Quest ideas

[Tannis]

With JADE being an essentially randomized game so it seems, the game runs the peril of falling into the generic quest trap: Go here and kill this monster, go here and get this item, or go here and rescue this person. Now, there certainly should be plenty of that in the game, since it is the bread and butter of adventuring, but it shouldn't be the be all end all of quests in JADE. Let's brain storm some interesting variants for Herr Biskup to code in!

Bogus quests: Every now and then you should get a bogus quest. The chances of getting a bogus quest should exponentially rise if the quest giver is evil or otherwise unscrupulous in some shape or form.

Maybe you are given an assignment, only to find that the source of the quest later refuses to pay up. An evil character could forcibly take what is theirs, but if you're dealing with the king of a region inside his heavily guarded castle, that might not be an option.

Another obvious possibility is that you're led into an ambush. Imagine you descend to the bottom level of a dungeon, expecting to find an enchanted pool, only to find 50 orc knights waiting for you. This is like of like the pyramid "quest" in ADOM, but if you're not expecting it, it could be buckets of fun, assuming you survive ;)

The best bogus quest, however, is when the hero is manipulated into being a tool for evil. Say a mage in a village requests that you retrieve an amulet from somewhere so that he can use it for some noble purpose. Imagine your shock to discover that the mage is in fact a necromancer, and you've just given him the final item he needs to awaken a Liche King. Not only is this a great twist, it naturally leads to the next quest: You have to deal with the Liche King you accidentally unleashed!

Thoughts?

[Sradac]

I posted something like what im about to say someplace else, think it mighta been a response to one of TB's blogs but not sure, and thats quests with multiple endings/solutions. The most basic description here is one guy wants you to steal a ring for him, but someone else is willing to pay you more for it, the first gives an item reward the other gives $. You're sent to deal with some thugs harrassing locals, the thugs attempt to pay you off to "look the other way" choice is yours. These can affect alignment too. These are just real brief basic descriptions it could HUGELY go in another way that could even affect the outcome of many quests down the line. If you've played KotOR 2 you know the quest you can either side with the bandits or against them and either protect a small village or attact it. THis could be applied to jade. An independent land owner refuses to pay the king or whoever owns the surrounding areas taxes on his keep he has. Help the king by "influencing" this person to pay taxes? Overthrow the lord and take the keep for yourself? Assist the lord and fight off any of the kings men that come your way? Claim the keep in the name of the king for a huge reward? Or the always available "look the other way" choice. Like ive said before possibilites are endless in roguelikes.

[Tannis]

I posted something like what im about to say someplace else, think it mighta been a response to one of TB's blogs but not sure, and thats quests with multiple endings/solutions. The most basic description here is one guy wants you to steal a ring for him, but someone else is willing to pay you more for it, the first gives an item reward the other gives $. You're sent to deal with some thugs harrassing locals, the thugs attempt to pay you off to "look the other way" choice is yours. These can affect alignment too. These are just real brief basic descriptions it could HUGELY go in another way that could even affect the outcome of many quests down the line. If you've played KotOR 2 you know the quest you can either side with the bandits or against them and either protect a small village or attact it. THis could be applied to jade. An independent land owner refuses to pay the king or whoever owns the surrounding areas taxes on his keep he has. Help the king by "influencing" this person to pay taxes? Overthrow the lord and take the keep for yourself? Assist the lord and fight off any of the kings men that come your way? Claim the keep in the name of the king for a huge reward? Or the always available "look the other way" choice. Like ive said before possibilites are endless in roguelikes.

Multiple quest endings are a fantastic idea! In a way, you already see this in ADOM: Kill the white unicorn, or kill the black one. Save the carpenter to get healing, or kill the healer to get it. On a grand scale it could produce some really interesting results.

I notice that in many unrelated discussions alignment comes up in some shape or form. I think alignment will play a tremendous role in JADE, effecting almost every aspect of game play right down to combat (after all, a chaotic rogue would be more likely to kick someone in the groin than a paladin).

To throw out another idea: there should totally be punishments for failing to complete quests. In ADOM if you get the puppy quest and let it the dog die, there's no real downside. If a baron asks you to rescue his daughter and you get to it 3 months later and she's already ogre food, one could imagine a pretty irritated baron...

[Sradac]

hah yeah thats totally true, I could always imagine me comming into town the that puppy corpse and giving it to the girl what would REALLY happen

Blup: Mommy?...No not mommy...Dinner?
Guth'Alak: Aye adventurer, that ones time truly has come
Twyat Pare: Aye lad, Abide by the law and us'll...what the...why are you bringing that to the poor little girl? Ye should have left well enough alone! Whats got into ye, upsettin 'er all like that? Get outa me town Ye villain!
Tiny Girl:....*sepuku* lol

[Grey]

You forgot to add the one that does happen:

Munxip: I'll give you 12 gold pieces for that!

[Grey]

Aside from humour, I do agree on multiple ways of dealing with a quest. ADOM had this on a few occasions - JADE should be far more complex. Also players should be forced to think about more than just the immediate rewards, they have to consider the long-term consequences of their actiosn, some of which might be quite subtle. Fallout had some great things like this - for instance fixing the ghoul's reactor would make them a target for the power-hungry neighbouring city, and they'd get wiped out. Here's an example of the sort of detailed quest scenario I'd like to see in JADE:

Locations:
- Erinor, lawful human city with extremely strict laws (no drinking etc and heavy punishments).
- Bemlin, gnomish gem mine to the north under Erinor's control.
- Schozzoth, evil human town fairly far away.

NPCs:
- Pelgaris, captain of the city guard - strict authoritarian and de facto ruler of the city since the king was assassinated.
- Menphil, deputy guard - enforces laws, but secretly has black dealings on the side.
- Nerie, princess of Erinor - due to take the throne when she turns 16.
- Gubdor, gnome foreman - looks over the mines, which have become more oppressed since the king died.
- Lavin, underground rebel - trying to bring more freedom to the city.
- Hortzen, ruler of Schozzoth - though at war with the city he makes most of his money through it with illegal smuggling.

Pelgaris' Quests:
- Gained by joining the city guard and doing lawful deeds.
- Quests will start off with simple criminal hunting and policing, but will reach a point where the player is forced to make hard choices between doing good and enforcing the law.
- One quest would be to kill some gnomish miners for striking against bad conditions. The player can carry out the orders with gusto and ransack the place whilst doing it. Or he can just imprison the leader to demoralise them. Or he can use diplomacy on their leader to make them go back to work. Or he can accept a bribe from the leader to lie for him (and then perhaps keep extorting them for more gems). Or he can agree to help the gnomes out by working with the rebels in the city to free them from the police state. Or he can agree to help them by encouraging Pelgaris to go easy on them (would be difficult).
- Though very strict Pelgaris is a man of immense power and is heavily respected by all the guards, and most are extremely loyal to him. Also, he'd still be loyal to the throne - when Nerie comes of age he will happily hand over the reigns, thoguh he will try his best to influence her decisions (he sees it for the good of the city).
- Greatest quest would be to kill Hortzen. However this could have bad repurcussions. Without the black market supplies from Schozzoth people could become too sick of life in the city and start rebelling. The police would crack down hard, and the resulting riots would lead to widespread bloodshed. Stores would be pillaged, the guards overwhelmed, the captains killed, the princess raped and murdered, etc. Afterwards the city would become a den of beggars and bandits. Or maybe the PC helps quash the rebellion and the city becomes "peaceful" - everyone lives their ordered lives not daring to speak out against the rulers. Meanwhile in Schozzoth the power vacuum is filled by a black priest who turned the city into a haven for dark cults that begin to terrorize the region. All pretty bad!

Menphil's quests:
- Achieved through working in the guards and rubbing with the wrong people, or maybe independantly (though being in the guards helps you get closer to him).
- Gives quests that involve being a little naughty, and eventually work their way up to helping smugglers in the city, killing other guards that are catching on to Menphil's dealings, etc. Some of them would put you at considerable risk should Pelgaris find out.
- Ultimately might involve killing Pelgaris (Menphil's too much of a coward to do it himself). If Menphil takes over the guard he forces the princess to bride him, becoming king. He's then start a tyranny, hiking up taxes, making harsher punishments, building a greater army and assaulting neighbouring smaller towns, etc. Few would be able to stop him.

Rebel quests:
- Acheived through befriending people unhappy with life in the city.
- Would involve jailbreaks, helping people from opression, giving food to the needy, etc.
- However every set of rebels has its dark elements (hate will breed hate they say) and you may end up involved in terrorism, thievery, arms smuggling, murder. Perhaps you'd have some influence over which way the organisation acts. Some might be loyal to the throne and want to see the princess become queen, others might come up with a plan to kidnap the princess and hold her hostage till their demands are met.
- Ultimately could involve killing Pelgaris. However if Menphil took over things would obviously get worse.
- The player might try to find a peaceful way of disempowering Pelgaris, like finding out that he had a child through an unmarried woman (and then the choice would be whether to blackmail him with this info, or just make it public and shame him out of office).
- If the rebels take over they'd have a lot of trouble initially keeping control of the kingdom, being inexperienced and suffering from the turmoil of an uprising. You might have to stick around a while and help them out a lot till they stabilise and control the city.

Princess Nerie:
- Contact with her could be achieved in many ways, such as working for the guards, sneaking in, bribing staff, etc. Gaining her confidence would be more difficult, and maybe require good charisma and diplomacy.
- One could encourage her to help support the rebels, or maybe some other political goal.
- Ultimately she would want you to find out who killed her father. This would mean tracking down the assassin or finding other clues about the killing. Some details might be held by the city guard already and you'd have to steal them (or rise high enough in rank to see them for yourself). And who killed him in the end? Pelgaris, unhappy with the king's plan for a peace deal with Schozzoth? Menphil, trying to manipulate things from the shadows? Hortzen, wanting to cause unrest in the city? Some other political enemy? Or was it something more personal, like a servant he abused taking revenge?
- A human PC with high Charisma and Appearance might potentially woo the young princess, and marrying her become the new king. This could rock the boat no end! A non-human PC managing to woo the princess (might be possible for elves, but virtually impossible for trolls - though my, the pleasures she could have...) would face hostile racist forces in the city etc.

Hortzen's quests:
- Can easily be hired by him or his lackeys in Schozzoth.
- May want you to conduct illegal dealing around the city (smuggling, thievery, mine raiding etc). Might need you to deal with enemies he has within his town.
- Overall he wants the city to remain stable. The strict laws create good business for him supplying the black market with booze, slavegirls, etc. May need you to quieten the rebels, or do away with the princess.
- However too much illegal activity will draw the attention and wrath of Pelgaris. You'd have to fight against city guards and such.
- Ultimately he'll need you to assassinate Pelgaris. However, he'll want Menphil to stay alive as he's more lenient on the illegal operations (since he gets so many kickbacks from it). After Menphil takes power the situation may change though.


And within all this there should be random elements, so you'd never be sure which is really the best action to take. The simple small quests you get (smuggle this booze for Hortzen, hunt down this criminal for Pelgaris, etc) would all be chosen from a set of such quests. The real killer of the king could be different every game (and the way to find out who was the killer would thus be different). The behaviour of the rebels would be different every game - in one they might be peace-loving hippies, in another they might be heavy-handed terrorists. Different people could have slightly different alignments each game, affecting how easily they're persuaded to certain actions, how easily they can be bribed, etc. The whole scenario would never be predictable, and you'd be on your toes throughout the quest wondering what'll happen next.

Of course there'd also be a whole load of other sidequests in the town - merchants that want items, girls that have lost their puppy, etc etc. These would all be random, and many would be influenced by the current political climate in the city.

And I'd like to see the whole JADE world filled with areas like this.

[Nezur]

I'd like a quest where you have to die (sort of) in order to meet the god of death. Afterwards you could return into your body.

In fact I'd like the possibility of visiting any alternate world / dimension. Or something grandiose anyway. ;)

[Epythic]

I'd like a quest where you have to die (sort of) in order to meet the god of death. Afterwards you could return into your body.

In fact I'd like the possibility of visiting any alternate world / dimension. Or something grandiose anyway. ;)

+1 nice idea

EDIT: But only for one little side quest. Permadeath is cool.

[Nezur]

-- Permadeath is cool.

By golly, yes! :p

[theotherhiveking]

+1 nice idea

EDIT: But only for one little side quest. Permadeath is cool.

Like in real life.............. DAMNIT!

[Ars]

It's quite a dilemma between making detailed places and quests like the one described by Grey which stay more or less the same always - they're really interesting for the first time(s), but when you are replaying the game you know the story, like most computer RPGs out there. On the other hand there could be extremely randomizable quests which could be varied endlessly, but would become boring and hollow after some time - especially if they're mostly like "kill this monster" and "get this item". Of course interesting pre-set situations are more interesting than random quest generators only though, but they're not optimal either...

The best thing I can think about is to make pre-set situations with ever-changing variables - of course city names and exact locations are randomized, but let's take the scenario Grey presented. Then randomize details for each new game. Sometimes Pelgaris (name changed always) would be a greedy bastard, sometimes a good-meaning but strict ruler - and he could at times be the late kings cousin instead of guard captain. Sometimes Schozzoth (name changed also) would be an evil place, sometimes a place where things are just more free. Sometimes the gnomes (they could be dwarves in some games also) would rebel, sometimes not. Then the PC would always need to investigate the situation thoroughly before he picks a side, because the outcomes would greatly differ.

Also it'd be awesome to have these loosely pre-set quest structures randomly assigned to different areas - with the possibility of the quest sets overlapping each other. So in addition to the presented scenario, Schozzoth have a designed scenario about a rebelling village trying to switch their allegiance for another town (with further details of course). They would also affect each other - if you assassinate Hortzen on the rebel villages behalf, then that would also disrupt the smuggling effort. There could be both simple and complex quest structures, and all might not come into use in every single game, or similar scenarios in same game with different specs. Then add on the simplest generated quests (kill the evil priest in that dungeon etc.) and always available jobs like caravan guarding and arena fights.

And time should definitely affect quests yes, if you tally for too long then some quests solve themselves - like if you visit Erinor, take no part in the local scheming, leave and return a year later, then the situation could've reached a stable state - Nerie's the queen and Schozzoth's been annexed by her forces.

Don't know if this is realistically possible to program, even well executed there are possibilities of huge incoherencies. Thinking of my last sentence, when Schozzoth gets sacced by Neries soldiers what happens to the possible rebel village quest? It makes sense that when Hortzen is killed then automatically they get to change allegiance, but what if that quest triggers something in the town that the rebels turn to, where the player hasn't even been yet? Dammit, this gets difficult...

Maybe I'll stop the rambling for now but what do you think about this?

[Grey]

I really agree with the randomisation of quests, with a great many variables being possible so you have to explore things thoroughly to understand everything in every game. Would make it so that each time you play feels like a completely different game.

[lochok]

Lots of these ideas sound great (even though I predict we may not see them in quite the first release)

One thing I would love would be class-based quests. It would make a lot of sense for a druid to be given a quest to slay the dark druid to collect the ancient amulet of the animal gods (for a corny example anyway) - or for a thief to be given a quest to steal the local dieties crown jewels...

[Dougy]

Just an idea, the PC could help establish trade routes between towns and cities. For example:

In some city:

You talk to the man "Sorry sir, our prices are high because we are nearly out of <resource>. You're an adventurer, do you know where I could find a supply of <resource>?"

In some town:

You talk to the worker "You say you know a city where <resource> is in high demand?"

Over time the shops in the city are able to supply many more products related to <resource>, better prices and higher quality. The population of the city and the town increases. For example, <resource> could be animal hide, iron/mithril/adamantium/eternium ore, foodstuffs, lumber, gold, gems, cloth etc.

[moppit]

I would like to see perhaps 5 major quests/quest paths and you don't necessarily know which major quest you'll get till mid level so you cant scum em...

My favorite thing about adom is the community working together to solve esoteric problems like what to ddeal with or how to deal w/khelevaster... If there was x amount of major quests - non guaranteed each time it would add lots of fun and problem solving adventure into the game.

[moppit]

I like the idea of storing the data for main quest in say five different dat files and randoming which one gets loaded so upon creation of an individual game you don't know whether you'll get major quest a, b, c, d, or e.... Each quest could also have certain guaranteed artifacts that aren't available in the others.. That will give the community lots to talk ponder and test out for many years down the road.. Not only that it would be easy to add/patch in additional quests in the future...

[moppit]

Couple more Ideas :

-- What is to stop you from putting a village/town/city inside a cave... especially of a sub-race like kobold, goblin etc...

-- In relation to previous : Perhaps there could be in addition to quests where you have to travel outside of an area, some minor quests which can all be resolved inside of an area... especially cities, My son is missing, I haven't seen him in days could you please help me find him his name is %n'inker' Would be completable in the city, and perhaps upon leaving city quest could auto fail, considering he got locked in a store room and starved to death.. That would also keep quest logs small and allow for lots of variety on random little pertinent questy things...


-- Perhaps trade route quests... I have heard about a community of stone giants to the north and seek to trade marble for this fine ale I am carrying, help me find the community so I can establish a trade route.. reward : caravan (quick travel) between established routes from inns etc.. (This would prob be a tricky one to code)

-- And my personal favorite, the chef for the local baron is cooking a feast and the baron has requested a fine meal of chaos piranhas! Plz. bring back 15 so he may feed the guests :P

[Grey]

An interesting thread came up in RGRD (http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.roguelike.development/browse_frm/thread/71d808803dcf95db/) about random names, and I thought one nice thing on top of the aforementioned random quests with NPCs having changing roles etc would be random names for every NPC. This way you really don't know what's what each game, and you'd have to approach everything carefully, unsure of whom to trust. Would have to be done well of course, and the linked thread has some good sources in it.

[PeanutGod]

One idea I like - taken from BG2 - is the stronghold idea. I'd love to be a thief, doing loads of random things through the guild, eventually taking over, then ordering my peons about and reaping the rewards. And I don't mean 5 random quests, I mean something like 20 odd, with then final few really being difficult (yet random). After all, the thief guildmaster is supposed to be the font of all shady dealings (so most be pretty useful in a scuffle methinks)

The idea can then easilt be applied to other classes. Fighters can maybe form a mercenary unit, druid a sect in the woods, Wizards get a tower (cheesy I know). Priests can have a church, paladins can have a different type of church. Assassins can take over the Assasins guild and start putting contracts out on people. Farmers could become small landowners and start dictating what gets grown and where, pulling in profit from cities for all their goods. Theres something for everyone. Worth investigaing IMO.