The Quest Prompt Thread

For all talk about quest development - creation, testing, and quest system.
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Jay_H
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Re: The Quest Prompt Thread

Post by Jay_H »

Yes. It only requires some start mechanism. I've created an entire quest line that I'm going to post over in Creator's Corner called the Perpetual Quests. They run in the background and occur roughly every 30 days, and range from ordinary events (stopping a robbery) to enormous (ending a plague).

A small example of this is the Cartographer quest system, which continually sends you on assignments to find lost locations in the game world on foot.

Another that I have planned but only made a little headway on is a different system, where after getting 100 reputation with a guild, you can send out for epic-scale quests, which will then be offered to you via letter.

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Kamer
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Re: The Quest Prompt Thread

Post by Kamer »

So i could trigger it with something like killing an animal? Also, could you have multiple quests at a time? Is there any limit to this?

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Jay_H
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Re: The Quest Prompt Thread

Post by Jay_H »

So far there are only a few ways to trigger a quest.

1. The main quest intro at the start of the game
2. Asking for a quest from a noble, commoner, or guild member
3. Triggering a quest as a result of another quest. One quest action is "start quest ______," which allows you to begin one quest from another. I've used this in a limited sense so far; imagine if you take a dishonorable route in a Mages Guild quest and kill a meditating mage, but no one ever found out about it. You can run a "startquest penaltymg.txt", which sends you a letter 2 weeks later telling you you've been found guilty of murdering the member, and your guild reputation drops 20 points. That's the kind of thing that we can do to extend Daggerfall's utility beyond its ordinary bounds.

Interkarma has suggested that in the future it could be possible to use ordinary objects to relate to quests; for example, gathering any 5 berries rather than 5 quest-spawned berries and turning them in for a quest. That currently isn't possible, but it could be in the future.

There is no limit at all to how many quests can run. They're extremely lightweight, so as long as you aren't spawning thousands of monsters/items/text boxes/magic effects, quests should have almost no drain on system resources whatsoever.

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Jay_H
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Re: The Quest Prompt Thread

Post by Jay_H »

I've been tempted to return to writing quests, at least in a preliminary phase. I'd be putting on hold the bugs in classic quests to focus on this.

My new palette of ideas comes from the interrelationship between guilds. Until now they've rarely affected each other, but a whole new dimension enters the game once we have guilds that interact with each other regarding reputation:

1. A Mages Guild quest to track down a member of the Dark Brotherhood who absconded with some research notes (see n0b00y09). +5 MG rep, -10 DB. (COMPLETED)

2. A Thieves Guild quest to retrieve a scholar's notes. +5 TG rep, -10 MG. (COMPLETED)

3. A Dark Brotherhood quest to slay some bothersome Thieves Guild rookie who keeps breaking into a guild hall. +5 DB rep, -10 TG. (COMPLETED)

4. A Thieves Guild quest to lift some evidence from a guarded house. +5 TG rep, -10 to the FG if the guild guard inside the house is attacked. (COMPLETED)

5. A Fighters Guild quest to capture a Dark Brotherhood assassin hiding in another city. +5 FG, -10 DB. (AVAILABLE)

6. A Fighters Guild quest to fulfill a city contract to slay a bothersome wizard causing problems in a regional city. +5 FG, -10 MG. (COMPLETED)

7. A Mages Guild quest to guard some important documents for a period of time. Enemies from the Thieves Guild will periodically attempt to take them. +5 MG, -10 TG if any of the thieves are slain. (COMPLETED)

These sorts of quests write themselves, so this is easy material. Knightly orders and temples could offer such quests but rarely be reciprocated by them, since their presence isn't universal like the other guilds'.

Knightly Order quest: A local citizen has become the target of a wizard's wrath, and attracts monsters regularly. Move about with the citizen and slay the enemies that appear to end the curse. (COMPLETED)

Mages Guild quest: Escort a renegade guild member to a house. Use a teleporting agent to send him/her to a dungeon. Follow to the dungeon afterwards on foot to find him/her and slay. Magical item reward. (COMPLETED)

Mages Guild quest: Reverse teleport effect. Use an enchanted item to pull a person back from a Recall spell.
Last edited by Jay_H on Wed Feb 06, 2019 8:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Feralwarlord
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Re: The Quest Prompt Thread

Post by Feralwarlord »

The bug in this thread https://forums.dfworkshop.net/viewtopic ... 955#p14955 gives me a quest idea.

A tongue in cheek quest where you have to rescue a "princess" that is actually a hairy, half naked, male nord barbarian [edit (or something similar)].

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Interkarma
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Re: The Quest Prompt Thread

Post by Interkarma »

I think humour is a great foil to predictability in quests. And Daggerfall doesn't seem to take itself too seriously. Sounds like a fun quest. :)

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Jay_H
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Re: The Quest Prompt Thread

Post by Jay_H »

This is the kind of thing I try to assign an unpredictability factor to: 3/4 of the time a quest proceeds normally, and 1/4 of the time something will go completely out of order and really surprise the player. I'll keep it in mind, thanks :)

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Feralwarlord
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Re: The Quest Prompt Thread

Post by Feralwarlord »

I have a new quest idea

you find a crude letter, you have 3 choices of what to do with the letter:
A. you read the letter and take a quest to rescue a harpy's 3 daughters from 3 different dungeons in the region and escort them to the harpy in a 4th dungeon. you get rewarded with gold and +1-3 harpy skill
B. you take the letter to the fighters guild who will send you out to a dungeon to exterminate a harpy nest for fighters guild rep and gold
C. you take the letter to an inn keeper who sends you out to steal the harpy's treasure trove and will reward you with a share.

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Jay_H
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Re: The Quest Prompt Thread

Post by Jay_H »

Skill increases aren't implemented in the quest system, but the rest is certainly doable.

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Feralwarlord
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Re: The Quest Prompt Thread

Post by Feralwarlord »

Assassinate the leader of [region name]
Questgiver: Dark Brotherhood and/or noble from another region

you are tasked with going to the castle of a city in [region] and assassinating an important political figure/the leader of the region
after killing your target you will be hunted until you leave that region, you need to lose your pursuers and get back to the questgiver.

Rewards:
A letter of credit for a large sum of gold
+rep for dark brotherhood and the region you did the quest for (if applicable)
-rep for the regions who's leader you just killed and a large bounty in that region (on top of any you earned during the quest)

EDIT:
so the way I see the quest going down is the player is given the name of their target and the region they're in, the player then has to find what city the target is in and the building within the city that the target is in (a castle of other building suitable for someone of the target's importance). After killing the target the player will receive a 2k bounty (or something similar) and be hunted by the regions guard, also if it is possible to add to they players bounty for killing them the quest could spawn knights and warriors as the regions soldiers to hunt they player down while they're still in the region. Once they player escapes the region they return to the questgiver for rep a large sum of gold and have 10k (or something like that) added to their bounty for the region who they just assassinated an important figure in.
Last edited by Feralwarlord on Wed Nov 21, 2018 6:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

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