I would love to see someone in each village (or each City/Commune), who doesn't have the best memory, so once an IG month, you can go to them and be told about a random item, which that person lost. To encourage some comm questing, or to make the quests a little longer, you have the option of bringing the person some wood, which they can make into a very general map (If you don't do the wood peice, you don't know which area of the Basin the item was hidden in. If you do get the wood and go for the map, you are given a general area, like "Grey Moors")
You are able to choose three different difficulty levels.
Easy is for people under level 30, and involves easy to navigate areas (Villages only)
Medium is for people under level 50, and can appear in any area on the Prime Plane.
Hard items (An heirloom?) are buried (You could also bring some more wood and iron to the quest person to get a shovel.. Or this would give those iron crafters out there a reason to make shovels) and are being guarded by bandits in any area on any plane (Not sure if it should or shouldn't be restricted to only those you have the Planar skill to get to. Also not sure if it should be limited to places you're not enemied to)

Anyone can choose any difficulty level (As long as they arn't too high a level) and if they choose hard level, then the bandits are at a level which depends on your level. It would be arced to be made dangerous for you, but not utterly impossible. A level 10 quester would not go against bandits at the same toughness as a level 50 quester would.

And it goes without saying, that only the person who requested the quest are able to attack the bandits/pick up the lost item. Also, if a person logs off/looses connection after asking for the quest, then it will be reset (The item and bandits vanish), and the quest giver will remember that you wern't able to complete the quest for the rest of the day (IC day), so you can get another quest after an hour. You will also only be able to complete one quest per day. Once you have completed the quest, the quest giver will remember you, for a little longer than you would be remembered if you had failed.



I just find that this would make it so you can still raise Karma, even if the village quests have already been done recently. Would also allow people to bash without the worry of being enemied to some group.

Any ideas/pats on the back?

Would you mind if I shifted this to Ideas? The concept itself sounds like fun... like an ongoing egghunt, almost.

Aah, bugger. I just noticed I posted this in Idiots. No idea how I managed that. Yeah, shift it please, Elryn.

A few questions:

What exactly would the reward be?
How would you stop people from 'camping out' on the mobiles offering this (i.e. working out the reset time pattern and just going there then)?
and
How is this any different from/better than all those mobiles who want stuff as part of a quest already?

I'm guessing it would have a random point in the month when the mobile loses the item, and after returning the lost item, the person would give you a gift. Something that has a small effect to something, and a benefit of having, but decays after, say, 2 IG days. Something like, a cloak that lets you fly, and land. Or a magic ring that gives level 1 racial health regeneration.

Reminds me of WoW.

Except WoW is overhyped and sucks because it is nothing more than any other 3rd person online RPG out there. Personally my ultimate RPG would have the levelling up system in Anarchy Online, the fighting system of an IRE mud, the twists of Metal Gear Solid 2 and the graphics engine of Half Life 2.

Have you seen Matrix Online's fighting system? I think without a local network, thats the closest you can get to IRE fighting in a visual environment.

Still trying to make Tekken online.

I resolved never to go near anyone who played Matrix Online just from the travesty of the movies and the Animatrix.

I like MGS2, until I started playing Raiden. Listening to the damn codec for a half an hour every 2 minutes is not my idea of fun.

And what's wrong with the Animatrix? The last two movies were crap compared to the first one, but I didn't have a problem with the Animatrix.

*mutters about the highjackers above*


I think the reward would be a sum of gold, incremental for the difficulty rating, and incremental at the hard level dependant on the level of the adventurer.
Easy Level: Sam, the Forgetful says, "Oh, hello there! I'm glad you've come. You see, I've lost my favorite (item). I'm not sure of the name of where I last saw it, but if you bring me some wood, I can draw you a map! Or you could always venture out on your own to find it. I do remember that I left it in a populated area."
So, that means a village. So, you bring a wood commodity and give it to Sam..
Sam, the Forgetful says, "Ah, good! Now let's see about that map."
Sam, the Forgetful takes the wood and crafts a large sheet of paper. Once that is complete, he brings out a quill and begins drawing a map. Soon finished, he hands the map to you, wishing you good luck.
look map
Scanning the map, and putting your great knowledge of The Basin to the task, you discover that the (item) will be found in (Village)!

So, you go and look around the village, eventually finding the random location where the item dropped, and return it to the quest giver..
Sam, the Forgetful says, "Oh, thank you very much! I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't found my (item)! Here, take this gold. I will never forget this!"
So, you get about.. 500-700gp? Not sure if that's steep, but on average, that's how much I get from Pilgrims each time I go around the Basin.
You would then have to wait between 1-2 days (I'd like to see the counter random between those times.. but not longer than 2 hours for the easy quest). Personally, I would like to see that if you greet the quest giver too much, the longer the wait will be. After all, how can you be forgotten when you keep on saying hello to Sam and (S)he keeps thanking you for finding the item?

At Medium level: Sam, the Forgetful says, "Oh, hello there! I'm glad you've come. You see, I've lost my favorite (item). I'm not sure of the name of where I last saw it, but if you bring me some wood, I can draw you a map! Or you could always venture out on your own to find it. It could be anywhere, so you should probably bring me some wood."

Sam, the Forgetful says, "Ah, good! Now let's see about that map."
Sam, the Forgetful takes the wood and crafts a large sheet of paper. Once that is complete, he brings out a quill and begins drawing a map. Soon finished, he hands the map to you, wishing you good luck.
look map
Scanning the map, and putting your vast knowledge of The Basin to the task, you discover that the (item) will be found in (area)!

So, like I said before, it could be anywhere on Prime. If it's in an area you're enemied to, then you should just wait relog, or you could probably tell the quest giver that you're busy at the moment, so you'll have to come back in a day to get another one.
Okay, so you find the item and you bring it back. Quest giver is all grateful and gives you... 1000-2000gp? After all, there's the chance of it turning up in the Roc area, or Serenwilde, or Glomdoring, which are huge areas, and with Murphy's Law, it's going to be in the last room you check.
I'm not sure how to say how much XP or karma the reward should be. I can't really see the reward being TOO high for Easy or Medium, though.

Now, onto Hard: Sam, the Forgetful says, "Oh, please! You must help me! Bandits have stolen my (family heirloon)! Please, bring me some wood and I'll draw you a map. I can also make you a shovel if you need one. Just bring me another bit of wood and some iron. But please, hurry! Before they sell it!"
You give the wood to Sam for the map..
Sam, the Forgetful says, "Thank the Gods! Let me do this quickly!."
Sam, the Forgetful takes the wood and crafts a large sheet of paper. Once that is complete, he brings out a quill and hastily scratching out a map. Soon finished, he hands the map to you, wishing you good luck.
look map
Scanning the map, and putting your vast knowledge of The Basin and The Planes to the task, the (heirloom) must be in/on (Village/area/Ethereal/Elemental (Wouldn't make too much sense if they were on Water, though. Can't bury things on Water)/Cosmic/Astral Node)

I think that while largely random, the place where the Bandits are should be based partly on how high you are in Planar. While you could always hitch a ride to a plane you can't get to yourself, there should be less of a chance having to go to that plane if you can't get there yourself.

Okay, now when you get there, there are maybe 5 bandits, spread across 5 rooms. The difficulty of the bandits is largely dependant on your own level. The room where the stolen item is buried, is one of the five rooms. And to make sure people can't just turn into a ground hog and burrow below to pick the item up, it's in a chest which much first be dug up. And to dig it up, you must first kill the bandit.

Okay, now you've killed the bandits, you've dug up the chest, gotten the heirloom and you're returning it to Sam..
Sam, the Forgetful yells, "Oh thank you so much, (person)!"
Sam, the Forgetful says, "I don't know how I could ever repay you, (person)! This reward seems so small im comparison for what you've done for me, but it's all I have that I can give you. Please take this gold and this small taken of my gratitude."
I'm thinking about 2000-4000gp reward, depending on where the item was lost and the strength of the bandits. Also, he'll give you a fur coat which will raise one of your stats (random) as long as you wear it. It decays in 5 days, and if you complete another of these quests within that time, you're asked if you want to replace the coat you currantly have for a new one, or keep the one you have.



For the last question about why this is different: It's different, because people can do this quest at anytime (if they havn't completed or failed one recently) There can be multiple people looking for an item for the same person at the one time, so unlike the currant quests, you don't have to wait for items to repop or for mobs to reset.
Of course, these arn't quests that will give you an honours line, either.
Hopefully all that made sense.. if not, ask me, and I'll try to clarify

I really like this idea, and i hope the Divines like it too. Random is good as to prevent tediousness, and it can provide a break from mindless comquesting, plus it allows people to learn the layout of the Basin! Which is a great reward by itself.

*pats Jalain in the back*

Yes, random is good for two reasons. Keeping things interesting and to make sure it's pretty much impossible for anyone to make some kind of script to take advantage of it.

I remember on another MUD I played a few years ago, I was friends with one of the coders. The game had the rule of no triggers that sent information to the game (Meaning echo, sounds and things like that were okay), and he kept putting in these systems to make it impossible to use triggers to do certain things. I used to be way better with Zmud than I am now, so I managed to foil his system (with his blessing) about four times before he got one that I couldn't work around.
Anyway, that made me appreciate just how nice it was to have some randomness. So I'm really hoping to find something which brings more randomness outside of PK and bashing mobs that give afflictions.

Well.. I take heart that Auseklis seemed interested in the idea, as he asked some questions.. So, fingers crossed!

Sounds good, alot like another Mud I played, where you requested a job, got the cords for some random area on a random quest, traveled there, and completed it

I think I know which one you're talking about. One of the gods there was a player on Lusternia and introduced me. Was a good game, but I just couldn't drag myself away from the addictive Lusternia.

If it is the one I'm thinking that you mean, there you have your own dungeon created for you, which only you can enter. Though, I love that concept, it wouldn't work on an IRE MUD. The number of people that would (in theory) be doing these quests would make it (mind you, I'm no coder) impossible without creating horrible lag for the whole game.. I think.

I know what you're talking about. The mud's name started with an E.
It's a pretty good game, but has too little areas. Basically all the people could do if they didn't want to sit in the main town all day was solo'ing in those instanced dungeons of theirs. Which was pretty boring, because there were 3 types of those dungeons, 3 types of enemies in each one (plus one boss).

I never got a chance to try out the arena on there, which I was told was pretty good. I did enjoy the puzzle jobs, though. The Minesweeper was great fun.