[MUD-Dev] Quests

[Eli Stevens]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Raph Koster" <rkoster at austin.rr.com>
To: <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Sent: Saturday, April 15, 2000 1:21 PM
Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] Quests

> 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.

I am not very familiar with Achaea's system, is there a post in the archives
that details it?


> Lee Sheldon ...[snip]... argues for something that looks more like this:
>
>               _ | _
>              / /|\ \
>              \_\|/_/
>                 |
>
> meaning that each step has a number (I think he said at least 8) of
> variations, each hand-crafted, enough so that in a chain of events long
> enough, two players getting the same sequence of events leading up to the
> ending is very rare. Then he doesn't care that the ending is known,
because
> the sequence of events required to get there is different from time to
time.
>
> The problems I see with Lee's approach for the larger games are that
there's
> still way too much handcrafted data for the average mud builder
(commercial
> or hobbyist), and that the solution doesn't scale very well to larger
> populations. We've seen much tougher mathematical problems solved using
> empirical data by the players... the number of permutations is low enough
> (and the number of *significant* deviations from the base plotline low
> enough) that the playerbase as a whole will quickly arrive at the
blueprint
> for the whole thing. Those are both forgivable issues with the system--a
> long-running game could keep adding permutations until the problem space
was
> pretty large--and it's certainly more interesting than the current
baseline
> mud quest design.

[snip thoughts on making it epic, have consequences]

> 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?

Hmm.  This is something I had been thinking about a while back, and I have a
different tack on the branching/coming back together plot you mentioned.  It
is just a rough idea, but...  It seems to me that the purpose of quests are
to give players something interesting to do, right?  I imagine that the idea
started when someone said, "you know, killing mobs over and over is kind of
boring."  So quests break the monotony of a static gameworld.  If the
gameworld was non-static, would you need quests (as typically implemented)?

Have the current political/social/whatever state of the game automagically
represented in code.  The recent post by Jeremy Hovance <URL:
http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/2000Q2/msg00275.html > about the
social combat system on Firan MUX is an excellent example of what I mean.
Take a game with combat, economic, social and political engines (I know,
easier said than done, but I think commercial ventures could do it) and add
a structure like the following:

  UrbanArea: Bubtropolis
    Ruler: King Bubba (PC or NPC)
    Accepted Races: Humans, Half-Elves (large part of population)
    Hated Races: Orcs (not allowed in city, etc.)
    Population: 10,000 (not all population has to e represented by a mobile)
    Crime: 7% (track theft, assault, etc.)
    Social Unrest: 15% (track fights, insults, whatever)
    Taxes: 10% (where King bubba gets his money)
    City Status: Normal (nothing odd is happening)

Now add in Events that can trigger automatically:

  Event: Race Riot
    Place: City with Population > 5,000
    Length: Random while Attacking Race in city
    Trigger: Un-Accepted Race attacks Accepted Race X times in given
timespan
             Social Unrest < 30% and Social Unrest > 10%
             City Status is Normal
    Effects: Triggers "Raise Militia" Event
             Social Unrest += 35%
             Crime += 15%
             City Status is "Rioting"
             Attacking Race becomes Hated if all are driven out

  Event: Raise Militia
    Place: City with Population > 2,000, with Ruler + Guard
    Length: Until Social Unrest < 25% or City Status is "Normal"
    Trigger: Social Unrest > 30%
             Crime > 20%
             City Status is not "Normal"
             or
             Triggerd by other Event
    Effects: Taxes += 10%
             Social Unrest += 5%
             Crime -= 5%
             Militia present in streets (Mobiles or others?)

  Event: Ruler Assassination
    Place: City with Population > 7,000
    Length: Once
    Trigger: Social Unrest > 50%
    Effects: Ruler is dead
             Social Unrest += 20%
             Political infighting, power stuggles, etc.

  Event: War
    ...
    Trigger: A Kingdom kills more than Y of an Accepted Race in a given
timespan
             or
             Allies are at War
             ...

Just with these four events, you could have a "quest".  If a dwarven player
were to start attacking Half-Elves in the city, and did so enough, there
would be a chance of a race riot starting.  If that happened, the ruler of
the city could either try and ride it out, or to get rid of the offending
race.  King Bubba would call out the militia to try and put the riot down,
and it might end there, or it could escalate into an assassination attempt.
If the genocide got out of hand, then the Dwarven Kingdoms might decide to
show King Bubba the error of his ways...

Given enough events, I think that the world would be interesting enough to
not need scripted quests (I could be very wrong).  Histories could be
generated, and fleshed out by humans, and the in-game history could be
recorded as it happens.  Making the changes have permanence or seem
realistic and meaningful might be hard (where do you go once the Dwarven
Kingdoms have occupied Bubtropolis?), but scripted quests have those
problems too.

Unlike AC, you would never have "event of the month" day, instead the
players would notice something different and new happening in the world some
time after the new event's introduction.

Thoughts?

<//> Silence is golden           RUIN, v.  To destroy.            <\\>
 ||  Eli                         Specifically, to destroy a maid's ||
 ||  wickedgrey at wickedgrey.com   belief in the virtue of maids.    ||
<\\> www.wickedgrey.com            -- Ambrose Bierce              <//>





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