[MUD-Dev] MMO Quest: Why they're still lousy

[Paul Schwanz]

David Kennerly wrote:

> Unlike programmed code, written narratives are rarely
> object-oriented.

You've suddenly made me curious as to what they would look like if
they were.

I wonder if you could write a number of smaller quest-lets, and then
use some sort of mechanic to string them together into larger
quests.  Perhaps some sort of path-finding or goal-oriented quest
management system could do the trick.

For instance, suppose Bubba has an enchanted sword that seems to
somehow always find its way back to him.  When the sword is stolen,
the quest manager starts generating quests that will bring the sword
back into Bubba's possesion.  Buffy gets a quest to clean out a
bandit camp.  The sword is part of the loot.  Boffo the thief get's
a quest to steal the sword from Buffy.  Boffo's fence finds that a
certain merchant is willing to pay more for the stolen sword than is
typical.  That merchant happens to be the one Bubba frequents most
often.  The next time Bubba comes into that merchant's store, he
sees his sword.  The merchant is happy to give it back to him, since
Bubba's a regular customer and the merchant wants to avoid any
inquiries.

As a whole, such a quest is quite complicated, but when you break it
down, it is simply a kill quest, a steal quest, a sell quest, and a
give quest.  The quest will never be written out as it is above.
Only the components will exist as a narrative.  Nonetheless, Bubba
knows that his enchanted sword seems to somehow always find its way
back to him.  The magically bound item story may or may not be
researched and documented by players.  My guess is that it would
eventually, and players would enjoy telling each other about some
fantastically convoluted path that a friend of a friend's bound item
took to get back to her.

In this way, stories become like complex sentences composed of
strings of simple quest-words.  The bound item story is only one
such sentence, but I imagine there are many, many more.

--Paul "Phinehas" Schwanz
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