My first response is, "WOOHOO!"
I'd love to make long, drawn out RP quests. I'd do my best to use the whole game world intelligently, too. :p
But before I get too excited, here are some important questions:
First:
Can one make an EMote occure as soon as somebody logs in? If not, the MOTD would do fine for this.
Second:
Is it possible to make it permanently raining (in a certain zone)?
Third:
If it IS possible, is it possible to set it as not permanently doing so via an NPC? Would "rain 0" put the rain back into a normal on/off cycle, in other words.
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That aside, what I'd like to do is have a little message pop up as the player logs into the game world -- or even better, when they enter a certain zone. It'd be a descriptive paragraph that immediately tells them that they're on a story server, not (just) a hack'n slash server.
A small shiver touches your skin as the heavy raindrops flow down your clothing, your breath coming out as a light mist in the chill air. As you look up, thunder rolls hollow & distant across the sky, soon followed by lazy patches of lightening. The rain... It is, insistant.
Through interaction with NPCs, players learn that it has been raining for a great deal of time now. They say crops are in danger, as well as houses and live stock, not to mention their children (could I have a short NPC as a regular spawn?). And the rain seems to soak their spirits as much as the ground.
So of course, the players have to set out and discover the source.
Weee, I'm having fun already.
I would probably use West Karana for this. Not because of its name, but because it's so large, and has houses. Or maybe North. Something that would suggest a village and/or habbitation and give some room for questing.
At any rate, I'd have a city or two set as a base for the adventurers - Qeynos would be the "friendly" town where everybody knew they're the helpers and thus heal, cure, etc everybody for free. Freeport would be the rough town (as it should be) and require items handed in for healing and such.
The quest would be progressed both by handing in items, and /saying specific phrases to an NPC (and thus receiving an item (letter, etc.). They may have to go threaten a certain NPC for information, for example, instead of killing it (NPC looks for specific words put together and responds with a phrase containing a certain phrase in brackets which they have to go say to a different other NPC. Multiple bracketed responses could be possible?).
Thus it becomes a combination of hack'n slash, information gathering, and item searching.
A true quest, in other words.
The end result would be the players discover the source for the rain and get rid of it. I'd
love for it to be an item - not a creature - but I'm not sure if that would be possible? The item would have to be on a spawn table and.. well..
A simple concept, and all in all a simple quest, but a good way to get started. For both myself and the questers.
So, the big question is, would all of this be possible?
Idea from NPC Scripting Post
Linear Mode
