Quest Showcase

[Jay_H]

The Cartographer quests are now done. Tier 3 had five in total. I was planning on including Orsinium, but it had no landmarks nearby at all, and setting up reliable directions for it would've been nearly impossible. In any case, Orsinium is revealed at any time it becomes important to the main quest, so I guess it isn't that big a loss.

Imgur is acting weird again, so I'm just putting the images directly here:





I had to choose carefully among the locations, ensuring they could all be found without too much hassle and that they'd be useful. The three non-MQ locations I chose are scattered across the northwest, northeast, and south central of the Daggerfall map, so they'd be helpful no matter where you chose to live.

Now for some real questing. I'm not sure whether to begin with the Necromancers, the Archaeologists, or an entirely different branch. I might take a break too. I'll see soon.

[Hazelnut]

Do these quests require you to find places in the wild from directions and starting points? That sounds great, DF has too few reasons to actually travel the land rather than just fast travel everywhere.

[Jay_H]

Yep, after tier 1 you've got to plot out the course yourself for each place, with some help from the questor. Of course, once you've found the location, you can just fast travel there for easy money the next time the quest rolls around. I figured these quests would be a nice contrast to the usual "reveal location, fast travel, kill thing" route we're used to. The Cartographer quests are completely pacifistic, so they open up a branch of quests for the nicer characters out there

I had to cross out some locations, like Orsinium, because they were just too complex to find. I still have some doubts about people's ability to find some of these locations even with the best directions, but I'm hoping Far Terrain will bridge some of the gap.

[Jay_H]

JHPQ006: Perpetual Quest. You're minding your own business, going about your ordinary life when a man cries out that he's about to be murdered by Helseth's followers.





This'll probably just be a stand-alone quest without any accompanying storyline. This is what I wanted Daggerfall to do when I used to play it: create a dynamic, moving world around you that would occasionally prick you with a bit of the action. Sometimes you look for work, and sometimes work finds you, and it's entirely up to you and your PC's narrative how you'll react.

[Jay_H]

JHPQ007: Out of nowhere, some criminal tries to unload something illegal into your hands so you'll take it to his or her boss. What you do with it is your choice.



Perhaps this could be an alternate way into the Thieves Guild, if the usual method becomes unavailable? No definite plan.

[Jay_H]

JHPQ008: Perpetual Quest. A random abduction is occurring nearby. What will you do?



Choice-based narrative! Between "but thou must," railroading, and unpredictable dialogue, it's easy to get bugged about how little freedom you have in some RPGs. Here you can choose between good, negligent, and pitch-black evil. There's something for everyone!

[Hazelnut]

Looking good, I like that you're breaking from go here, kill type quests.

[Jay_H]

Thank you Right now my creativity's usually the only limit. Once I get a good idea, it doesn't take too long to hammer it out and test it.

[Midknightprince]

Thank you Right now my creativity's usually the only limit. Once I get a good idea, it doesn't take too long to hammer it out and test it.

I can test - ify to that.

[Interkarma]

I love the idea of your cartographer quests, well done!

I've always enjoyed this open style of exploration. In 1996, I would head out into the desert wilderness of Alik'r, having read about dragons out there somewhere. While resting one night, I was attacking by a dragonling (random encounter) and thought "I must be close now!" Keep in mind this is before I had the Internet at home - my version of online at the time was dial-up BBS's. Information back then was a lot harder to find than now. Daggerfall had so much mystery, something which is hard to describe today.

There's something powerful about striking out into the wilds in search of something, anything. Even Morrowind captured this for me. I'm one of the people who enjoyed trying to follow a quest-giver's directions. I had the map stuck to the wall beside me and imagined my adventurer's hands folding something like it away into his backpack after finding his way. The later games kind of ruined this for me with the sheer theme-park density of POIs and directional markers of all kinds.

Except for the compass. A good, reliable compass is essential.