On my mud I'm the head questing immortal. We hold at least 3-4 original quests each month, but lately our quests have been feeling less and less original to me. I'm hoping some of you out there can share some of your own ideas and experiences with me.

Our quests consist of:

1. Killing a big mob, sometimes after a several quest story unfolds that consists of going after smaller mobs

2. chasing something, like our cache, which dispenses tokens to anyone going into its rooms and saying "I wish to loot the cache", after which it promptly teleports itself elsewhere.

3. pvp(arena based, or with special arena areas built)

4. Trivia

5. Seeing who can kill the most of x mob in a certain amount of time.

Uusually there's some sort of story that goes along with it. What sort of quests have you had? Even examples of recent ones might be helpful.

sounds like you promote Hack&Slash playing, where quests doesn't really have to relate, or be logical to your own game world.

In that case any first-person-shooter's scenarios are good base for quest.
Same goes for graphical MMO"RPG"s quests.
You can steal ideas also from GTA San Andreas, there was also "Story like" missions where only point was to get something new items to play or open new quests - so external, game technical reason, not to do really anything with role, only technical button pressing playing.

Another way is to make just simple missions. where someone can "be" something. Being in Role.
Being a city guard in fixed time, and getting paid of that (and don't doing any mistakes).
Delivery guy (that might start up building player driven economy).
Manufacturing something to someone.

Thanks for your reply fjin. I might try doing some sort of delivery quest. If anyone else out there has any ideas(I noticed there are a lot of views but not many replies), let me know. I definitely wouldn't mind trying some roleplay stuff, but it's a little harder on my mud since it's never really caught on with the players.

If you have any ideas on things I could do to get them to roleplay more, let me know.

I saw a forum post on MudMagic a while back about "quest basics" from a coder standpoint. Aw, here it is:



As to adding role-play it would take (in my opinion) a live staff member to role-play effectively during a quest. Anyone can role-play by themself (or with NPC's, objects and situations) but it takes a live person to add to the mix for good quest role-play.

For those more common Quests. Make those have effect in game world.

If Weaponsmith wanted some special metal delivery from distand and hard to get place. Make one special metal weapon appear to him for selling (withing next few days), and only then.

Put those quests to make difference in world.

Nothing is more boring than hard and world-saving-quest, what has no effect to game world and other players. Only sign would be special item, and every other player are carrying that "unique" item, because they have also done that exact same thing as you.

I like the idea of some sprcial items. I'll just have to be careful and make sure they don't unbalance the equipment we already have too much.

Thanks for all the ideas so far, and if anyone else has any please feel free to post.

A bit late, but still...




Linked quests are nice. Let each take place a week after the last. This is just an idea, but in general it is nice when the actions of the players in a quest influence the world a bit.

(1). Create a tournament, in which you can win a marriage to the princess. Just before the end of the tournament the princess leaves for the toilet and is not seen again.

(2) Let the king declare an enormous price for who finds the princess. At the end of the search, the princess is found, but she refuses to come. The quest can be won by abducting the princess or by telling her message to the king.

(3) The king has imprisoned the princess, but the people like the princess a lot more. So the people revolt against the king.
Let the players either fight for the side of the people or at the side of the king. Maybe make it possible to free the princess, and return her to her people.

(4) After the revolution either failed or succeeded, (Either the king is ruler, or the princess has become queen.) the country is still in a lot of problems.
A lot of merchants have been killed in the battles. Children are hungry, food has been stolen. Bandits are approaching from all sides.
Depending on the actions of the players the city becomes stronger. So at the start nothing can be bought, but at the end it is possible that the city contains cheaper/stronger goods than before.

(5) As a result of the weakening of the country an invincible dragon decides to nest.
Give hints to the player that the dragon is very/very strong and everyone on the route tells them not to go, since all have been killed... Build up tension... And make the dragon actually invincible. Kill all who meet him head to head.
But create an alternative route which can be found by looking carefully at the descriptions. You can find a secret passage, where you learn a secret about the dragon, which you can use to blackmail him to go away.

(6) The dragon is gone, but some of its children are seen flying around in the sky, burning parts of the city.
Kill the young dragons before they become too strong... Honor the person who comes back with the most dragon heads and give him a special item, such as a mug of unlimited beer.

And so on...

Wow... just the sound of some of the linked quests makes me want to participate! Cappen, would you happen to know where such quests might be held?

Sorry, but I didn't have any MUDs in mind. I just was thinking out loud.

The closest to something like this, would have been for me, to play a RPG sitting around a table with friends, papers and dice.

I occasionally play the weakest link where I randomly slay players till only one remains. That is the weakest link who's subsequently banned for a month.

Another game is the strongest link, where I use my bot network (I send spam for a living) to flood-ping each player. The last player to link loser gets everything a man could need for an entire month, which boils down to emails about viagra, free (IRE style) porn, and cheap loans.

My final game is called the kinkiest link. Given the nature of this board I won't go into details, but it involves Smurfs, steel breastplates, and having players compete in creating the most original quest. Though participation is (sadly) not compulsory like the other games my beloved player base gets quite motivated once I write an angry note threatening to delete some random pfiles or shutdown the mud.

Quests need to be more then just violence or killing, that doesn't apply to all the different types of players out there. While it is a main majority in muds, there's also political intrigue, exploration of a huge world(wanderlust), magical quests, non-magical quests, death quests (where the player knows they will die gloriously). And a bunch more. I recommend thinking up some more quests that don't just center around combat.

Cappen's note reminded me about the major story arcs that I have tried to introduce in the MUD called Dragon's Exodus. It is a RP encouraged (and still to a large extent hack and slash) MUD and for me as the head of RP the task is to involve the hard core RPers and the hack and slashers in the evolving story line of the game. Invasions and attacks by armies (PC or NPC) tend to trigger involvement of the most people. These sort of evolving and intermeshing story lines (with some excuse for killing thrown in) tend to get a lot of hard core involvement.

The problem that I encounter, however, is if the story arc gets too long (A trial for murder, an invasion apparently by a clan, an attack on a village, seige of the city, the clan turns out to be innocent, the invaders capture the city, the city burns down in the process, the invaders try to capture another city, there is an internal coup within city 2... etc etc....after like 9 months of intermeshing stories people lose track of the plot and where the story is going. Yes, one posts recap notes and posts the story on the MUD website, but it becomes simply too much detail for people to handle. What I am basically saying is, intermeshing story lines make for wonderful intense player involvement and quests that look and feel real. But one has to give serious thought to how long this single thread can be maintained and when you need to move to another thread.

Kleothera Servilius,
Head of Role Play and Mentors,
Dragon's Exodus

If you are seeking quest ideas, might I suggest looking at IRE's games?  Lusternia, for one, has an incredible amount of quests that are not based on the typical "hack and slash" genre.  Edmud.net is also a good example of a "hack and slash" type genre of MUD utilizing non-hack-and-slash methods in their quests.  I hope this helps.