RuneScape quests are among my favorites. Here are some summaries to steal for your RPG game. I’ll give an overall summary of the quest premise, and how I would adapt it.
My personal favorite. In this quest, you are recruited by the Gnome King on a military extraction mission, rescuing a special ops unit gone missing in the southern seas. When their last known coordinates are visited, you find out an intelligent monkey and ape society on an island has taken them prisoner. You also learn that they were sabotaged and there is a mole in the gnomish military.
I think a hot start is appropriate for this. Start them en route to the island, getting a mission brief. Replace intelligent monkeys with something else as you please (bears are another good one). Then get into the stealthing around the island. A big part of the original quest is sneaking just out of sight in the high grass; make evasion and stealth possible. Put guards on a rotation if they get caught.
An element you could include is the magical ‘greegrees’ of the quest, which transform you into a monkey while held. They can then get past monkeys, as long as they maintain grip of the greegree. You could do other ways of interacting with monkeys, such as social radicals who take the PCs under their wing.
Play out the mole however you like. Is he on the island? Back at home base? What are his goals?
A small quest that is often overlooked. A young man in the frozen north discovers a strange creature trapped in ice. He asks for help in freeing it. You find out it is more dangerous and horrifying than you expected…
I like just the premise of this; seems ripe for many resolutions. While the original quest is tied to a lot of RuneScape lore, you should feel no need to do similar. This could be a small discovery, or it could escalate into a mustering of an army. A wizard far away may know its weakness. Or perhaps a legitimate horror is unleashed onto the world, and the PCs must flee in terror.
The monster could be one of many (perhaps trapped in a terra-cotta style army), or entirely unique. It could be intelligent or rampaging…or both.
Another favorite of mine. This is the seventh quest in a series of human renegades overthrowing their vampire tyrants. This quest focuses on an assassination attempt by the humans against a high-ranking vampire noble, necessarily involving an infiltration of the vampire’s secrete city: Darkmeyer. There, the hated noble resides, and also, a secret key to defeating the vampires…
Salient bits include:
I like the idea of leading an insurrection against overlords. It combines many cool ideas: a team you aren’t sure if you can trust, a special weapon hidden away, and a clever disguise. There is even a subplot in the quest of a vampire contact who is the noble’s sister.
This requires more setup and buy-in than others. Players may start off as regular denizens of this bleak landscape, but after some inciting incident or encounter, learn of the resistance’s actions and join them. You could also have a more direct involvement of the resistance - perhaps they save a PC’s life.
This quest is set in the feuding sister cities of Menaphos and Sophanem. Due to a plague in Sophanem, Menaphos closed its gates. The plague has subsided by the start of the quest, but the gates have not opened nor have Sophanemian citizens living in Menaphos been returned. Something is clearly afoot…
There is a whole host of political maneuverings that could go on here. The original quest has you meet a Menaphosian government contact for information, but this could go a step further: infiltrate the city and investigate. You could be listening in on council meetings, hiding out in slums, or sneaking into a formal event for intel.
You could also put pressure on the other side as well. Maybe there is a Menaphosian mole in Sophanem, or the Sophanemian leaders need intel fast.
The reward is also pretty interesting: a dagger that is especially effective against a certain type of giant desert bug. An extra monster weakness and its reveal at once.
I paired these two quests together because I would probably run them as one big adventure. The first quest focuses on your initiation to a tribe of viking-styled peoples in the far north, the Fremenniks. You must pass various tests and trials to earn a tribal name and allowance to use facilities in their main settlement.
Lunar Diplomacy is reconciling an age-old conflict between the Fremenniks and the Moon Clan. While the Fremenniks are primarily operate by mundane means, the Moon Clan live in a world of magic. You must go through a second initiation into the Moon Clan to be in a position to negotiate the end of their feud.
I think the initiation into a foreign culture is an interesting adventure structure. You have to overcome many different challenges, mental and physical, and deal with various tribe elders’ personalities.
I would blend these two quests by having a setting composed of several different insular peoples. You may want to join one, and they pose some challenges to you for initiation. What happens if two feuding peoples assign conflicting challenges? Examples could be a pair of challenges, set by different people, such as killing a rival in another tribe but also making peace with them. How could these be reconciled to complete the initiation.