Simply the Quest

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

When I joined Obsidian Entertainment last year, because of my background as a tabletop game designer, I was asked if I wanted to work with the Pathfinder Adventures team. Even though it meant having to work with Mike Selinker—Hi, Mike!—it sounded like an awful lot of fun to go back to my card game roots for a bit and, frankly, I flat-out love the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. So I said yes—of course I'd love to see what cool things we could bring to the game on the electronic side that simply aren't possible in the physical space.

Our biggest goal was to expand replayability to make sure the electronic version of the game is an amazing value with tons and tons of fun gameplay. The first step was working out the difficulty system that Nathan has already talked about, which allows you to play the same scenario multiple times and still have it feel fresh and fun. The wildcard powers in particular mix things up so that even when you replay the same scenario you just completed, things still feel new.

But that's still essentially replaying the same scenarios that many of us have already played over and over. Couldn't we use the computer running the game to generate a new adventure whenever we want one, so that we'll always have fresh scenarios to play? Thus, the concept of Quest Mode was born: Mixing and matching existing scenario powers, locations, villains, and henchmen to create new experiences.

Quest Mode, engaged!

How Random Is Too Random?

Randomness is great, but sometimes things that are truly random are also truly terrible—my first CD player's random mode once repeated the same song four times in a row. That's entirely possible in a truly random system (even if there's only a 1:1,728 chance of it happening on a 12-song album), but it's still not what you want. Randomness is supposed to keep things fresh!

So we looked at places where randomness would result in less fun. A perfect example of this is the scenario Local Heroes. It's a fun scenario, but it completely breaks down in Quest Mode's "grab a scenario and add a villain and some henchmen" mechanic. First problem: there's no villain! And what if you're randomly given a bunch of locations that don't have many allies—or any allies? The whole thing can grind to a halt.

So we pulled things like this out of the pool of possible combinations. If a card wasn't going to play nice with Quest Mode, it had to step away from Quest Mode... for now. We ended up with 10 scenario powers, 10 villains, more than 20 sets of henchmen, and multiple maps, so there are more than 10,000 different adventures to be had—and that's before you start calculating different location configurations (and linkages for Legendary difficulty!) and possible wildcard combinations.

We do have the ability to build connections beyond pure randomness, so as we're able to spend more time developing Quest Mode, more "hand-crafted" adventures will be appearing. Certain combinations of scenarios, villains, and maps that are designed to work together will appear together more frequently (or even exclusively together).

Bring on the XP!

Another cool thing we can do in Quest Mode is bring the game a little closer to its tabletop RPG roots. We knew as soon as we started talking about this mode that we wanted to use an XP and leveling system where you'd get XP for each monster and obstacle you overcome in addition to the usual rewards for finishing a scenario. That level of granularity for tracking progression would get in the way with the tabletop game, but it's something we can do well in the electronic space. That meant we could have many levels for progression, and therefore more rewards.

Speaking of progression, we need to call out and give a big thanks to the Pathfinder Society—the PFS Adventure Card Guild progression system gave us a very clear path for developing our Quest Mode progression.

The Future of Quest Mode

So, that's a little look at the history of Quest Mode. But what does the future hold? One of the first new things coming to Quest Mode will be hand-crafted scenarios that deliver new scenarios, villains, and henchmen that players haven't seen before, and special combinations that raise the challenge level higher than we've seen before—with commensurate rewards, of course! And after that?

Well, the obvious direction is "bigger and better." Frankly, I'm not allowed to tell you too much more yet. But the thing to remember is that since Quest Mode is outside the boundaries of the Rise of the Runelords storyline that Paizo and Lone Shark delivered, Obsidian has a bit more freedom to roam and present new characters, stories, and rewards! I know that I'm genuinely excited about it, and I think everyone will really enjoy it.

David Williams
Pathfinder Adventures Designer
Obsidian Entertainment