Dialogue for the 1st quest

[Moontayle]

Decided to take a stab at this:

Guard Gharoth

Greeting: "Welcome to Silversage."

Player Choice: "Who's in charge around here?"

Response: "That would be Magistrate Haelaphos, but nevermind him. I'm under orders to test you to make sure you can hold your own out there before we commit to your involvement. Behind me you'll find a bunch of target dummies. As silly as it sounds, go over and "kill" ten of them. Then come back to me and I'll consider you "proven" and pass you along to the Magistrate. Deal?"

Player Completion: "Ten dead dummies, just like you asked."

Response: "Excellent. As promised, here is a missive to take to Magistrate Haelaphos stating that you passed my test. He'll fill you in on the situation and make sure you have plenty to do. Oh, and once again, welcome to Silversage."

-----------------------

Ok, the way I figure it, players need a quest out of the gate. In the Wiki I see a tentative note about a farmer or whatnot being there to give out the first quest, supposedly to kill rats, but I believe it's probably best to get players immediately involved in something pertaining to the overall conflict in the region. In this case, wolves are being displaced because of the greeny vs. undead fighting, and heading in the only direction available. This is actually pretty convenient from a design standpoint, since the first thing you encounter when you enter into the Plateau are wolves. Also, I think it sort of lends to the seriousness that the people of Silversage are taking this by basically telling the players, "We're not going to just take anyone into this."

And, of course, upon completion the character has proven himself and is thrust right into the main storyline. Quick, simple, and effective.

As far as rewards go, I think this first quest should have just a simple experience award, preferably enough that killing the requisite amount of wolves and then turning in the quest will level the player to 2.

Thoughts?

Edit: As per Faille's post just below this one, the dialogue was changed to make it into a newbie quest/tutorial hybrid, instead of one which requires new players to leave the immediate area.

[Faille]

Hmm.

The farmers and quest to kill rats is really just a newbie quest to get people who want to kill stuff straight away something to do. We're even thinking of having an xp penalty on the zone to encourage people to find their xping out in the outside areas.

The farms within the city should be mostly safe areas, so kinda cut off from the actual conflict, though obviously want to make sure people find out about it.



What we could do with the starter quest you've designed is have practice dummies for the the person to kill. So the guard just wants to make sure people can target and kill, so its like a game tutorial / newbie quest all in one.

[Moontayle]

That doesn't sound unreasonable as far as a starter quest goes. I'll modify the dialogue.

And done

[Believe]

Originally Posted by Faille

We're even thinking of having an xp penalty on the zone to encourage people to find their xping out in the outside areas.

Is the primary way to level by grinding on mobs (EQ), or from doing quests (WoW)?

I really thought WoW did a great job of moving the player along via quests - and really I think the less artificial restrictions you place on players the better. So instead of lowering experience in X area, you would just make the experience rewarded for quests in Y area worth moving to as soon as possible.

[Vatoreus]

One thing to keep in mind about dialog, is will it come across such as WoW, etc. did with very limited player choice interactions or will we try and do, if possible, dialog interaction along the lines of KOTR, NWN2, Jade Empire, etc. The latter I think would be pretty cool and could be something simple that would elevate the game a tad over current market games.

With this though, voice actors would be a needed type thing for certain characters maybe, or not.

[orcmauler]

nm

[Moontayle]

That's not a bad idea orcmauler, but it doesn't really mesh that well with what's been done so far with the testbed. This thread is actually my attempt at meshing the Lore that's in place with things that will work their way into the game. (pop over to the Wiki to see what's been done so far) That's not to say it couldn't be expanded upon as people get a bit more confortable with the tools. Like yours could be the second part of the tutorial, where you get into class specific stuff.

It would also act as the start of the class specific quests.

Also, to note, the testbed is generic fantasy but that's merely a convenience based upon the preloaded stuff that came with Torque (if my understanding is correct), and not out of a decision to actually go with a generic fantasy setting.

[Fattyfat]

Moon that looks great. I also like having this stuff in the open for discussion and I agree with your points above.

If we can come up with a quest Template, that would help developers implement.

NPC Start
NPC Finish
Pre-Reqs
Level Required

are a few fields i can think of... would know more after we start adding them.

[ruination]

NPC Start
NPC Finish
Quest Text
Pre-Reqs (level required would fall into this category)
Objectives/Goals
Reward(s)

[Fattyfat]

also something to note what step maybe?

[Faille]

Here's a quick flow of what information is needed for lore writers who want o create quests. ignore the arrows, everything flows form left to right.

As you can see, there's 6 major section of dialog needed depending on the situation.

Also this is the simplest example of a quest, doesn't really take into account multi step ones or more complicated ones. We can work on those later.


Added:
- Name. Each Quest should have a unique name

- Multistep quests, if you really want to do multistep quests, just breaking them down into a quest for each step, and use the previous quest as a pre req for the following step.


-Factions effected should also be mentioned. Who the quest is for, and what faction adjustments are made on success and fail. (current factions are village / undead / orcs)/

- Newbieworld is just going to be focused on village faction really. so, no way to advance in the other 2. Future projects will explore that.

- Need to included mobs that will drop quest items, and their location. eg, wolves at entrance of silverplain.

- Items needed is trickier then you think. Eventually we're going to have to have a list of which mob groups drop which quest items so there's not too much doubling up and we can spread quests around. For the time being, list the item needed, when the quest it implemented, the item will be added to the list, so that future quest writers can check against it when decided what items they will be using. I'd rather avoid situations where wolf fangs are used in 5 different quests. Likewise I don't want to see wolves drop 5 different quest items, when you can have different groups dropping some of them.

[Moontayle]

nm

[Moontayle]

Originally Posted by Faille

Here's a quick flow of what information is needed for lore writers who want o create quests.

Ok, that helps. How about we create a standardized form by which the writers could basically just plug in the information so the implementors wouldn't have to worry about a difference in structure?

[Faille]

Originally Posted by Moontayle

Ok, that helps. How about we create a standardized form by which the writers could basically just plug in the information so the implementors wouldn't have to worry about a difference in structure?

Will do. Just making sure I'm covering all the bases so far.

[darkblue]

Thanks for finally permitting me to post here, lets see if I can make my first post a “good” one. I am currently working on writing 10 or so different quests following the template on the site and trying to sort them out so what they do and lead onto makes sense together with the lore that has been written. Will try and post a quest "tree" that I am using to show some ideas on the quests and follow up quests etc. My first language isn't English either, so the way I sometimes form sentences isn't proper, so please point that out if you see it. Anyway, here are the first 3 test quests I have written.

Quest Name: Vermin infestation

Location: Silversage Village
Description: Clear out the abandoned houses (Kill 10 rats)
Start NPC: Clerk Anlor
End NPC: Clerk Anlor
Pre Reqs: None
Level Range: 1-3
Difficulty: Easy
Items Involved: None
Rewards: 50xp, +50 Silversage Defenders, 5 copper, (House deed to one of the abandoned houses, if you plan on testing player housing later on).

NPC Dialogue
NPC Start: You there, come over here and listen to a proposal I have to offer on behalf of Magistrate Haelaphos.

When news broke out in the village about the threat that now surrounds us, some of the miners and their family's that followed us here decided the risk not worth the promises of gold and silver. Though we tried to get them to stay, our effort was futile and they left together with the last trade caravan leaving Silversage.

With them gone it didn't take long for their houses to get infested with vermin. As it stands now, we have enough problems to deal with around here, and we just cant have our village overrun with rats on top of that.

Go clear out the abandoned houses, do not let this turn into a bigger problem then it should be.

Even though it's a simple task, you will be rewarded for your time. Thus is the request and proposal of Magistrate Haelaphos.

What say you?

Player Accept: Glad your able to see a good offer when it's been handed to you. Upon your return you will be given an appropriate compensation.

Now get on with it, I have far to many things to deal with that my time can not be wasted with idle chatter.

Player Decline: It's a shame you can't see a good offer when its been handed to you. Your time here in Silversage will be short, traveler.

Player Success: Finally! With the amount of time that took, I was beginning to wonder if the rats had started chewing on your rotting bones. But enough about that...

Even though it took longer then what I would have liked...here is your reward as promised.

Player Not Finished: The rats to great a danger for an adventurer such as you?

Do not bother to come back if you have no good news to bring me.

Player Failed: (if applicable)