Quests as Campaign Structure

Let's say you want to start a new campaign. It's about, I dunno, kids in a monster hunter academy. 

To make sure it's about what you want, and to give yourself and players some direction and focus, set out 1-3 campaign/default quests. Like:

* graduate from monster hunter school

* make and maintain friendships

* find and maintain romance

Say, "these are the default quests. You never can lose them. As long as you're following a quest, you're playing the game right. This is what the game is about."

Say, "You can and should write down other quests for your character before and during play. When you're following those, you're also playing the game."

The objective of the game is to see what happens when you follow one or more of these quests, to see why you do what you do, and to see what comes of it. 

When you as the the GM or you as the player don't know what to do next, follow a quest, present obstacles for quests, ask why someone is or is not following a quest, challenge that, or wrote and follow a new quest. .  

What Do You Want; Or: How to Win at D&D or Die Trying

Here's a thing that should be part of character generation.

What does your character want? 

Obviously money. 

But why?

General 

1. pay off a debt
2. ransom/redeem someone
3. purchase a costly treatment 
4. redeem ancestral land or possession 
5. support artistic career
6. buy way into aristocracy
7. pay tribute to warlord / bandits
8. pay money to the druids for good crops next year
9. pay to have loved one healed / resurrected
10. pay for the mending of something broken
11. pay off the weregild of the man I or a kinsman killed
12. provide for family
13. provide for the poor
14. provide for my people
15. give a certain amount of money as restitution to someone wronged
16. bride-price 
17. live quietly and simply without care
18. live the high life
19. purchase the one thing I can't live without

Fighting-Man

1. purchase generalship
2. support my own outlaw band
3. build keep to hold against chaos/law
4. support my own army to overthrow ruler

Magic-User

1. build a tower to carry on the research I really care about
2. build the device that has haunted my dreams
3. repay the being who opened the arcane to me
4. create the potion that will cure my sorrow

Cleric

1. build a temple 
2. build and run an orphanage / leper house
3. support holy army for the crusade 
4. support a missionary trip to dangerous lands 

Thief

1. purchase a building to serve as HQ of my own thieves guild
2. pay off enough politicians to have the city in my pocket
3. buy my way into the most OG thieves guild on the continent
4. buy up all competitors in an industry

Season to taste.

When they get enough money to accomplish the goal, or accomplish it without having to get all the money, you've got two options: (1) retire to safety/despair after accomplishing goal, or (2) choose a new goal.

Your character can also choose to abandon the goal for a reason your character articulates or that is obvious from the fiction. 

When you accomplish or abandon your goal, you have won D&D with that character.

Congrats. 

The Gods Must be Crazy

Don't just give the deities domain portfolios. Have them act in extreme accordance therewith and be delighted when the PCs do so. 

The gods are inhuman and frequently delight in inhuman things. 

Avandra, goddess of luck, change, travel, freedom, wants PCs to:

* break up marriages

* assassinate rulers

* destroy buildings and statues, especially her own

* build new things 

* play Russian roulette 

* violate contracts

* set things ablaze 

* go somewhere else, now

* bust people out of prison 

* give people lucky breaks

* have parents abandon their children

Her priests teach these things. Her extremists are even more extreme. Her holy symbol can be found (ambiguously? A natural occurrence?) near sites of such action. 

In other words, players don't need a domain list. They will know from things that happen in the game what a deity is all about.