From Vanguard Wiki
A quest is one of the core structures of the fantasy genre. A quest can range from "Take my husband Jed his lunch" to "Travel across the Deserts of Time, Creep through the Echoing Mines, Scale Mount Brisgamen, Infiltrate the Castle of the Dread Lord Morra and Rescue Prince Lisken from foul torment in the Castle dungeons". The latter would be considered an 'epic' quest, while the other is a simple delivery quest. Another type of quest is the 'bounty', which requests the player kill a certain number of selected mobs.
Quests can bring structure to gameplay, as well as allow players to feel they are participating in a story and a world, rather than just killing stuff.
In Vanguard, quests will form part of adventuring and diplomacy. It is unknown whether the crafting and harvesting spheres will involve quests, although it could be argued that crafting work orders are a form of quest.
Most quests will be acquired through dialogue with NPCs, where players can select from a list of in-character responses. However, there are rarer quests which may require hidden keywords to be spoken in the presence of the correct NPC. Additionally, these keywords might not produce any response if the player character does not have specific flags active.
Known quests will be recorded in your Travel Journal.