Thinking deeply into something is great, I think I just described it confusingly in the first place when I used the word nature. I couldn't think of a better term. Life magic sort of fits, but people usually think of healing for that. Bio-magic sort of fits, but that could also include lots of unrelated things.

You're probably familiar with the concept of "the invisible hand" in economics, but is there a word or phrase that means the opposite? The underlying concept is that it's the purpose of human existence to use their unique intelligence to exert control over various aspects of the world for the betterment of the world, with some experimentation thrown in to figure out new things that might improve the world. With the mosquito example, the culture in the game would believe the no-nonsense approach would be to save an example of mosquitoes or a micro-world including the whole ecological web mosquitoes are currently a part of, then experimentally eliminate them in another such micro world to see if it causes any problems, then experiment more to see if they could ameliorate these problems by adding something other than mosquitoes...

In my personal life I've played with lassies-faire gardening and the results are pretty unimpressive. If you put a big variety of seeds an bulbs in your yard in a few years you will have a yard filled with nothing but 3 or 4 kinds of weeds.

I'm not talking about[color="#1C2837"] lassies-faire gardening, I just mean storms and woods and hurricanes and such. But never mind, it's off-topic.
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[color="#1C2837"]"[color="#1C2837"]underlying concept is that it's the purpose of human existence to use their unique intelligence to exert control over various aspects of the world for the betterment of the world"
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[color="#1C2837"]Crystal clear.
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[color="#1C2837"]But there would be actions taken, some intellectual force that works out the what and the player can be the how. Yes'm? This sounds like a scientificish approach. But no matter. Point is that the monsters aren't necessarily of the "el Chupacabre is eating our livestock, save us" vein but it could be just about anything.
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[color="#1C2837"]So there is a lot of creative freedom to make hand-crafted puzzles as quests. They can be as simple as find it and kill it or maybe killing something else that is a critter's diet or support, etc.

When it comes quests I’m not a big fan of context less and errand boy quests. The type of thing were some random npc ask you if your not to busy saving the world to kill the 10 spiders in his basement or take a package to his aunt.



In my mind a well designed quest is as goal or objective that needs to be completed as part of some character development, on going story line, or larger task. Some real world examples of “quests” might be:

• I need to find a date for my mates 30[sup]th[/sup]
• If I want to a get promotion and pay rise this year I need to complete the personal development objectives my boss set.
• If I want to take that 6 month round the world trip I’ll need to save up £30,000, and find someone to rent my flat.
  
  
  In your game world what if you were spirit of nature helping various tribes thrive on world ravaged by natural disasters?
  
  The game could that start with the tiny village of the pika being destroyed by a hurricane and so they pray to the goddess of nature who sends you to help guide them and rebuild their town.
  
  
  
  The initial 3 quests the player has tackle in that case would be:
  
  
  • Provide the pika with a new food sources. (either through farming, raising animals, or a combination of the 2)
  • Provide the pika with a new source of water. (either by digging a well, or unblocking the stream.)
  • Provide the pika with shelter. (By rebuilding the town hall, or building a refuge at your shrine.) Later quests would further help the pika tame their environment and expand the village. Eventually you’ll start working with the different tribes each with different environments, challenges, and traits and further expanding the villages through trade and between the tribes.
    
    
    
    Think how much fun it could be set the fashion and architectural style of an entire village of tiny creatures.
    
    
    
    
    

I think it might be interesting to incorporate the monsters you capture and breed into the quests. Perhaps you could have a mole-type critter that is good at digging up fields and getting them ready to be seeded (i.e. Harvest Moon...but with a twist). Or a flying creature that could help repair damaged roofs (how cool would it be to have a dragon...that fixes houses?). I think it would be a lot of fun if the player could take control of the critters and do the work (or for lazier players, just send the monsters to complete the quests and reap the rewards).

Just my two cents.

This game does sound like a lot of fun though. I'd definitely play it too.

Something I might like to see that expresses your theme (in my interpretation of it, at least) is Chaotic interaction between seemingly unconnected things.

For example, a certain faction may be carefully cultivating an area of land to produce a certain thing that they need, whether that's material for some other endeavor or a suitable habitat to re-establish a population of creatures which has fallen near or into extinction. But somehow another faction's efforts towards its own, separate goals interfere with that process. This can be more mundane, like reducing or stopping output, or more interesting, like altering the output in some way. The first faction can then experiment with the altered output, adjust their goals to meet the new condition, or even explore and investigate to see who or what is affecting their efforts and how, in order to stop the interference.

It sets up opportunities for interaction between factions and players in ways meaningful to them (as it's tied up with their own already-established goals), requires inquisitiveness and experimentation in responses, and exemplifies the spirit of refusing to accept the decay that comes from processes beyond oneself.

I guess these aren't "quests" in the traditional sense like WoW. But they are things for players to do which shift the game's equilibria in dynamic ways, there are probably a lot of different approaches and scales that could incorporate the basic idea. But the biggest story benefit is that it is experiential, rather than spawned instance quests bordered with text that few read.