[MUD-Dev] Questing Systems

[Mordengaard]

From: Ben <bjchambers at phoenixdsl.com>
>     I was planning on making it so that quests can be used for exp instead
> of just charging into every existing room and swinging your axe until you
> level up.  Of course if I were to do this it would require a much more
> advanced type of quest than is currently implemented.  It couldn't be just
> "go here and kill this", it would have to be involved.
>
>     One way I thought of doing this was to use flags.  For example a mud
> would for instance have flags 1 to 255.  If the quest was simply to go
here
> and kill this then when I entered the given room I might get flag 1.  Then
> when I killed that it would check to see if flag 1 was true, if it was I
> would have completed the quest.  Now obviously there would have to be many
> triggers etc... for this to work, but does anybody have ideas for a better
> questing system.

Ideas, yes, knowhow to code them?  Well, here goes anyway...

First up, we've dropped the idea of having hard-coded quests that are always
the same.  This is primarily because we want the world to be dynamic and
realistic, and partly because we're far to busy creating standard rooms to
think up vast quests that'll be solved and posted on the web within a few
days.
Instead, we have three types of quest...

1) "Random" Quest
These quests are generated by the system, and are always along the lines of
fetch x, deliver y, or kill z (although we may add more things to do later).
They're not totally random - the quest will normally make sense to the
player's situation and ability.  We don't send out holy paladins to "slay
the Angel of Goodness" (alignment checking) nor do we send out mere Mortals
to take on a Dragon (that's the stuff that Legend rank players are for).
These random quests aren't "handed out" by any one person - they're seeded
across the mud and can be found on inn notice boards, in the hands of a town
crier or even presented by a hooded man in a tavern (who remembers that old
chestnut?).  There are varying rewards and limits for these quests, again
randomly determined but checked to make sense (no million gold piece rewards
for killing a chicken).  Some of these quests can be picked up by anyone,
depending on the source of the quest, and you may find yourself competing
with other players trying to complete the quest.  Lastly, there may be
consequences for failure, especially if you are the only person offered the
quest... try not to upset the King, mkay?

2) Team Quests
These quests come around once in a while (testing should decide how frequent
they should be).  A team quest is a larger-scale quest than those described
above, and there's normally two "sides" to the quest.  These quests are
usually targetted at conflicts between "good" and "evil"
players/npcs/monsters, but can involve racial or guild conflicts as well.
For example, a team quest based around a Princess could have the evil
players kidnapping her while the good players try to recover her, or two
rival magical guilds attempt to get a particularly powerful artifact back to
their guildhouse.  To solve the problem of balance (ie. if there aren't many
evil players on at the time of the team quest), NPCs automatically balance
out the numbers.

3) Directed Quests
These quests are run by the immortals of the mud, and normally have a
significant impact on the world whether or not they are completed.  Anyone
can join in a directed quest, and I don't think it'd be unusual to see
competition and collaberation between players.  The timing of these quests
depends on preparation time as well as the player numbers etc.

Mordengaard, Yhared MUD




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