Dynamic Quest/Story Generation

[DarkSign]

I thought Id share these two wonderful links about dynamic quest and story generation.

http://www.thealmosfunkband.com/backup/SGOPIATE.pdf
http://h-world.simugraph.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Library.TipsForRandomStoryGeneration

One of our wish-list features is a way to key the need states of NPC groups and solo NPCs into an overarching storyline on the fly.
Add to that a structure based on different types of archetypal plots where relations between NPCs become storylines...and you've got a world that really moves and changes and hopefully is intriguing.

Thoughts on the subject?

[Vinadil]

I like the idea... it will take me several more hours/days to actually read and process the Thesis :).  I had to do a small double take when I saw "Page 1 of 208".

[CaptBewil]

I've, personally, about decided against any type of npc missions/quests.
XP
Give players the tools and let them create their own missions/quests (of course, in my system there's no need for mission/question generation for XP purposes, because i've removed XP from my game design).

Missions/Quests take a long time to write out, design, and implement.  Why not avoid extra development work where possible?

[Lightstalker]

I've, personally, about decided against any type of npc missions/quests.
XP
Give players the tools and let them create their own missions/quests (of course, in my system there's no need for mission/question generation for XP purposes, because i've removed XP from my game design).

Missions/Quests take a long time to write out, design, and implement.  Why not avoid extra development work where possible?

There will be an initialization problem with this route.  What happens when none of your players have created any quests yet?
There will be a maturity problem with this route.  What happens when the player curve has pushed past the region of new player interest and there is nothing for newbies to do in the world?

Saying the players will sort it out is fine and good, but there needs to be some minimal baseline of stock/static questing (if questing is an important mechanic in the game) to make the game fun if the players decide to skip the whole player generated quest bit.  It makes sense to leave optional features and game extensions in the hands of the players, but not the core user experience.  If the game launches without any quests at all over the entire character progression folks won't stick with it long enough for players to figure out how to create reasonable quests for each other, cause it takes such a long time to write out, design, and implement ya know.

[Alkiera]

To me, the concept of 'player generated quests/missions' is pretty silly.  To really do that, you need to have players with the ability to create NPCs, place items that will stay where put, and if the quest is doable more than once, respawn on that spot, set dialog and difficulties for said NPCs, etc.

If you don't do all that, you just get something like a buy order system, which I don't think is what people mean when they say 'player generated quests'.  I am all for a buy-order system.  Heck, I'd put some in the system that are stock, for NPCs, and let players out-bit them.  So a newbie goes to the village message board and sees a list of 'stuff wanted:  Boar tusks, Bear Pelts, etc' they choose one, and can see GenericNPCTailor pays 8cp; Joe wants 20, pays 10cp per pelt; Frannie wants 100, pays 12cp; etc.

So if I need something to do, I can go to the board, see what people want and are willing to pay, that I can do, and I go kill the things and sell the pelts to those players via the message board.  Maybe have a similar system for transport of stuff, like EVE does.  Anything more complex than those is gonna be problematic, though, I think.

--
Alkiera

[pxib]

What you're proposing, then, is a game about resource gathering?

---
Igwald the Alchemist has been making a high end paralytic because he's selling poisons to local assassins. He needs a troll scalps, pixie bladders and dew from the edge of the world. Troll scalps are a dime a dozen and he buys them in bulk from a warehousing conglomerate called The Golden Acre. Pixie parts sell fairly well and, since he's a skilled dissector, he specifically hires young mages like Fiorella Watt to hunt them in the fairy-wood because, unlike the archers that hunt them for their dust, spell-flingers dependably bring back intact corpses. Dew gathering is a rather complex and elaborated process that the alchemist must do on his own... so every week or so he arranges for a few capable bodyguards, like Vidya and Hans, to escort him there and keep him safe while he gathers it.

The Golden Acre has merchants everywhere. They, and similar outfits, operate like the NPC merchants of conventional games. They will pay bottom-dollar for any usable junk you've got in your pack because somebody, somewhere is willing to buy it. They hire fly-by-night caravan operators like Sally Three-Mule to cart their junk around, safe in the knowledge that nothing they have is worth stealing, and then pass the savings along to their paying customer. Their profits come from quantity, not quality.

Vidya and Hans may work for a mercenary organization which operates like a twisted temp-agency, or they may be free agents. They can be guaranteed good pay and fun fights because if there were no possibility of danger they would never have been hired. Igwald would be happier hiring from a trusted temp-agency because, should he wind up mugged or cheated he can reasonably expect that bad news to be at odds with company policy and that his grievances will be answered. Free agents, while cheaper, would be considerably more risky.

Fiorella is our newbie. She shows up in town and checks those bulletin boards and sees that Igwald is offering a lot of cash for INTACT pixies. Her stun spells allow for that sort of thing, so she heads out to the woods and discovers that not only are pixies woefully rare they cast nasty curses that can only be removed in town. Still she bags a few and, since nobody's paying as much as Igwald, sells what she has before she gives up for good.. leaving the task for the next sucker who spots the ad.
---

If it worked it'd be spectacular, but I think we'd have a lot of Fiorellas, Hanses and Vidyas serving a relatively tiny population of Igwalds. To high an organizational demand and most players stop thinking what they're doing is fun. Where am I even supposed to find pixies? My character can't kill trolls! Where do I get the dew-gathering equipment?

When the answer is "more layers of player bureaucracy", it could get tedious fast.

[Xilren's Twin]

One of our wish-list features is a way to key the need states of NPC groups and solo NPCs into an overarching storyline on the fly.
Add to that a structure based on different types of archetypal plots where relations between NPCs become storylines...and you've got a world that really moves and changes and hopefully is intriguing.

Thoughts on the subject?

So are you planning on a single server or multiple servers with true environmental divergence then?  Or are these dynamic quests still contrained to not actually effect any significant change in the gameworld?

Xilren

[Krakrok]

I'm voting for a Darklands style.

Faction #1: Lairs spawn randomly on the map. Lairs have mobs which loot and pillage the areas surrounding the lairs. The longer the lair lives the more loot it gets and the stronger the mobs get. Tell any villager in any town that you are looking for adventure or whatever and they tip you off about the nearest monster lair. It could dynamicly match you against a lair of your current difficulty. You go kick it's ass. When it's destroyed it's removed from the map.

Faction #2: Towns spawn randomly on the map. Towns have mobs which loot and farm the areas surrounding the towns. The longer the town lives the more loot it gets and the stronger the mobs get. Tell any monster in any lair that you are looking for adventure or whatever and they tip you off about the nearest monster lair. It could dynamicly match you against a lair of your current difficulty. You go kick it's ass. When it's destroyed it's removed from the map.

So now you have players from each faction working against each other dynamicly.

When you get the central treasure or whatever from the lair/town it looks at your shittiest item and gives you a better one. Or maybe it pops out a Djinn which gives you a list of random items to choose from (not the 2-3 item shit like WoW). Better yet it would give you chests and chest full of items that you would have to bring in pack horses to pack off with. Or go Diablo and just drop random items for a good time.


For the win.

[Samwise]

If it worked it'd be spectacular, but I think we'd have a lot of Fiorellas, Hanses and Vidyas serving a relatively tiny population of Igwalds. To high an organizational demand and most players stop thinking what they're doing is fun. Where am I even supposed to find pixies? My character can't kill trolls! Where do I get the dew-gathering equipment?

When the answer is "more layers of player bureaucracy", it could get tedious fast.

I think what you outline sounds awesome and very workable.  As long as Igwald is the only one who needs to do all that organization there are no problems, because there's a small percentage of players who will really enjoy doing that.  (See: SWG merchants.) 

The critical piece is providing the bulletin board/mission terminal/what have you that allows Fiorella to find work easily without having to deal with any of the bureaucratic crap that Igwald thrives on.  As a bonus, after Fiorella accepts the mission from the bulletin board, the game knows that she's looking for pixies, and can give waypoints or manipulate spawning behavior as appropriate if you want to make sure that Fiorella isn't wandering around in a cockblocked haze for the next three hours trying to find the damn things.

[CaptBewil]

I've, personally, about decided against any type of npc missions/quests.
XP
Give players the tools and let them create their own missions/quests (of course, in my system there's no need for mission/question generation for XP purposes, because I've removed XP from my game design).

Missions/Quests take a long time to write out, design, and implement.  Why not avoid extra development work where possible?

There will be an initialization problem with this route.  What happens when none of your players have created any quests yet?
There will be a maturity problem with this route.  What happens when the player curve has pushed past the region of new player interest and there is nothing for newbies to do in the world?

Saying the players will sort it out is fine and good, but there needs to be some minimal baseline of stock/static questing (if questing is an important mechanic in the game) to make the game fun if the players decide to skip the whole player generated quest bit.  It makes sense to leave optional features and game extensions in the hands of the players, but not the core user experience.  If the game launches without any quests at all over the entire character progression folks won't stick with it long enough for players to figure out how to create reasonable quests for each other, cause it takes such a long time to write out, design, and implement ya know.

You misunderstand.  You'd have to read my entire Design Outline to see how it would work out.  But basically:

You have a Fixed Economy with two primary waring factions.  Certain Players (those that choose a leadership profession) fill the appropriate ranks of these factions that are initially ran by GM's (remember the days of paper D&D?)  At different ranks your control over funds, and faction NPC movements, etc increase.  You can also generate a covert-ops mission for other faction players that are online to determine current enemy locations and number of units present (since factional NPC locations won't be static like they are in WoW, SWG, and pretty much any other MMO); perfect for Spies.  Then from there, you can use that information to generate additional missions for larger groups of factional players (namely, commando's, coordinated with factional NPC movements) to take out those enemy "camps" (keeping in mind, that higher ranking factional players can modify or cancel such missions as they see fit...though the initiator can always petition up the rank ladder).  Those types of missions would be very common.

Another example of Factional missions is the use of High Profile factional NPCs used for diplomacy, espionage, and so forth.  These NPCs can be captured if overwhelmed by enemy troops or a target of a capture mission from the other faction.  You may then have to generate a mission for players to rescue the NPC in a heavily guarded enemy factions base.  Yet still another example of factional player missions, are those that are generated by automatically by the system (primarily pre-designed R&D research schematics for engineers to work on).  Factional missions would typically come in two flavors, "Standing Orders" (repeatable mission) or "Field Orders" (one time mission).

Non-Factional missions, for example, Bounty missions.  Any player can place a bounty on another players head at any time.  Bounty Hunters can then choose to go after the bounty.  Bounties can also be assigned when players attack other players who are unarmed.  This helps to prevent grieving in open PvP environments by letting the player Bounty Hunters handle said players.

Other Non-Factional mission could be simple delivery missions for players.  This is especially handy if you want to help supply a faction without attracting too much attention from the opposing faction.  Smugglers would fullfill that need better then most.  A lot of these type missions would be referred to as "Contracts".

So to answer your questions directly (represented as 1 & 2 to mean question 1 and question 2)

1.  Since there is no XP or leveling, this isn't really a problem.  However, there would initially be GM's running the two primary waring factions.
2.  Players wouldn't have to wait for missions to be generated to just go out and do something.  For instance, a player wouldn't have to even join a faction to get a mission to attack factional NPCs or players.  If the player wanted to attack the faction NPC or Player for no other reason but to do, they would be able to.

This really allows for players to work better together, coordinate attacks (or movements), and adapt to the ever changing battlefield in a way that static mission/quests would never allow for.

[Glazius]

Since there is no XP or leveling,

Ahahahahaha no.

Unless the only thing you get for completing a mission is a splash screen saying YOU'RE WINNER, you have XP and leveling, they're just in funny hats.

Or are you really saying that players can never expect to improve their characters in any aspect whatsoever?

--GF

[CaptBewil]

Since there is no XP or leveling,

Ahahahahaha no.

Unless the only thing you get for completing a mission is a splash screen saying YOU'RE WINNER, you have XP and leveling, they're just in funny hats.

Or are you really saying that players can never expect to improve their characters in any aspect whatsoever?

--GF

The system I plan on using will allow you to have 1 point to spend for each 3 months of play.  You can apply it to the Strength attribute or the Ability attribute (though the gain will be fairly nominal for general PvP purposes and will be more significant for the way your character interacts with the environment).  There are other ways to "advance" your character, such as in the Class system or advancement within the Faction system.  This prevents character "grinding" because it's time dependant and not play dependant.  In this way, it helps keep casual gamers on the same playing field.  Granted, this system would only work well for FPS mmo's.  If you are going the traditional route, then you'd want to stick to XP and Levels or look into some other time dependant route...