[MUD-Dev] Resets, repops and quests

[Adam Wiggins]

[Alex:]
> } > The question that was left unanswered is: How can a mud have a working que
> } > system without some kind of resets?
> 
> Ling, Jeff (using some vaguely english-like language)

Heh.  I thought maybe I was just turning dyslexic when I read his posts.

>and Caliban (???)
> suggested some sorts of imm intervention/control.
> 
> While perfectly valid, I think this circumvents the problem of resets instead 
> solving it.

Yup.  Works great - IMO, the reason muds and computer RPGs were created
were so that you'd have something to do when you couldn't play Cyberpunk
or Shadowrun with your buddies.

> Let me restate.
> I want some computer-run, hands-off, completely automated, totally computerize
> human-free quests in the scenario.
> Why?
> Because if a human is needed to supervise, I may as well play a "classic" RPG.
> I want the system to provide decent entertainment value when no imms are
> present.  Even for a single player.

Agreed 100%.  Though I plan to have a lot of fun fooling around with
the world as an admin (switching into mobiles being my personal favorite),
this is just me fooling around.  No way in hell I want to maintain some sort
of admin staff.

> Quests, as I see them, provide short-term goals and some sense of accomplishme
> and progress.

I don't like quests.  This is one reason I've never taken to LPs.  They
are too linear - and before you argue, you'll never get a quest randomized
enough or with enough built-in paths to make it non-linear enough for me.

Our standpoint is to look at things from a simpler perspective.  How do
stories and quests emerge in real life?  Simple - they just emerge based
on people's actions.  There's no one (in my book, anyhow) that sits up in
the sky carefully creating things for humans to do.

There's no reason a mud can't be the same, not with the technology availible
today.  Basically, we have a bunch of *very* simple 'goals' set up in the
world.  Most of these are based on resource management (I'm showing my
roll-player stripes here).

For example:

Boffo wanders out into the plains.  It gets dark, and he stupidly forgot his
torch.  He accidentally wanders over the edge of a cliff.

Buffy, riding by on her horse, hears cries for help.  Investigates and
finds Boffa lying with a broken leg, wailing like a baby, at the bottom
of a cliff.

Boom - quest.  Buffy (should she deign to help the poor soul) has several
problems to overcome.  She's got to find some way down the cliff, get Boffo
to quiet down, then get him back up the cliff.  This could involve a lot of
things - if she can set the bone it would make things much easier, for
example.  Perhaps she's got some liquor in her saddlebag that will kill
his pain for long enough that she can drag him up the cliffside.

Assuming she gets him back to town, she has to seek out a healer.  The healer
sees that the leg has been mashed almost to the point of no return by the
horseback trip to town with the unset bone.  The healer sets the bone, but
proclaims that Boffo will never walk again.  Buffy, being somewhat of a
sappy fool, and anyhow not wanting her hard work dragging his ass back to
town to go to waste, asks the healer if there isn't anything they can do.
Healer tells her of a mystical herb which grows far off in the east in
the private gardens of the King of Grooblegrum which has magical healing
properties that can be used to repair Boffo's leg like new.  Buffy, being
a sappy fool, and because the person playing her thinks that sounds like
fun, decides to go after the herb.  And there's a whole new 'quest',
as it were - she's got to first get over there, then manage to actually
get the herb, then get it back.  This may sound simple, but then, it also
sounds simple to get the One Ring from the Shire to Mount Doom. :)  So
assuming your world is populated with enough interesting stuff, they'll
be plenty of pitfalls on the trip (would be wise if she brought some
buddies), plus she's got to get the herb (steal it? buy it from the king?
do some favor for the king <quest alert>?)

Now, the parts of this that you actually hand-craft are very limited.
You've got the town healer, who of course knows how to heal, and has knowledge
of stuff in the land such as magical healing herbs that he can send
players after.  There's the king, who actually has the herb...who knows
what sorts of guards he has on it, or what he'll trade for it, or whatever.
What if Buffy gets there and the king tells her that someone stole the herb
several weeks ago?  Fine!  Makes perfect sense; the healer's information
was just out of date.

How you want to do this as far either hard-coding locations of things, or
just by randomly inserting that 'knowledge' about things into mobiles heads
as they generate in the world, thus ensuring a highly dynamic world while
loosing some of the hand-crafted effect, is up to you.

> I can think of several quests that seem to be immune to most scenarios:
> * Guild initiation rites.

Sure.  This would qualify as a simple goal.  It gets complex when the player
is actually an assassin that has been paid a large amount of money to take
out the guild leader.  He finds that the keep is impregnable, so decides
to try to join the guild in order to get closer to the leader.  Does
this require extra code on the part of the guild creator, or creation of
a special 'quest' beyond someone desiring the guild leader dead?  Nope.

> * Teleporting a player into an extra-dimentional dungeon.

What, you're just walking down the street munching on a snack and suddenly
you're thrown into some dugeon?  I dislike highly random events, as a player.
It's fine if they *seem* random, but there should be something underneath.
Ie, you find out that that spiffy looking ring that you found on the ground
and slipped on your finger actually belongs to an other-worldly demon
who summoned you to his plane to retrieve it.