Here is a grep of "quest" from an Oly I survey:
threats (the orcs are a nice touch), quests for artifacts, obscure clues,
YES. More monsters! More quests! More skills! There should be niftier
I would like some quests (cf depth)
some quests, missions, and other things like that.
quests to 'boost' newbie power that are only available to newbies, but
More quests for people. Magic swords and armor for treasure. ETC.
cheaper to exercise), and most importantly, quests made. A demi-god
Some Oly II alpha testers have also mentioned quests.
Now I believe there will be two opinions about quests:
1. Yes! I want quests. Add them right now.
2. Why would I want to go on some boring cookie-cutter machine-
generated solo scavenger hunt in a wargame with 100 players?
There is room to accommodate quests in Olympia; the question is whether
group #1 will become disappointed with the quality of machine-generated
quests, and convert to group #2.
* * *
Proposal:
Have a "Heroic adventure" skill under combat. Knowledge grants use
of a QUEST command.
QUEST creates a quest for the character.
Certainly a character may only have one active quest at a time;
I may also have to limit players to only having one active quest at a time.
Quests would generally follow a script like:
Go to place X
Attack monster Y.
Obtain some sort of reward.
For instance:
> QUEST
You consult the seer Osswid the Great:
"Go to the Forest [xy99]. There you will find Ruins [cq23].
You must battle the dread Gorgon and retrieve the Staff of
Calyx. Take the staff to City [zz01] in Mountain [dr67]
and sell it to the first buyer for 100 gold."
The difficulty of the quest being determined by the distances between
the locations, the number of steps, and the toughness of the monsters.
Now, design consultants, search your hearts and tell me if _this_ is good
enough. I expect to be able to come up with some variation. But if the
example above provokes a yawn, there's no way I can code a quest-scripter
to keep you entertained after the 10th quest.
-- Rich Skrenta <skrenta@shadow.com>