These are Sidequests, or otherwise optional missions given to you randomly, with varied requirements and rewards that are still within certain limits. One of them is given after you've finished the previous one, given the next real-life day, or have a whole pool be randomly generated with you only picking one or a few.
Compare Randomly Generated Levels, where it's the locations and enemies/treasure/other things generated in them that are randomised.
Often overlaps with Play Every Day, especially with free-to-play games.
Examples:
Adventure Games
- Parodied in Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People Episode 5: 8-Bit is Enough. Strong Sad has been warped into the world of a video game that exists within the series and when you find him, he has taken up the mantle of quest-giver. He'll ask for a randomly named item, which is always just the same cube, or "pixel" as characters within the game refer to it. After delivering the cube to him, he "rewards" you by giving you another quest, which is just to find the same cube, in the same place you found the first one, under a different name. This can be done infinitely many times, and nothing will ever be accomplished by doing so. The real solution is to deliver a cube of scorpion bait, which causes the King of Town who has been merged with a scorpion monster from the game world to attack him, letting you get him out of the way of the path he was blocking.
Augmented Reality Games
- Pokémon GO has Field Research Tasks, which are given at Pokéstops. These tasks range from capturing Pokémon to making good/great/excellent throws to keeping a streak by doing a certain task several times and not missing. These tasks can grant Pokéballs, berries and even Pokémon, and are randomly generated every day.
Card Battle Games
- Hearthstone uses a daily and weekly quest system, which you complete to earn rewards. You get one daily quest every day and three weekly quests every Monday, and can reroll one of each per day if you don't like the requirements. Quests are usually things like playing enough cards of a specific type, dealing damage to the opponent, playing games as specific classes, or winning games in certain gamemodes.
- The Horus Hersey: Legions has a similar mechanic. One of the daily quests involves doing a certain amount of actions that day: summoning a number of minions, use your warlord's ability, destroy enemy troops, etc. The resulting crate has three tiers: the higher the results the better the rewards when the timer runs down and the crate unlocks.
Idle Games
- Anti-Idle: The Game has the Random Quest system. The first quest given is always "Reach Level 100", but a new one is randomly given after that, with its difficulty depending on how many quests you've already cleared that day and its goal depending on what level you're at. Full list
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- Idle Empire 3 has randomly given quests which are usually about reaching a high power rating/level, opening treasure chests, playing for a certain amount of time, getting critical clicks, or collecting diamonds. Quest types may not be fully random (for instance, two playthroughs had Random Quest 1 require reaching a power rating and Random Quest 2 had playing for a certain amount of time), but quest requirements certainly are (Random Quest 2 required 10 minutes of playtime in one playthough and 12 minutes in the other). Each quest is added immediately after clearing the previous one.
MMORPGs
- In Moshi Monsters characters can randomly give your character a quest three times a day. Said quests can be either playing a game, cleaning a boat, finding a lost Moshling, finding a lost item, or answering a riddle. It all depends. The reward is also completely random and it can vary from an item to XP.
Puzzle Games
- Nonograms Katana has the WANTED quest given each day, where you have to beat a 10x10 puzzle from a selected category that was made by users, to earn a resource reward.
Roguelikes
- For the King has Sidequests to slay a specific monster or transport an item in exchange for money, items, bonus experience points, or a scenario-specific reward. Most towns allow the player to select a single quest from a list of options where the targets, destinations, and/or item rewards are randomly generated.
Role-Playing Games
- The Elder Scrolls:
- Arena utilizes these for sidequests, taking the form of "go to X, kill/retrieve Y". They lack the depth of later games in the series, primarily existing to give players an option for extra experience and money outside of the main quest, but nonetheless proved popular.
- Daggerfall builds upon the popularity of the sidequests in Arena, combined with Randomly Generated Levels to massively pad out the content. It also adds guilds and factions to the series for the first time, though they still use randomly generated quests unlike later games which give these questlines full blown Sidequest Sidestorys. However, procedural generation was phased out from the series afterwards, and not reintroduced (partially) until Skyrim.
- Skyrim introduces a "Radiant Story" system that generates random objectives given by NPCs to the player when asked for jobs, usually involving going to a randomized dungeon and either killing a specific enemy or finding and bringing back a randomized quest item; it also populates the overworld with Random Events for the player to encounter while traveling.
- Fallout 4 has the dreaded "settlement ambush" radiant quests that require you to travel to one of your Minutemen outposts to protect them from bandit raids or mutated animal attacks. You will get a bit of exp and whatever loot you can scrounge up from enemies after completing it. You can fortify your settlements with as many turrets and defences as you'd like, but the game can still generate these quests, no matter the outpost's defense rating (though the higher rating makes them less likely to happen and boosts the chances of your settlement winning against the enemies if you won't help). If you won't come to the rescue, a dice roll will be performed by the game, and if you'll lose, some of your structures will get damaged and will slowly repair over time, you can lose inventory items and the settlement will get a temporary happiness penalty.
- Genshin Impact gives the player four random quests each day from the Adventurer's Guild. They usually consist of beating a certain number of monsters, but can delve into time trials or item delivery as well. Clearing all four and reporting back to the guild gets you bonus rewards. These are generally a slow but effective way to farm for experience-boosting items and Primogems for the gacha system.
- Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team has the Job Bulletin Board, which has several missions that require you to do one of a few objectives. The exact objective, the location (including the dungeon and floor), who is requesting it, and the reward are randomised. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers also adds an Outlaw Notice Board which has you defeat a criminal, but the other variables previously mentioned are randomised. While each job has a code that can be typed in once as Wonder Mail, the boards themselves randomly pick a couple of tasks each time a new in-game day begins, with you only being able to accept eight at a time.
- Simplest RPG: You always have a quest to defeat a random monster x number of times and get a specific piece of equipment to a certain + level. After finishing it, you get a reward in EXP and another quest of the same type is given.
- Warframe:
- After completing The War Within, players can access sorties, daily quests consisting of 3 high level missions, each with randomly selected objectives and conditions that make them extra harder (lower energy pools for players, weapon restrictions, magnetic anomalies, radiation hazards and such). Completing all three missions rewards the player with one of the rewards listed in the sortie menu.
- Bounty missions in landscape areas are made-up from 3 to 5 stages scattered around the map, all but the last one being selected randomly from a pool of mission types available for that area. Each completed stage rewards the squad with one reward chosen randomly from a list given in the bounty menu.
- Xenoblade Chronicles X features a mission board for BLADES to take jobs. It's a large pool of mostly pre-determined quests that tasks you with gathering certain materials or killing certain enemies, but you almost never know which ones will be available from day to day, or which ones will show up next after you complete some of them.
Survival Horror
- Dead by Daylight: The game gives you a maximum of three Daily Rituals which award Bloodpoints, the currency used to level up characters. You can replace a single ritual once a day. The rituals will typically consist of performing tasks as either Survivor or Killer, such as hit a Survivor 3 or 4 times with a specific Killer's power or successfully escape using a specific Survivor.
Tower Defense
- Bloons Tower Defense 5 has a Quests tab in the menu, available by clicking on a monkey wearing a red hat. It shows three quests selected from a pre-determined pool, which typically involve popping a certain number of bloons, using certain towers, or beating maps. Most quests have a duration of one day, but some longer ones last five. After a quest is completed, you're able to collect a reward, which is usually Monkey Money, Special Agents, or free towers.
- Infinitode has a random quest given daily, like playing for 30 minutes or selling 5000 gold worth of towers. Clearing it rewards you with bucks to spend on permanent upgrades and tiles to use in the Map Editor.
- Infinitode 2 has a daily quest system where the game makes you do an easy task on one of several pre-made levels for a reward, though you can also try to claim a high score to earn addditional rewards depending on the percentage of players you land in. It also has a daily loot system where the game makes you do a random side quest which is available normally at any time (as many levels have quite a few side quests, the game just picks one of them) but with an additional reward.
Wide Open Sandbox
- Dwarf Fortress: Quests or "Agreements" can be given by local rulers to slay monsters and bandits or cause troubles for another faction.
- In Starbound, while the main quests are fixed, side quests from tenants and villagers are generated, and include activities such as bribing someone, capture a monster or buying stocks.
Other Games
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons gives the player a set of random tasks to complete for a small amount of Nook Miles (talk to people, chop trees, sell items, etc). Every time you finish a task, a new one replaces it. Sometimes the tasks have a multiplier to give you more miles when completed.
- Bakery Blitz: Passing levels in this Time Management Game involves filling customer's orders for baked goods. Each customer's order is randomly generated, based on the ingredients and kitchen equipment available in the level. Some levels impose the added pass/fail condition of serving a set quantity of a certain ingredient, with no guarantee that the randomly-generated customer orders will include that ingredient. This regularly produces levels that are unwinnable. Players might find themselves stuck failing and replaying a level that requires them to serve 3 cakes with chocolate frosting when customers are only requesting cakes with mint frosting.
- Bee Swarm Simulator:
- Six NPCs in the game are of the quest pool type: Black Bear (found near the Ticket Tent), Brown Bear (encountered near the Clover Field), Polar Bear (located on the path leading up to the Mountain Top Field), Honey Bee (found near the Pine Tree Forest), and the two bee leaders, Riley Bee and Bucko Bee (located in the Red and Blue HQs respectively).
- While Black Bear does give out regular questlines, once you've done all of his quests he will start giving quests that are randomly generated. These quests involve collecting pollen from certain fields or from flowers of certain colors.
- Brown Bear's quests involve collecting pollen (just like Black Bear's quests), and usually give out items such as Royal Jellies and Tickets. A later update makes it so that his quests scale in difficulty similar to Riley Bee and Bucko Bee, and after you complete a certain amount of quests, he will also give you additional items such as bee eggs, crafting ingredients, and even a skin for your Cub Buddy themed after him.
- Polar Bear's quests involve collecting from fields and defeating mobs to use them as "ingredients" for his dishes. Completing a Polar Bear quest grants Polar Power, which permanently increases all of your bees' energy by 1%.
- Honey Bee's quests require you to collect Honey tokens that you can find by doing things such as collecting pollen and from defeating enemies. Completing its quests lets it give you a blessing that doubles your Conversion Rate for 30 minutes. The number of Honey tokens you need to collect increase with every Honey Bee quest you start.
- Riley Bee and Bucko Bee, however, are a bit more complex. You can't actually do their quests until you obtain Translators from Science Bear by completing his quests. Once you do, you can use Translators on the two bees to unlock their respective quest pools. Their quests have objectives such as collecting a specific color of pollen from one field, using their Field Boosters, and so forth. The quests also scale up in difficulty in order to enforce the fact that both the Red Bees and Blue Bees are Determinators.
- Six NPCs in the game are of the quest pool type: Black Bear (found near the Ticket Tent), Brown Bear (encountered near the Clover Field), Polar Bear (located on the path leading up to the Mountain Top Field), Honey Bee (found near the Pine Tree Forest), and the two bee leaders, Riley Bee and Bucko Bee (located in the Red and Blue HQs respectively).
- Hill Climb Racing has three random Daily Missions given each day. They typically involve you doing stunts or collecting items. There's also a Daily Challenge which has you reach a certain distance of a random stage (even those you haven't unlocked) with five free tries.
- Most contracts in Kerbal Space Program's Career Mode are randomly-generated, using the player's progress so far as a guide. Contracts might require the player to place a satellite in a specific orbit around a planet, test a spacecraft part at a certain altitude, etc. The payout is calculated based on the "difficulty" of the contract.
- Progressbar 95 has "Today's challenges", which aren't given each day despite what the name suggests. Instead, three of them are randomly picked each time you turn on the game, usually involve filling a progress bar by a certain amount, beating levels, or getting rid of annoyances like popups, and give a 5000-point reward after you clear another level.
- Sideswiped: Quick Race randomly selects cars, event types, and tracks from across the game to create unique events for the player. These events tend to be on the easier side to ensure they can always be completed, which can be helpful if it generates a Destruction event with the Warrior, or a proper race with the Daidara. Note that these races can even generate with content the player has yet to unlock, offering an opportunity to experiment with late-game cars early.
