How do you write an interesting "Collectathon" quest storyline?

[aqua03]

So as I've been working on my new comic Drachenseele, one thing I've been having a bit of trouble in the story planning phase is the second act/arc of the story, which is a bit of an RPG-eqsue "Get the things" quest.

The basic plot is that there's a group of six knights each bonded with the soul of a Dragon King (Basically the gods of their world) and they need to go on a quest to reunite said souls with their respective bodies to properly awaken them to heal their dying world before the villains can get their hands on the bodies and drain their latent magic to resurrect an undead overlord to enact his evil plans. Basic RPG stuff.

The big problem I have is with the "Get the things" part. Mostly kind of stemming from Drachenseele's extremely early origins as a completely unrelated RPG video game named DRGN where you could get away with a bit more of "repetitive" plot struct like "Go to quirky town, engage in solving town's problems caused by boss of the week, find artifact, onto the next town to rinse and repeat." It's kind of repetitive and boring when I write it out. There are some good character moments and stories in there, but it just feels kind formulaic and ends up making the villains feel kinda wimpy also given that it's mostly just the heroes beating them, especially when they have such a strong entrance in the opening, nearly destroying the protagonists' base of operations and causing their leader to sacrifice himself to stop them.

So what should I do? Have a bigger driving force beyond the looming threat of the world's destruction and the villain group resurrecting the big bad guy. Should I plonk all the Dragon Kings in one area (Besides the first one that the protagonists have to help send them off on their quest in the first place) so that the quest is more straightforward than "Bumble from town to town to get them all"? Should I have a bigger villain force (Like a rival kingdom working with the Villain group, who are more a group of roaming mercenaries than anything, to resurrect the Big Bad, who would be the final boss of the story either way.) Should I tweak the plot a bit to make the "Collectathon" more interesting? Should I do something else altogether?

What do you guys think? What would you guys do and how should I go about making an interesting story with the elements I have?

[CosmicLeon]

Something I have learned from running dnd games is that doing the same mission over and over can be boring. Some advice is to change up what your players, or in the case, characters are doing. Rather than retrieving the item every time, perhaps they have to earn some, and etc... Dungeon crawl, v.s escort mission. (i think you get the point) If you feel the villains are too weak, make your characters fail, or take away something that is valuable the the characters that they have to claw back. Not all villains need to fight. Play mind games too. I find that the mind games are what get my players with I DM, and the get caught up on little things. For example my party will not go into anyplace dark, and that has led to hilarious, and deadly choices. So, I think you can implement that into your story and throw your character for a loop. I know that I am comparing this to DND but it is a story building game, and I use the game to improve my storytelling skills, and see the reactions of people who don't know what is going on in my head. Also, if you can, run your story by some people, and not tell them anything, but ask for their opinions on what is happening and what they think will happen next.

[aqua03]

Neat, thanks for thew feedback. Never really thought of it like that before. Especially the "Just show the story to somebody and ask them where they think it would go" idea. I really like that idea and might try it out some time.

[IndigoShirtProd]

Focus on your characters. I have a story with a similar plot line where the group goes from location to location to defeat certain monsters. What keeps the story interesting is subplots and mystery. In each location, there is a focus on a specific character, for the most part, and an arc the character goes though. One character gets a power up that they need to work on to use, another character has another reason to be in that location and also needs to complete that task, the team is broken up in another location and they have to deal with that. At the end of each major monster fight new information is learned about the villains, the heroes and the past. These things keep the story interesting, and gives your reader a chance to get invested in the story. So consider subplots is what I'm trying to say.

[darthmongoose]

I'd say the best thing to compare your structure to for inspiration would be something like One Piece.
In One Piece, a large crew of pirates sail around the world on a ship. They have a shared goal and to get to it, they need to visit different islands along the way. Each Island is an almost self-contained adventure with its own villain, supporting characters and a heroic climax, and often a particular island can serve as a place to meet a new crewmember, or an arc that explores one of the existing ones more deeply by being tied to their past in some way or by having a conflict that's close to their heart.

I'd structure it so that getting soul 1 is the most straightforward, like everything is where it "should be", there's a tough challenge to get it, but there's no twist on the formula. This means I'd suggest putting the first one as the soul for the knight with the lowest self-confidence, and the barrier to getting it is largely "can I overcome this challenge?" and the resolution is either "yes, with the help of my friends" OR "yes, and I did it alone, I'm not the useless member of the team who has to rely on all the others after all!"

But then after soul 1, they all tend to have some kind of TWIST. So like... the place where they need to get to has caved in and now it's at the bottom of a pit, or a nest of monsters have moved in, or the instructions to the challenges have been lost, or thieves have stolen the thing they want and taken it to their airship base, or the place the soul resides is now at the centre of some huge Hunger Games like battle royale currently ongoing... you know, something like that.
The twist should be in some way tied to the skills and the personality and flaws of the character that soul is relevant to, and their victory should highlight why we should love that character and think they're cool. There should always be a moment where that knight realises: "Oh! I'm the only one who can do this. Leave it to me!"
Around the 4th or 5th one, the twist should be that the big bad or their second in command involves themselves directly to sabotage the team's efforts, to remind the audience of the looming threat.

So my suggestion in summary: Each soul quest should be a distinct mini-arc with a different environment and a different character focus that leaves that character and their relationships to the team a little different from how they were before.

[Zak]

My comic story is actually just this. Or at least is based around this idea. And so what Ive done. (Not to spoil anything too much) But I have a story arc that Im drawing up where "Collectible item" is being fought over at the moment. And that story is self-contained as a Arc in itself. (About 5 chapters estimated) Than I have two arcs inbetween before the next one is probably then found (Its estimated at the moment). So its mostly writing up a quest as it were for that being the main goal but you can write around THAT particular bit to do interesting things.

Maybe one idea is that you have a fighting tournament and winner gets the item at the end? Or maybe you could have it that its not that straight forward. Like maybe literally a fetch quest where someone has Item A but wont give it up unless they can exchange it for a favor or Item B?

Treat it like a game or something. Thats me spit balling but Im in the same boat. So if you ever get stuck on it later on down the track you could use my story as inspiration. Just a thought! lol

[DualDragons]

The very first version of RotH used to be a collectation type story. There was "the chosen one" who needed to collect seven magical keys. These keys were needed to open a ancient chest that contained a weapon. This weapon could be used to defeat the "Overlord" who was the main antagonist at the time. So Andrew and friends fared against the Overlord to collect the keys first and defeat him.
I kinda dropped it since it felt a bit overused, mainly the fact that I wrote it like the good guys always got the keys and won which frankly was boring.

I did reuse and change most of the aspects of the story to create what RotH is now. But I kinda ditched the collectation part since I wasn't very good at handling it. Make it so one of the bad guys actually get one of the souls first and therefore threaten the good guys with it.

[aqua03]

@darthmongoose @Zak @DualDragons

Thanks for all the feedback, guys. I guess I realized that I was having trouble with said storyline when I was writing my one shot for a manga contest I'm entering which has a similar "quest" storyline and had a much easier time due to how "concise" it was, not just due to it being a short one shot, but also how straightforward it was given that it was the characters just heading towards one main goal and dealing with bumps along the way (like encountering a wind goddess who attacks the airship the heroes are on for disrupting her airspace, fighting the guardian of said thing they need, etc.) Made me wonder if I should just put all (barring the first dragon need they need) in one place for both groups to race towards so they'd have a more singular goal of sorts if that makes sense, kinda like how a JoJo arc like Stardust Crusaders or Vento Aureo is structured.

I do like the idea of having different "Mini Arcs" as well and I did think about having one of the macguffins be put up for a prize of some sort of tournament or similar event, but I realized that it would be kind of dumb for the person who had an artifact that was a necessary part to save the world (one that would stop the world from ending that most everyone was trying to locate to do so.) and then just put it up as a prize for some contest if that makes sense. (Maybe that's me just being too idealistic, though.)

I guess I just need to think a bit more about that going forward as well, because I'm not quite sure how to properly handle said "Collectathon" storyline at the moment. Thanks for the feedback, though.

(Maybe I might have the villain group be working with someone else besides the sealed big bad in order to prevent them from becoming the "Team Rocket" of sorts of the story.)