Mar 27 (edited) • D&D
Here's the Secret to Keeping Players Hooked — Side Quests Included
Have you ever scoured a game like a hungry vulture, devouring every piece of content it had to offer? Red Dead Redemption was that game for me. I spent over 200 hours completing every story point, bounty, hunt, challenge, achievement, and side quest. I even set internal achievements that didn't offer any reward or progression — tossing people off cliffs, robbing outlaws, lassoing travellers and dragging them behind my horse, and holing up for a final stand in the local bar to see how high I could get my bounty.
What about RDR hooked me to explore every inch of the map and tackle every side quest?
Was it rewards like new horses, guns, and cosmetics? No. The rewards were marginal improvements at best. I might have changed my outfit twice my entire playthrough, better horses only seconds off travel, and gun upgrades only made kills slightly easier — nothing worth obsessing over.
Was it that I wanted to impress my friends with a completionist trophy? No. That dragged me across the finish line after they killed my favorite character, but it's not what kept me in the marathon.
What kept me engaged for 200+ hours were two things: characters I loved and compelling encounters.
Players will push through the boring bits if it means spending time with a character they want to get to know more deeply. Take John Marston. He's a former outlaw trying to make amends and become a better man — relatable, flawed, and an underdog. He'll destroy anyone who threatens him or the people he loves, but he always offers his adversaries the courtesy of a warning before putting a bullet in their head. He's morally grey: Capable of being the hero or the outlaw in any situation, which keeps you guessing what he's going to do next. This is the kind of character that keeps you hooked in the long term.
Compelling encounters give players the chance to shape their characters' stories through their actions. Early in the game, John Marston finds Nigel West Dickens, a snake oil salesman, shot and left for dead in the desert. John saves him, and the bandits who shot him give chase. After recovering, Nigel offers to help John track down his old gang, but first, he has John use his marksmanship to con an audience into buying snake oil to fund the search.
Notice the pattern: Every decision involves a consequence and an obstacle. Saving Nigel puts him in John's debt, leading Nigel to help John find his old gang. (consequence) However, John's life is at risk because the bandits want Nigel dead (obstacle). Consequences present additional compelling encounters. Obstacles up the stakes. With every iteration of this pattern, a character gradually changes, forming an arc that is ideally satisfying to the player.
You need both lovable characters and compelling encounters to keep players engaged long term. Dungeons & Dragons makes this easy. Every player gets to choose the character they want to be, and every decision in combat, exploration, and roleplay shapes who that character becomes. This means the DM only needs to focus on one thing: create encounters that compel players to make those decisions matter. How interesting the choices feel depends on their costs and benefits.
But that's an article for another day.
0
0 comments
Here's the Secret to Keeping Players Hooked — Side Quests Included
powered by
skool.com/learn-storytelling-through-dd-2990
Build a D&D world so compelling your players would pay to live in it.
Suggested communities
Powered by