Paladin Quest

Okay, I love the Paladin's Quest. It's dripping with flavor, and it drives the paladin to action, which is great. Basically it seems to me that the paladin in the group should very nearly always be on a Quest for something. 

But if that interpretation is right, there are several classic questy things that don't seem to be easily expressed with the three fill-in-the-blank quests that are listed. The ones that have occurred to me-- there may be more -- are:
Rescue ______ from ______'s captivity.
Bring ______ to ______ that it may be destroyed.
Retrieve _____ and return it to its rightful owner.
Find the fabled lost artifact ______.

I mean, you can fill in many of these blanks with values from classic stories, right? If it's supposed to be easy to go on a quest, I would think these or some similar ones should be added. I think I'm going to do that, unless some of you good people convince me that he existing list is adequate or that Paladins should have a little more trouble establishing quests all the time...

On a related subject, it seems to me that the defend blank from iniquities quest might not necessarily drive action from the paladin as much as the others would. This is purely a perception, not from actual play, though.  Anyone with experience using that style quest have any comments on how it worked out?

I had Valeria the troubled Paladin defend Xena the Wizard from the iniquities that befell her: namely the demons she summoned regularly to achieve her adventuring ends.

Valeria had the boons of:
•  A voice that transcends language
•  An unwavering sense of direction to evil.

I told her that to maintain her blessing she had to remain Valourous (forbidden: suffering an evil creature to live).

Invariably I had 'evil monsters' appear that were sniffed out through her senses but also had something to offer the party, or were of greater use alive than murdered. The Cleric, Denethor was of a holistic persuasion and abhorred murder in any guise.

there was much aiding and interfering, failed spell casts and lots of juicy character driven scenes. It was an awesome open ended quest for the paladin!

The core quests are so generic that basically everything can be squeezed through them.

Rescue ______ from ______'s captivity.

It's just Defend _______ from the inequities that beset them

Bring ______ to ______ that it may be destroyed.

This is a bit vague because it does not contain its actual scope. Might be both Slay _______, a great blight on the land, and Defend _______ from the inequities that beset them, referring to those threatened by whatever should be destroyed.

Retrieve _____ and return it to its rightful owner.

again, Defend _______ from the inequities that beset them, referring to its rightful owner

Find the fabled lost artifact ______.

This too is a bit vague, could very well be any of the other core quests.

about defending, I actually had in game just one time; it was Defend the City of Agarth, and it basically fueled the story all by itself by setting the starting city, telling us what would have been the main antagonist, how to deal with him (based on the boons received by the quest), why the others were interested in following the questing paladin, and so on.

That said, if you feel you want to play with custom quests, it's worth to give it a shot and try them.

The core quests are so generic that basically everything can be squeezed through them.

Okay, this is exactly my point. I feel like you're stretching 'Defend _____ from the inequities...' into some awkward contortions to fit these. If we're going to make it fit, why do we even define a list of possible quests? Why not just let the player of the Paladin define the goal, maybe with a few requirements about challenge and selflessness?

If we're going to have a list, I feel like it should be able to cover the common stuff without feeling awkward. Using 'Defend _____' for recovery of a stolen artifact or seeking the lost symbols of someone's kingship or throwing the Ring into Mount Doom feels awkward to me. Okay, I grant that you could probably stretch Slay _____ to cover the last case instead, but still.

I had Valeria the troubled Paladin defend Xena the Wizard from the iniquities that befell her: namely the demons she summoned regularly to achieve her adventuring ends.

Interesting. This is actually an example that makes me go 'hmmm', because it points out  where I think the 'Defend' quest is potentially problematic. This case doesn't have a well-defined end state. How would you know when Valeria had actually fulfilled her quest? Doesn't the very word 'quest' sort of imply a concrete goal that you can point to and say, 'yes it has been achieved' or 'no it has not'?

I think you're focusing too much on the "what" and understimate the "why". The paladin's three quests are not detailed actions you must perform, they are heroic goals you must achieve by means of your choice. Saying you have to destroy an artifact doesn't tell us why it must be destroyed, while in the core quests the motivation is a central matter. Saying that you have to defend a whole country from the iniquities that beset them will lead, through the normal Q&A the GM and the players do before and during the game, at the specifics of the quest, that could very well be your classic artifact smashing adventure.

While I agree that the motivation is very important, I really don't see that laying out the core quests in a constrained form like this helps us get there, precisely because they are so generic. 'Discover the truth of Blackrock Tower' doesn't tell us any more on its own than 'Seek the Holy Grail'. Even 'Slay Horlath the Ogre, a blight on the land' is only slightly better in that regard.... why are you going after Horlath instead of the other blights? (There are always plenty of blights upon the land. Many of them can't be slain, of course....)

In practice, I think a Paladin is going to see something in the fiction he wants to take up. Then he's going to look at the goals under Quest and see which of the Quest goals is best fit. Sometimes that's going to be a fairly tortured reading, as the answers you gave demonstrate. Worst case scenario, he looks at the quests and thinks that none of them really fit the mission he wants to take on, so he can't use the Quest move. Best case scenario, one seems to be a pretty good fit... but then what have you gained by finding one and stating it in those terms? It doesn't define the task more clearly, or provide the motivation (presumably the Paladin already had motivation for taking this on). Maybe it shades your perception of the true nature of the task a little, but when you're stretching 'Defend ...' the way I see you doing above, I don't think this is really important. It certainly doesn't help me see when the Quest is complete, which I think is part of my problem with some 'Defend ...' uses.

The more I think about it the more I think it should be as simple as: "Describe the selfless and heroic task you have set yourself." (Rather than expanding the list.) That matches my conception of what a Paladin's Quest conceptually should be -- a selfless and heroic task -- without needing to be fit into any prewritten boxes.

Somewhat related to this is the question of how long a typical Quest should last. I would think it should be something like usually two to three sessions, not infrequently one or less, and only rarely much longer than that. I think you want the Quest changing with some frequency so the GM can tailor the vow to what is interesting in the current environment, and not be stuck with what he told the paladin 6 months ago. This consideration is what is leading me to prefer Quests that have pretty well-defined ending conditions.

I agree in principle Threlicus, but in execution, it sort of undermines the whole 'list' concept of Vincent's paradigm. Your idea seems more conducive to John Harper's World of Dungeons, where the players and DM work out the particulars of the 10+, 7-9, miss engine and the details of player character flag choices (like the Paladin's Quest for instance).
 
Similarly, when a Player Discerns Reality, they can't always 'match' the question they want to ask from those from the list. It is exactly this constraint that focuses and characterises DW (and AW) play.

By all means, scrap the 'Defend' Quest and replace it, or simply add more examples to the list, or use your generic Quest profile in your game - if it makes it better for your group, great! Its your game after all.

Personally, I prefer as GM to antagonise the heck out of the PC's about 'getting there', especially with the open-ended sort of quest flag like 'Defend'. It is precisely this generic nature that spurns all sorts of future stakes and complications and adventures to be had! We try to leave as many blanks to be discovered through play as possible. The actual conditions for meeting the completion of a quest are much more fun when discovered through play, rather than pre-determined in chargen.

 Your examples about Blights and their ability to be slain is GOLD. I would be itching to play to see what happens and what details of the world we create, given those few sentences of setting :)

I think the provided list can be used for almost any situation that will come up in the game. I also can definitely see adding quests as necessary; it's not a big enough deal that I think the game text needs to change. Think of it like adding a custom move to your game: If a quest really truly needs to be "I will return _____ to _____ so that it may be destroyed," then just let the player write that and BOOM, done.

Sometimes gamers get caught up in RULES AS WRITTEN and I think DW is intentionally left very open to prevent that. A lot of DW play is tweaking the game to your individual group. Just add the quest and don't worry about whether it matches the exact phrasing in the book. No biggie.

So yeah, I did think about the list paradigm thing. Restrictions breed creativity, right? I'm just not sure how applicable it is in this case. In the case of Discern Realities (or AW's Read the Sitch move) it makes sense, because it's trying to avoid this mode of play:

"I search the room. That's a... 22 on the perception check. What do I find?"

But, although it looks like a restriction on the player, it isn't really -- it's using the player's choice to create the restrictions on the GM that breed the GM's creativity. And, of course, while the rules authors have tried to be comprehensive, a group might well want to add a question or two to fit their vision of comprehensive, if there is something that is important to that group that the authors missed.

In any case, I don't think that problem is so applicable here, because as I said, I think the usual mode is going to be that the Paladin has an idea of what to do and wants to frame it as Quest, rather than saying "I want to be on a Quest, what task should I take up?" Given that, I think either the one sentence formulation should be used or the list should be exanded to more comfortably cover the common cases.

Incidentally, I'm perfectly comfortable with house rules. It's just that sometimes there is some reason behind a rule that I don't see, and it's good to get other people's input on it. And it can also be good to see if there are any other people with the same issue you have...