Video game design has come a long, long way since the industry started to take off in the 1970s, but few genres have grown as much as RPGs have. The simplistic, rudimentary design philosophies of yesteryear eventually gave way to far more depth and complexity, resulting in roleplaying experiences with larger, denser worlds, richer stories, and a wider variety of encounter solutions to support player creativity and freedom.
Despite this, a few irksome and tired trends still remain — one of which is the prevalence of fetch quests. These simple missions task the player with retrieving one or more items and then delivering them to the quest giver or another NPC, and in most cases, they're incredibly dull busywork jobs with little-to-no story or roleplaying relevance.
