[MUD-Dev] Resets, repops and quests

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <338dc07c.193932289 at neptune>, on 05/27/97 
   at 08:21 AM, alexo at bigfoot.com (Alex Oren) said:

>Anyways, There was an interesting thread about a month ago which
>discussed resets and repops in a mud.  The consensus seems to be that
>resets are a thing to be avoided(tm).

Yup.  That's where the whole Trash Collector concept came from AFAIR.

>The question that was left unanswered is: How can a mud have a
>working quest system without some kind of resets?

Leaving aside the point that I feel that quests are an inherently
flawed game design structure for MUDS, instead of having a quest that
needs to be returned to a set (or randomised variation upon) state
each time, instead concentrate upon creating a process a side-effect
of which is to create a state which can then be the function of a
quest to change.

Thus you can have the whole Orc breeder/drone/fighter/noble/king
seceario discussed earlier.  Next give the wandering bands of Orc
fighters resulting from an Orc population explosion a natural affinity
for buildings.  Make the Princess prone to wandering.  Add a feature
to the Princess such that, should she meet an Orc it takes her
prisoner and conveys her back to the warren.

Voila!  An instant automated, unpredictable process which more or less
guarantees that periodically the Princess will be captured and in need
of rescue.  

It actually ends up more fun for me as your character could just steal
an Orc-ish body and go capture the princess yourself (and then redeem
her with one of your other bodies for valuable prizes!).  Or you can
use the Orc body to unnoticiably infiltrate the Orc-ish warren yada
yada.

>Clearly we cannot manage 2000+ different quests, so there must be
>some (heavy) overlap.  But now we have to deal with quest
>availability issues ("How can I rescue princess Grizelda from the
>hill orcs when Bubba The Dimwit just slaughtered the whole tribe
>along with the princess?  Now I'll probably have to wait 15 years
>until the king has another teenage daughter stupid enough to be
>kidnapped") versus world consistency issues ("Hey, the king wants me
>to rescue Grizelda?  Didn't Bubba The Dimwit behead her two days
>ago???").

Create an automatic process which ensures a supply of Princesses.  If
Bubba did the full body scalping trick, then have another process
which kicks in upon the death of a princess/royalty.  eg:

  Each area has a "King".
  
  It is required that the King have an heir.

 If the King does not have an heir, then the locals will rise in 
   revolt, depose/behead the King and install one of their number 
   (who has a child) as the new King.

Voila!  Instant unending supply of Princes and Princesses for capture
and restoration.  

Oops.  What happens if Bubba wipes out *all* the kids?  Not a problem. 
Put in another automatic process:

  Have mobiles (with attendant families periodically "created" as 
    imigrants from other regions.

  Should an entire area find itself childless, along with its king, 
    Have the entire area go flat out buts (ie chaotic aggro) until 
    either one of them has a kid (and thus becomes King, or a mobile 
    with child "appears" in the area.

Now you can have more fun trapping Bubba the twit in his own town of
insanely angry childless mobiles.

What about if Bubba kills all the mobiles thus removing the King and
all future sources of Kings. 

  Still have the "created" imigrants as above.

  Have each area during its normal operation produce imigrants whose 
    job it is to wander until they find an area with a lower 
    population density than their source, and to then settle there.
  
>Just another thing, let me add that I really like the quest concept
>on one hand but highly value a consistent storyline on the other
>(probably comes from being a DM for too long).

Storyling doesn't have a lot of value to me for MUDs as I see it as
inherently forged.  To me it reeks too much of trying to enforce a
story on a Monopoly game.

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...