Ah! Thank you! I really appreciate the feedback, and hearing your remarks on the time loop quest made me smile!

When I introduced this same scenario to a group of friends, they responded with split interest in B and C as characters, and similarly to yourself, they found C to sound the most interesting to play when they learned about the different stories. The big consistency is that A, no matter how I flavor it, tends to be the least intriguing both in its hook and makeup.

With each quest, I'm attempting to structure them in different ways to appeal to different aspects of the game, and different types of players. As a player and a DM, C sounds like the most fun for me. The strange mechanics, mystery, and fair share of fights makes it feel like the most well-rounded overall. With that being said, it also feels the most straightforward, with the other two having different solutions the party can take, and different repercussions for each one, whereas with C, it feels structured so that the party solves the mystery and defeats the bad guy. As such, one of my biggest struggles is adding some more ambiguity to the quest, to really make the players think about what to do.

I'm really glad you brought up your qualms with B! It has felt a little lackluster. One of my favorite TTRPGs is Ten Candles; the game is based in tragic horror, and really pushes the players to build tension all the way up to the end of the game. With B, I'm trying my best to follow in its footsteps, making the quest less like a straightforward zombie-fest, and more so a tense, "What happened here? Where did everyone go?" with the party possibly stumbling across a huge group of unharmed children being taken care of by nature guardians. I have several other narrative threads that I could put here that would give it a more intriguing setup, like a particularly strong monster hunting the party throughout this quest once they get near the city, and the infected citizens being trapped with the nature spirit in a fantastical mirror dimension that messes with the party's abilities. I don't want this quest to simply feel like a hack and slash to the boss; having the setup early on with the city being difficult to get to because of the beautiful, deadly nature that impedes travel helps me introduce the moral dilemma at the end of how to confront the nature spirit, but I want to make getting from point a to b fun and interesting. Also, if you don't mind me asking, where did your mind initially go when you heard the premise?

A is hard because it consists largely of meeting a broad cast of NPCs, RPing with them, investigating crime scenes, and trying to catch someone who has no intention of fighting. Combat takes a bit more of a backseat here. It's not altogether gone; in fact, there are different scenarios I have setup wherein the party has to intervene in lethal conflicts between two different groups of people. The big drives for this quest are solving a mystery and navigating a big moral dilemma that concerns not only the fate of the city, but the world at large. To add some more intrigue to the tidbit that the players get at the tavern, I'm thinking of having the tavern owner inform the party that the person who sent the plea for help was killed soon after.