New quests: let there be choice!

[BenMathiesen]

So in the wake of the crowdfunding campaign, I've been thinking about what has kept ADOM fresh for me after all these years.

I think I have my answer: the early game sets the tone. There are several choices to be made with real and immediate importance--Keethrax or Yriggs, join the thieves' guild or not*, spend time hunting for Kranach or try to rescue the puppy, risk the SMC... eat Keethrax and probably gain a corruption, or return his body to Guth'Alak. When I start a new character, the choices I make in the early game make me feel like I'm telling a unique story, like the character is participating in the world in a meaningful way. The investment gained by these choices sustains me for a long time, at least until Dwarftown.

But after Dwarftown, ADOM sometimes becomes a bit of a slog. It's still fun, don't get me wrong. But after that point nearly all the quests should be done if you can, and there's an ideal order in which to do them. The important choices I made fade into the past, and what sustains my interest are the unusual events and surviving risky situations. It becomes more like other roguelikes.

So I've got one simple request for Thomas--with all the new quests he's going to be adding (yay!), it would be great if some of them were mutually exclusive, and if more of them had consequences on future interactions in the game. It would be even better if the choice between them relates to the personality of the character, and not just on what makes the most sense for the class.

For example, a quest to the monkey jungle to defeat the ape king might yield lost magical knowledge (a unique spell) and an artifact weapon--but accepting the quest means that I can't travel to the Pleasure City of Graff with equally interesting rewards but a very different experience. The choice between the two can then be based at least partly on the character's narrative and acquired personality.

When I tell my friends about ADOM, I tell them it's the only roguelike RPG. And the root of this is not the wonderful world, not the race/class system, not the skills and talents. It is an RPG because I get to make choices with real consequences to the story that plays out in the game.

Thanks for listening!
Ben

*The weakest part of this narrative is the thieves' guild, because joining it is incredibly useful to everyone, and has no real consequences. It would be more interesting if shopkeepers throughout the valley raised their prices due to a lack of trust, for example, or even if the sheriff refused to give any more quests to a joiner.

[szopin]

This is spot on. I was trying to pinpoint what attracts me to this one roguelike (since becoming RL freak I tried tens if not over a hundred and keep returning). Thought it was the ability to keep a Mystery alive even after decade of reverse-engineering taking place, be it by source diving or repeating actions by HC fans hundreds of times to estimate the underlying mechanic. But this is actually very good point. No other RL out there gives so much RP possibilities. When I play orcs/necros I skip puppy quest, even though altar on PC:2 can be very helpful, it just feels wrong. Can't really say about later game (never yet finished pyramid or toef), but the first 10-15 levels can be gained in so many ways. Lately tried to just speed to CoC, or UD diving, both very enjoyable if sometimes failing options (your only spellbook drenched when crossing river is painful, but also makes the few first levels in CoC so much more exciting, just to get a spellbook of Light, love it). Still not enough deaths to even start visiting bugville... And new content will be there soon... YaY!

[JellySlayer]

I like this plan. My hopes were for something like this:

On D:25ish (below Banshee, above wall of flames in that weird area where the numbers are messed up), there is a new staircase that opens up. It allows access to a new, three level system. The top level is a city of (lawful) Mist Elves. The bottom level is a city of (chaotic/neutral) Ratlings. The middle level is heavily populated with random monsters of both types, who will attack each other, and the PC depending on alignment. The Mist Elves will assign a few quests to the PC--two immediately, one will require the PC to visit a post-ToEF area, which will culminate the in destruction of the Ratling city. The Ratlings will offer a series of chaotic quests of similar difficulty that will culminate in the destruction of the Mist Elf community. Whichever side the PC chooses to align with, all quests from the other side are immediately blocked.

[prime]

I like these ideas! And I agree, one of the attractions of ADOM is that there aren't as many clear-cut "right" or "wrong" choices, just trade-offs.

[Aielyn]

I like this plan. My hopes were for something like this:

On D:25ish (below Banshee, above wall of flames in that weird area where the numbers are messed up), there is a new staircase that opens up. It allows access to a new, three level system. The top level is a city of (lawful) Mist Elves. The bottom level is a city of (chaotic/neutral) Ratlings. The middle level is heavily populated with random monsters of both types, who will attack each other, and the PC depending on alignment. The Mist Elves will assign a few quests to the PC--two immediately, one will require the PC to visit a post-ToEF area, which will culminate the in destruction of the Ratling city. The Ratlings will offer a series of chaotic quests of similar difficulty that will culminate in the destruction of the Mist Elf community. Whichever side the PC chooses to align with, all quests from the other side are immediately blocked.

If they were Lawful and Neutral, then I could see three different quest paths in that context.

Lawful path: Align with the Mist Elves. Undertake their quests, and the end result is not the destruction of the Ratlings' city, but the destruction of the door to it - the stairs down to it. The Mist Elves, being lawful, consider it to be effectively putting them into a jail, punishment for their non-lawful activities. All quests on this path are Lawful quests.

Neutral path: Align with the Ratlings. Undertake their quests, and the end result is the destruction of the Mist Elves' city. The Ratlings, being Neutral, consider the Mist Elves' effort to jail them to be attempting to skew the balance in favour of Lawful activities. Quests on this path have varying alignment and impact on the character.

Chaotic path: Locate the Vapor Ratling, somewhere on the middle level, and align with her (could be "him", but I thought it would add a bit of variety). The Vapor Ratling is the result of a corrupted Ratling mating with a corrupted Mist Elf, and is thus a disturbing half-breed with a lot of corruption and a very chaotic demeanor. Having been ostracised by both sides of the war, she has grown up with intense hatred of both. Her quests are chaotic in nature, and will eventually result in the corruption of both cities, with the main result being eternal war between the two to the exclusion of all else.

Each of the three quest-assigners could hold an artifact weapon designed for use by one of the equivalent alignment - the lawful weapon could draw your alignment towards lawful, have the properties of the "Lawful" and "of the Sun" ego weapons, and reduce rate of PC corruption by 20%, for instance.

The choice of path could also impact interactions elsewhere. For instance, perhaps completing the Lawful path will result in the Ratling Vendors turning hostile (get as much as you can from them before finishing it, because you'll get no more food from them after it).

[Silfir]

Impossibly secret: The "third option" of brokering a peace between the two communities. Only Thomas has any clue how to pull it off. It's going to be brilliant and require two years until anyone finds out how it's done.

[Kyreles]

Simple: Just 'h'andle the trees until the Scroll of Omnipotence falls from the branches and give it to the elder of one village, then arrange a meeting between the two at the Red Rooster Inn at dawn.

[grobblewobble]

The Ogre lord in the cave should assign a quest to murder dwarftown.

A bit off-topic, but I've always wondered why Thrundarr doesn't have anything to say about Kherab. Surely he should be (in)famous among the dwarves?

[Stingray1]

Mist elves are neutral, not? Are these Mist elves just a lawful faction or so? Oh, ok. That's fine.

[Silfir]

Did you even check the date of the thread? It's from October 2012. I don't think we knew a whole lot about mist elves back then.

I actually think reviving the thread was a nice touch since it involves exactly what Thomas is looking for - new quest ideas - but pedantry is a weird motivation for it.