunch quest.

- Your enjoyment in the quest is the most important thing.
The quest will end as soon as you stop enjoying to write it. Others may quit if they are unhappy with a turn of events and the quest can still go on, but if you quit its game over. I've seen too many great quests end, just because readers insisted on doing something the qm wasn't happy with.
So don't be afraid to veto, change or even retcon whatever you want. As long as you don't abuse this people will understand. A simple "I don't feel comfortable writing this" is all you need and anybody who has a problem with that can go write their own goddam quest. /rant ;-)

-And finally: Just do it.
If you have a decent idea you can see yourself pulling off, just start the quest. You will never be able to prepare perfectly before you start and its better to just get going. That's how you get better after all.
As soon as your idea is fleshed out enough, start writing. You can rework it during the process if you run into any snags.

That's a really hard question to answer for me and I think it heavily depends on the type of quest you want to run.
Most of what I could say to this has already been said, but I'll echo this statement: The more equal your vote options are, the better. If all your options have pros and cons and none are objectively better than the others, then the discussion really get going.
Also, do not offer options you are not prepared to write. Because eventually one of those will get voted in.
Also also, consequences don't have to be instant. You can have them pop up a few updates later.

You can pm me those ideas if you want. I have some ideas as well and I always have fun bouncing them off people.
Anyway, I'm looking for something fun to write during the voting periods of my other quest, so perhaps we can find something that works.
I'm just starting out as well, so we can be noobs together XD

 

Thanks, I'll send you a PM then. Though if anyone else is interested, speak up and we can do some kind of group idea pool.

This point about not offering options you don't want to write is one I think I'll have to make an effort to keep checking myself against. In the past I've had difficulties with being asked to RP a role I didn't like or using a mechanic I thought made no sense, and yeah that's definitely bad for my motivation to write. And while I've got lots of time to write, motivation is what I tend to run dry on or burn out my supply. The best thing for motivating me is when others are excited about what I'm writing and are talking to me and each other about it, which is why quests seems so tempting to write. But that can turn into the "pressure to write things I don't want to" problem, when my preferred topics aren't the most popular, and they often aren't.

 

Incredible experience, thank you for sharing this.

 

I used to run a lot of stories with players, and I did so from my early teens. I cauterized that part of my life out of shame nearly a decade ago now because I had to figure some stuff out, take a break and figure myself out and I'm bewildered as to where I should even begin. Humbly, I think is the right answer.

I think the best thing I ever learned is to write. Whether its good or bad you can fix later, or you can live with the difficulties of poor decisions and you can pay for them and carry them into some sort of redemption.

If you want to make people care, you need to be able to make them to cry. If they can't laugh, they'll never cry. If they can't smile they'll never laugh.

Start small, and keep it sincere.