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Old 07-21-2005, 02:20 PM   #7
Valg
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Join Date: Apr 2002
Home MUD: Carrion Fields
Posts: 643
Valg will become famous soon enough
Well, it's counterproductive to try to have casual players play major roles from a number of angles:

1) Practicality: Nothing much will happen if the person isn't online more than 1 hr/week.

2) Fairness: While you want some opportunities to be available for casual players, there's nothing unfair about saying 'This guy is on twice as often, so he'll be twice as involved.'

We've had a lot of success getting both casual and regular players involved in ongoing quests. The key is writing the quests so that's possible. Some examples:

1) Episodic Quests: Have a number of events that can involve people who have missed all past events. As an example, before we introduced our system for warriors, we had warrior monks who would pop up in places and propose competitive contests to local warriors. Their underlying motivation was to test the merits of the local guilds, and identify honorable people who could be entrusted with passing on the techniques of their dying Order. What was nice about these was that I could grab a monk, devise some contest of skill (Race from town to town blindfolded, with the winner being taught , fight one another using improvised weapons (brooms, shovels, etc.) with the winner being taught , etc.), and challenge whoever was around. Enough warriors ended up in multiple contests by chance that we were able to build the larger storyline, but we always seemed to have one or two warriors around who had never been contacted. No one saw every contest, but after a month or so of them, word got around.

2) Encourage apprenticeship: Tell a long-term participant that they won't be enough to do The Big Quest, and they'll need to recruit a trusted partner. This was done with me when I was a mortal player on Carrion Fields, and it enouraged me to seek out like-minded magi to found the , with the price for my service being immortality. This lets players get players involved, and they'll often pick different people than the staff would, and increase the number of people you have working towards spreading things around.

3) One-Time Deals: Not every quest needs to be epic and ongoing. Sometimes, angry trees decide to attack Galadon, dammit. If you're on and you're in or near Galadon, you're involved! Fight trees, burn the city, or run like ####!

4) Novices Only: It's tempting to always start quests with kings and dragons and apocalyptic threats and such, but sometimes, a farmer just needs help, and he doesn't have the money to hire big-time adventurers. If you target novices specifically, you'll disproportionately involve players who haven't invested a lot of time in your game.
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