RPing Scripted Quests.

[orth]

Not an official stance or anything but I'm getting a little tired of RPing scripted quests as though they keep happening over and over. Can we all just pretend they are new every time? Paraphrasing Pankoki whom I was discussing this with "They're there to facilitate the progression of younger levels. Not a huge conspiracy."

No - Ragrian didn't lose her necklace _again_.
No - Erag is not amassing a collection of dark soul essence to destroy Hlint.
No - Nikki in Krandor has not asked for the ashes thirty eight hundred times and is secretly trying to kill everyone.

Those are just my thoughts, just wondering how others feel.

[Faldred]

No - Erag is not amassing a collection of dark soul essence to destroy Hlint.

He isn't? I thought that was going to be a plot quest eventually.

[steverimmer]

No - Erag is not amassing a collection of dark soul essence to destroy Hlint.
No - Nikki in Krandor has not asked for the ashes thirty eight hundred times and is secretly trying to kill everyone

I like the thought of these to be honest...I'd never heard of the Nikki one but when I was one of the dm team I was toying with the idea of a quest based around Erag and his insatiable appetite for dark soul essence. To be honest I think that rumours like these add to the flavour of the game, I mean who can really look at Erag now without wondering what he does with all that essense, and why is he so creepy anyway?

[miltonyorkcastle]

honestly, I don't care either way. The fact that they repeat either has to be explained or ignored. You (Orth) and Pankoki are suggesting we ignore the quests once each persons' character has finished them, while others find that ignorance hard to digest, especially since often after one has completed the quest, they help another complete the quest.

If you're suggesting we need to come to a consensus and stick to it, rather than allowing for both interpretation and ignorance, so be it. Though I think the GM's just better decide and tell how they want it to be, or else we'll be in debate with this forever.

[Eorendil]

So.... don't RP scripted quests? Just kidding. I just wanted to add my incoherent babblings and perceptions on this topic...
This is always a difficult subject in an online PW where some quests are static and unchanging. Until an engine is designed that can come up with quests, get rid of old ones that have been solved and allow GMs to easily and quickly create and implement progressive, evolving quests into the world it will continue.. RPing this sort of static content is even harder.. I mean.. how many times can you help clean out the caves before the local denizens are wiped out.. or decide to move to greener pastures?
Its a tough subject and one that can be equally damaging if hard and fast rules are implemented regarding how they are RP'd. I've seen some online RP oriented worlds where the players felt they were so boxed in that they couldn't even speak to one another about the game world for fear of GMs coming down on them.. RP there amounted to .. "hi.. er.. nice nail color. You like my dress?" O_o "Look, I trimmed my whiskers with my new Cutlass_of_Sharpness_01"Unless, of course you were involved in a GM run plot line.. then it was okay but it was far from immersive or fun for most players....
Quests such as pay for hunting down a handfull of goblins or animals to keep them in line or supplying an NPC crafter with a random number of various goods work very well in PWs because there is an obvious continual need.
There is a point at which you need quests for flavor as well and so most world designers put in the static quests because it does give the world a certain flavor and it also helps spread lore, or can be used as a tool to do so. Too many static quests can harm immersion and a fine line has to be drawn somewhere.. A good imagination can overcome a lot of things but there's a point at which any imagination has difficulty pursuing the suspension of disbelief.

[orth]

To me it breaks the immersion. I know it's a scripted quest, and I'm trying my best as new character to consider this as something that has just recently happened, not something that has been done thousands of times. I dunno, as soon as someone RPs something that makes me think of the OOCness of it, it loses a touch of it's mystique. Lately I've felt even the same about Johan, because seriously, his wife hasn't been sick for 50 years, he hasn't asked for around 25000 pelts.

This kinda crosses over into the issue of say Captain Garent and the constant abuse he gets. "Oh sure sure all he does it walk the streets of Hlint, ask him for help and he ignores you.". No. That's all we're really capable of or want to spend the time on for NPC ambience.

Perhaps it just loses it's humour after a couple years, or maybe it's my dev mind asking myself every time "How can we make every event dynamic", then again maybe I'm being a bit of a sourpuss.

Just a discussion I thought I'd throw out there.

[Eorendil]

I truly wish quests, and even the world, could be made to be more dynamic. It isn't the fault of any Quest or Dev team anywhere.. its tough, really tough. Its a personal point of contention I've had with online worlds in general for some time. A fully PC run world would overcome some of it but that would require a player capacity even major MMO producers couldn't begin to deliver. Not to mention.. who has the time?
Its a very valid subject and one that deserves a lot of thought. I'm so glad I have a small PnP group.. ;-) There's just no real substitute for imagination mixed with perception.
Wouldn't it be cool if you could have a living, breathing virtual world that not only took into account player actions but those of npcs, animals, growth of plants, etc etc? What fun that could be... a true fantasy simulation, in a way. I can't even begin to imagine the complexities and how tough it would be to put in things like a dragon.. detail its growth, aging, learning, etc etc.. just too much to think of... The best thing about a true simulation? Surprise.. things would happen that you never even thought of.
I suppose you could do that with NWN and have the apearance of a constantly changing world but you'd have to have a team of people willing to work every day, changing and updating the world, running quests, tracking their outcomes and modifying the way things were accordingly.. there'd have to be daily world updates too.. The work would be staggering, I'm sure.
Layo is a great place though, no doubt about it. Its pretty amazing what the people that have worked on this world have done. At some point we just have to accept the limitations of the tools with which we work.. or go make our own tools.

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Erag eats the essence, I swear.

Ragrian can't keep her hands on that bloody necklace, but her WIS is so ridiculously low that she keeps going back...

Johan's just after pelts. I didn't even notice his wife was sick.

Systrian Cars, despite her rudeness, is really very... Ahem. Popular. She gets lots of mail.

Stupid Johan can't keep his cows in the pen, and keeps naming them Elsie. You'd think he'd learn.

It goes on.

I'd love to see some NPC-related events. Bring 'em on!

[Thunder Pants]

i figured johan was just lazy so instead of getting the pelts himself he got other people to do it for him, the one that tends to make the least sense is Farmer Parts when done multiple times, he just seems to keep using the same acursed straw to make scare crows

Ronus quest is fine other then that Ronus have a whole lot of old shoes to hand out

Dalton really needs a lot of those Willowisp essences, and Jaunita seems to keep geting her leather oil stolen by ogres, and Larry lends out his hammer to his brothers a lot

[Acacea]

There is nothing going on that cannot be turned into a fun thing RP-wise, but the quality of the scripted quests certainly makes it a challenge. Turning it into something you never mention-never did-first time ever happened in the world for anyone-thing just creates a time warp that is less immersive than simply making them things that are constant problems.

Johan still asks Acacea for pelts whenever she goes in... he has been doing so since she arrived. It's not a completed quest, just one she didn't feel was worth her time, under the circumstances.

It IS completely retarded to say "Yeah, that's been happening for the last fifty years," but really at that point they need to be changed. And considering how the current ones are, it would not be an enormous task to just swap some around, as none of them involve any more than a few one liners and a fetch-and-carry.

Either way you tell the world to react to a stale, unchanging quest, it is still the stale, unchanging quest that is the problem. If it was a long drawn out complicated NPC quest that required any sort of thought, I could understand wanted to suspend belief a bit so that it could be a first time thing for everyone. The fetching, delivering, and killing require no such thing.

If I am supposed to do them and then pretend they never happened, I can gladly just never do them in the first place, ensuring that it is so.

The NPC bit is just simple AI abuse most of the time. Garent is rarely going to respond, and so you can insult him and brandish the sword at him and say "You'd better walk off."

There is a large difference between roleplaying quests, and being a jerk about the fact that the NPCs are not being played, ignoring how they would react were they there. In my opinion, this could also be aided somewhat by adding brief descriptions for the common NPCs, as a snapshot of their personality for those who have never interacted with them while they were possessed.

While there are much cooler, newer things to work on, the effect the minimal amount of time spent on these things can have on the playability of the world is enormously underrated.

[Filatus]

IC, I really don't really know that Erag asks multiple people for those essences. Perhaps the fact that you know every person wil do that quest influences your knowledge of that. I say this because IC, I've never heard people discuss it.

The only exception is the taxaccountant.

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

She's having a love affair with the wererat.

[SuperMunch]

I don't really find it funny anymore also, but I still play along because that's what Freldo does.

There is no way of fixing this but adding a "follow up" to each of the scripted quests would be a way to add a justification for the repeating quest. For example, having Erag tell you he fouled up but he's not going to trouble you for it again would be a way out.

Why don't the characters change from time to time? Promote Garent to something else and have another walk in his place. Erag's now the postmaster and such - mix it around.

Adding a nice description, as Acacea mentioned, would be nice for us to play with.

I kinda of worry about the AI NPCs, maybe playing around with them - maybe even adding a few simple random follow up quests (no XP, a little token or something or just a thanks) would be nice. Having Ronus ask for a few ears, or maybe even the Ettercap's silk gland (just for fun) randomly, would add a little spice and the reward could be used to role play an alignment (allow a +1 / -1 point here and there), I don't know.

[lonnarin]

I always figured some of those quests which repeated looking for precise items were all just cunning tests disguised as quests from members of some secret Thieves Guild. Ragrian sneaks down to the caves and throws the necklace into the slime herself nightly in order to find out which adventurers' pockets not to pick, Moraken really invented Storan and his ring via necromancy to test potential apprentices, etc... For the chieftain head hunts, savage tribes will always elect a new leader, so it's not too much of a stretch for them to be consistant. Then, for some items, I could see how one'd need a constant influx of them.

As Willowisp Essence and Goblin Ears are key ingrediants of various hooch, I suspect that Talon and Mage Dalton are secret partners in a brewing business, either that or chronic alcoholics.

Far as NPC quests go, we really need to get Talon and his Ilsarite healer woman hitched... maybe have Milara turn out to be a jealous ex-boyfriend wedding crasher or some such.

[miltonyorkcastle]

I think the general consensus is, "It's time for a change."

As to the how the change is implemented is still up for debate, of course, whether new quests are developed to replace the old ones, or new reasoning for the old ones emerge, etc.

[Icurus]

You could tell people not to help younger players on any quests...then the older folk won't talk about it because they don't know about it.

Of course, you'll have a lot of, "man, I'm like the only person that hasn't gotten the oil...fighting all these Ogres by myself really stinks."

[Juzzo]

Ive been gone along time, but I always used to rp the quest with the new guy, Just to help his experience in layo be fun. (I had fun doing it too)

[darkstorme]

Also, to be fair, if you don't let the older players take the new arrivals out on some of the quests, the new ones will spend a lot of time by the Bindstones. For a first level character, even a single Goblin Archer can be a hazard... and gods forbid you run into a skunk.