Fallout co-creator Tim Cain boils RPGs down into 9 different types of quests, but warns "more of one thing means less of another"

Have you ever sat down and counted how many different types of quests there are in an RPG? We often hear how many total quests are in a game—Skyrim has 273—but how much variety is there really? Fallout co-creator Tim Cain explains the nine core types of missions you can be given, and, to my surprise, kill and murder are two separate categories.

If you just want to know the nine kinds of quest, then here they are: murder, kill, the infamous fetch quest, collect, delivery, the often maligned escort quest, talk, puzzle, and timed.