[MUD-Dev] Quests

[Matthew Mihaly]

On Sat, 15 Apr 2000, Raph Koster wrote:

> 
> On Saturday, April 15, 2000 11:11 AM Madrona Tree said:
> 
> I've always considered the events run on Achaea to be a model for how it
> should be done, but I don't know how much time investment is required.
> Asheron's Call is doing something similar, and they tell me that it IS a
> huge amount of effort to carry off one large-scale, non-repeating,
> consequential event every month.

Thanks. It IS a huge amount of work. I am jealous of the AC people in that
they have enough staff to pull it off once a month. After our last big
event (which ended a couple months ago) we were all a bit mentally
exhausted.

> An ideal mud quest: Some large event occurs damaging enough people that it
> feels like a significant change in the world. Quests are offered to players
> to try to solve this problem. Every quest is different. Many of them solve
> sub-problems or other problems, without fixing the situation. Enormous
> sacrifices are required of those who take on the quests. And finally, when
> the problem is solved, the entire world is changed. And then that situation
> never actually occurs again.
> 
> But how to do that? I don't know. I can write ONE. But it would take a lot
> more time to write it than to play it. I can see a way to do them
> periodically, with a largish staff, to a lesser level of complexity. I don't
> know how to weave it into the fabric of the world. Anyone?

Well, one thing to do (and I mentioned this in my Gamasutra article on
politics) is to use player organizations as focal points of quests, to
assist in getting more players involved. Instead of trying to involve
players individually, you can make organizations more the focus of things.
That way, the pre-existing organizational structures will act to bring
members of those organizations into the plot. This doesn't solve the
problem of content production, but it does help solve the problem of
involving as many players as a big MMORPG has to deal with in the plot.
You involve the organization they feel attached to, and let the leaders of
the organization organize the membership involvement in the plot. I sense
that I'm not explaining this very well, but it's 3 am, and I'm going to
bed.

To me, hand-crafted quests are a perfect thing to be charging players
extra for (ala Simutronics in case any disputes it works), incidentally. 
They are very admin-intensive, and it's very reasonable to expect people
to pay extra to participate in them. Perhaps it is the case that it's just
not worth doing massive consequential events as frequently as AC does
them, if people paying a mere $10/month. Certainly in every service
business there is a point at which providing more service will just lose
you money.

--matt




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