Thread: RP Quests
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Old 05-11-2002, 02:38 PM   #3
Pleos
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Join Date: Apr 2002
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I used to look at doing fairly small, contained quests, the 3-4 hour kind, that were reasonably easy and had limited chance of failing. But often I find that these sorts of quests only involve the questing player and an Imm (who plays all the other roles, takes over NPCs, etc.) This tends to be time consuming for the Imm and I've found there's a limited number of quests you can pull off this way, i.e. kill the beast, save the princess, find the treasure, etc.

Also, these types of quests tend to get away from the principle of an RP Mud which is for players to *interact*.

So lately, I've changed my style. I create quests that are far more open-ended, with far more possible paths to the ultimate "end". I put end in quotes because it tends to be a relative term. With open-ended quests, players can end up taking several different paths, and maybe there's no specific or absolute end, or the end occurs before/after we expected or the end is something that wasn't expected at all. All of that is fine, as long as people roleplay throughout and interact with others.

Now this may make it hard to give specific rewards for the conclusion of a quest, but I don't necessarily think that's the case. I think you can give out rewards to people in the middle of a quest, especially if it's taking some time, and the quest itself becomes really a storyline or just becomes part of everyday life for the characters on the MUD.

So if something starts, a quest of some kind, with a specific goal in mind, and I see halfway through that the player has done an excellent job - I'll reward them. Doesn't mean the quest should end, but especially if it's veered down another path, I give them a reward, because (a) they deserve it, and (b) to encourage them to continue.

Also, by making quests more open-ended you avoid the urge to make sure that the player succeeds. Even if the player fails - if they roleplayed well, then they deserve the reward nonetheless. The reward isn't necessarily contingent on "saving the princess" it's on "what you did RP-wise while trying to save the princess".

The Turning Point does have some more narrow quests - a Warrior Quest for example - in order to gain more hitpoints. This was setup before my time, but it was done in part to help balance old warriors' hp rolls cause they weren't good enough to properly compete. That since has changed, so I think that quest is more a thing of the past. But it had definite guidelines, processes and steps that warriors would take.

These days though, I am moving away from that sort of "closed door" quest or "narrowly focused" quest.

Also when people ask me for quests, I often ask *them* to come up with ideas. As an Imm I've got to handle many quests, many responsibilities, etc. I would love to be able to think up quests for everyone, but I simple cannot. So, I ask people to come up with ideas that would suit their characters. People should know their own characters better than anyone else - so they should also be able to come up with ideas for quests.

Another thing I've started doing is asking respected players who find themselves involved in quests for others to report back on the progress, quality of RP, etc. This way, I don't have to be watching 24/7 while someone is on a quest, the other players around can help me out.

Finally, as far as rewards go, standards on TP are experience points and restrings. I'm partial to restrings because it adds some uniqueness to characters and the entire MUD. Titles are also common, but I'm not as much a fan of them. We are also working on building in other RP mechanisms/features that we can then offer as rewards. For example, we can change the talk-verbs of players now, so while all drow may "sneer" as their default talk verb, we could change it for specific people. This again adds uniqueness and more style to the MUD. By doing it through rewards though we help minimize abuse, and help extol the virtues of continued and exceptional roleplaying.

Hope that helps out with some ideas...

Pleos
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