Quest Digest 4/5/95 From: ">>-Josh->" <J.P.Gallagher@durham.ac.uk> Date: Thu, 04 May 1995 00:00:00 +0000 ____________________________________________________________________ | | | THE QUEST DIGEST | | The forum for the E-mailing Quest-players | | Compiled by Josh Gallagher: J.P.Gallagher@durham.ac.uk | | Date: 4th May 1995 | |____________________________________________________________________| o This is not an automatically generated compilation, so if all contributions could be sent to me in a seperate e-mail with paragraphs initialled, I would appreciate it a lot. o Please do not use this list for your own purposes; people do not appreciate thousands of pieces of mail arriving a day! o If you ever want taking off the list, just say, and I will be happy to do so. I don't want telling off for any nuisance mail! o All material here is the exclusive property of the author and may not be used elsewhere without their permission. JPG> Hello again folks, and welcome to another edition of the digest. I shall shortly be sending out short questionnaires about tardiness of turn delivery, or not as the case may be. I would appreciate it if all KJC players could take the time to fill this out. Sorry to those none KJC players that it will go out to, but I don't have a list of who plays what (well, I have the List Of Questers, which I will soon (honest!) update and send out, but it would be far easier for you to delete the email if it doesn't apply!) JPG> On with the messages! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quest Helpline service. This helpline is chaired a by a panel of experienced Quest players, who will be available to answer any queries or solve any problems to do with Quest. Send e-mail to <godfrey2@cov.ac.uk> and give "Quest help" as the subject line. Contact me if you want to join the panel. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Finn Theodorsen <theodor@diku.dk> Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 15:03:50 +0200 FET>About criticism of KJC for messed up turns.. I haven't had the kind of bad experiences other people mention. FET>Around cristmas one of my turns got doubled up (executed twice) so i wrote them and they 1) Gave me money back for the messed up turn, 2) Made some changes (after my specifications) so that the turn which should be executed next didnt get messed up as well 3) Gave me an extra free turn as reparations for the lost tempi. FET>I guess it is possible to talk to them when problems show up, and come to an understanding. FET>This nice treatment made me so happy I started a third party in G15 right away (Invoked Devastation 1173). FET>I checked all my combat results as well... The damage formula saying DMG= round(BASEDMG + TO%) seems to be right. Base is 1 for hands, 5 for dagger, 7 for flail/mace, the sword have 7/8/9 and axes have 9/10/11. Bows have no TO bonus (they are 6/8 and 8/10 for xbows). Now why would anyone in their right mind start equipping someone with anything else than an axe?? Are sword easier to train with??? Combat XP is still equal to damage (and xp for some near misses as well). -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 14:30:43 +0100 (BST) From: Chris Dickson <chris.dickson@keble.oxford.ac.uk> CMD> G'day, all. I got my turn 100 back yesterday, safe and sound. It's got no significance to anything else whatsoever, but it IS a nice milestone. To be quite honest, I'll stick my neck out on the block and suggest that we're being ever so slightly too hard on KJC - although I do agree with everything that people are saying. First, and I'll try and keep quoting to a minimum, in response to a couple of points by Chris "tine" Clarke in this private comment with world-wide relevance... > > CMD> Whoa, Chris, KJC have got your gander, haven't they? > > CC> WELL SPOTTED - give that man a rat fur! G 99 (Chris M. Dickson) 464 > CC> Quest Improvements poll - good idea > Quest Improvements poll implimentation - total garbage > Far too awkward. I admit I'm lazy, but it was just a total pain. Understandable. I am tentatively planning a sequel to the poll, for about a year's time (assuming that the world is still playing Quest). However, I will keep everything on the same form, something like this.... [ 1a] [Failed thefts punished by town guards ] [ ] [ 1b] [New quest type - kill specified thieving party ] [ ] and the box in the right is designed for you to award your votes (and will also limit you to 5 votes per category). I may also have a space for write-in votes at the bottom. What do people think about this? (It's probably best to e-mail me personally - people may be upset about seeing simple "It's great"/ "It sucks" messages on the Digest). Bear in mind that this is for the sequel to the poll, in about a year's time. CMD> Right, it's time to don the asbestos undergarments and dole out some opinions contrary to those of most of the Digest. I have been a customer of KJC Games for about seven and a half years (I started by playing "It's A Crime!" at the totally unsuitable age of eleven - but that's another story.) In that time I and local friends have played Crime!, Quest, Isle of Crowns, Isle of Crowns II, Top O' The League (Extra Time) and KJC Fantasy Soccer. I would not have started playing, and kept playing, all these games, if I did not feel that KJC offered a good game with fair service at a reasonable price. In fact, I did stop playing KJC Games for about 2 years after the end of my first game of Crime! because I couldn't afford it. CMD> If you really feel that KJC Games offers bad service or poor value for money then you can stop playing. Indeed, I would take my hat off to any player who had been playing for a long time who stopped playing as a protest. I just feel that all these outbursts are a result of KJC not being at their best, rather than KJC being bad. (Also, with so many of us being British students, the start of term and a return to work [aargh!] may have put us in a bad mood). That said, KJC badly need more, more accurate, more reliable inputters, and our frustration at having lots of ideas that would be really cool to have in a game, but I realise would take a LOOOOOOOOOOONG time to implement properly, has manifested itself in complaints. If it's the case that Kevin Cropper is taking a very large chunk of our turn fees as profits for himself, to the extent that he's making a fortune from it, then it's a bit off, but there's nothing we can do about it. Although I don't know the guy personally (although I have met him), I believe he loves PBMs in general enough not to do something stupid like that. If he IS using KJC as a nice little earner, and not caring about the players, then... well, he's got to live with himself. CMD> Certainly there are points where KJC customer care could be improved. In the cases of postal strikes (I know Paul in Newcastle is badly hit - and RoJ may be too, not helpful for an alliance leader at a crucial stage) the ability to 'phone turns in free at no extra charge is good, but how about faxing turns out at a vastly reduced rate? Then Paul gets some fax software for his modem and turns travel once more, by-passing the Royal Mail. All letters should get a careful, considered, polite reply. Ditto all calls. That said, I haven't found this a problem in my experience. (JPG> OR SENDING IN TURNS BY EMAIL!!! - caps intended, please read Steve!) CMD> As for all the suggestions, he wrote as the compiler of the improvements poll, I really don't expect most of them to happen. I suppose as a list we could try and work on a theoretical PBM as a joint effort, starting from the bottom with a new, better, more balanced design, but as most of us are students and have very little resources to draw on, I can't see KJC Games needing to tremble in their boots. In the past I have worked on rules for PBMs, as a theoretical exercise, and come up with some nice simple rule sets for fantasy war games et al. It's an interesting diversion. I have tried to program them in my very wobbly spaghetti BASIC knowledge, and I didn't get nowhere before I lost patience. Perhaps someone could set up a sub-list to discuss a design for a new PBM with very, very vague Quest backgrounds but better in lots of ways, and, very importantly, not infringing copyright? Josh, you act above and beyond the call of duty in compiling the Digest each time. I know how hard it is from my short tenure in said position in the holidays. However, if there are enough visionaries on the list, it would make a hell of a summer project... JPG> Actually Chris, I was thinking of writing one for my 3rd year project, so I was a little disgruntled when they recently told me they had stopped letting students come up with ideas. All ideas from lecturers only. :-( They have the unerring ability to come up with boring versions of interesting ideas. CMD> I'd like to know what other fantasy PBMs people play and how they compare to Quest. As soon as a game comes out that is even Quest-like in theme and undeniably very good, if someone advertised it on the Digest, they could have 50 people dropping out of Quest and starting up in this new game. I subscribe to Flagship, a general PBM magazine, and there are very few character development / adventure & discovery style games around, and they all have their problems. I wonder how Crasimoff's World Quest is going these days? If it seriously is better then perhaps we all ought to try that. JPG> Thing that persuaded me against it was extra cost. I dunno, it may have been worth it.. I like the idea of a semi-hand moderated Quest game. CMD> As a loyal KJC customer for seven and a half years, I want the firm to succeed and am very happy when it does well. I do feel a little more willing to respond to their players very definitely could and should be shown. It's a horrible phrase, but perhaps KJC should get "Back to Basics". Anyway, I have this fantasy. One day, Steve Fairbrother's going to turn round and say: "Thanks for your suggestions and criticisms, everybody. We've been working in secret on a game with them all in, instead of putting them in Quest. We'll keep the old Quest running as ever at a reduced price. However, you may want to join the all-new, bug-free, feature-packed... Quest II." Quest II, with all the things we want in it, would be my dream game. CMD> Too bad it's only a dream. JPG> *grins wide* Check my sig. :-) Hmm.. I knew it'd be dangerous when i started putting comments back in to the depths of the digest... Guess I just like getting the first reply to everything. :-) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 14:31:01 +0100 (BST) From: Lord of Spoons <A.O.Hooper@herts.ac.uk> > 8) Alan Hooper AH> Its Allan BTW - anyway I think the excessive quoting applies to me so I'll try and cut down on it (but not with too much success!). JPG> Um, sorry Allan! :-) Should have looked more closely! And the quoting wasn't really aimed at anyone, just helps if everyone bears it in mind. Imagine you're responding in snail -- you don't cut up peoples letters to reply to them! :-) > DR> 'E' order in town, Yes Please. KJC won't have it though will they, as we > terrorise, beat up, steal off then kill every new player. Not. Get a life > Kevin. AH> In my experiance the worst people for beating up new groups have been the 'good' alliances - just so they can boast they beat up someone with a slightly evil name (like had 'black' or 'dark' in it). With good alliances like this I feel safer already <G>. > > NB> And if this doesn't work, I'll write my own game! > DR> Count me in if you want a 68000 programmer. I looked at it but > couldn't do it on my own. AH> Count me in too when I finish here in 3 years..... DR - Honey roast peasant, my favourite..... JPG> As I said, I'd love to program one, and I finish in 1.5 years. :-) >NB> Steve, rather than try and make a point, I'd rather you just >fixed that grammatical errors that someone _has_ made. AH> Well said, I have an A-level in English but still managed to get an D- in a english test here at Uni ( E was for overseas students!) - why? because I could not be arsed. If your staff cant be arsed mistakes will still be made. > NB> At 6000 gold per suit - it would need to be damn good. So it > gives you 22AR, but AR only protects from damage. You could buy >CC> And one acid blast and bye bye ... AH> My point being exactly that - if you make plusx armour magic resistant you have mages in 22AR with no chance of getting rid of it - only really good fighters can get through 22AR so we have the immortal magi syndrome.. >CC> Good day. Try the silent treatment. Let them break it - I'm great at >this and it drives people up the wall. AH> The worst thing about it was the end, it was like this:- THEM "It was processed yesterday" ME "Oh right. Thanks. B" THEM <click - burrrrrrrrr (hangs up)> ME "ye..." AH> I dunno - perhaps to break up the tedium they have a "who can be rudest to a customer" competition or something? Much similar to the "who can fit the most mistakes into an PP card" competition, or "how long can we hide a turnsheet at a vital time" game. No doubt there's other little games... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: roger.littlefair@unn.ac.uk Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 16:08:58 +0100 (BST) RoJ> Missing mail can be blamed on Xmas partly. A student deliverer was found recently with 2 sacks of mail, but only wanted the cash, so didn`t deliver them. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 17:19:27 +0100 (BST) From: "C.H.E.B." <ctc@coventry.ac.uk> CC> Anyone intersted in contacting my friend in G12/13/14 or G13/14/15 - I still can't remember what game combination - please contact him at: Paul K Paton 31 Penmark Green Ely CARDIFF Wales CF5 4QL Cheers -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: DEAN P R SHEARS <eeshears@swansea.ac.uk> Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 17:01:21 GMT0BST DS> It seems I fulfil the good (hey I'm angelic) contigent of G14. I run the Phoenix alliance which accepts followers of all goods but any anti-social gaming is not accepted. I also run a service for newbies in all games, send me your stats and long term goals and I'll give you info and tips to achieve those ends. Any game newsletter editors who want to give my name no probs but I want SSAEs if they're are asking by snail mail. My address is 33 Eversley Road, Sketty, Swansea, SA2 9DB. DS> Recently (actually Dave is probably finding out now before his turn arrives) I pumped my team full of melee spells and attemped robberies on a team hoping for glorious failure. Sadly his retreat had been exceeded and he legged it at the first sign of trouble but on my next attempt I er.. borrowed some chain mail from him but my loverly thief gained no experience!!!! The next order he was successful again but they had no gold to steal and still no exp!!! Scream!!! This is really sickening as he still need 12 exp to be trained up, I phoned KJC and they muttered something unintelligible and put me on hold. 15 mins later I gave up!!!! DS> This is not good enough, in the past my teams have recieved exp fighting with teams that have no members (very handy too) but this seems a really strange way to get it back!! Oh and Dave, IOT3 can have the mail back if they want it. DS> And finally to Roj. You must have an arse full of splinters from sitting on that fence so hard!!! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 17:14:18 +0100 (BST) From: "C.H.E.B." <ctc@coventry.ac.uk> > JPG> I think I got the date right this time.. :-) CC> Novelty, novelty <G> Bloody hell, I've justed deleted all my stuff and there isn't anything else! JPG> Will this lot do you then? :-) And I'm being extra careful about the dates now.. ( thanks Neil! :-| ).. that UNIX date command is handy. :-) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Emma! <e.k.moore@uclan.ac.uk> Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 18:33:34 GMT+0 Re: Alliances Yep I am a member of an official alliance and it is fun getting a full list of the members and the funds each turn. If you are the head or the recruiter you get to see everybody's alignments too!! They also protect you from attacks in your home city so if you want a fight you have to leave home. At the moment there is a bug that won't let some of the members get into the shop if it is hidden even though they have slept there for lots of turns. Maybe they were blindfolded each night ? Re: KJC's Attitude I have found that if you phone up and get to speak to Cathy she does get things sorted properly but with the others they seem to have the occasional hitch but then doesn't everybody ? Emma K. Moore -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 02 May 1995 20:09:00 GMT From: editor@elbon.demon.co.uk (Paul Noble) >NB> something new. Perhaps if you joined in you might find > something for you here? PN> What? please tell me, just recently (since december)I have began to role play all my groups, from brash thievery to solomn and quiet, it has become more interesting, especially when certain situations force me to decide between whats best and what they would do, I think I'm succeeding in doing so but it is hard. I join in more than most, I have written reams for the digest. I have taken on as much quest related matter as I possibly could, time allowing. I have started an alliance and taken the leadership of another. I run 5-6 groups of which only 1 is not involved in the mainstream game. I've started compiling a quest guide with the help of several experienced players and hope to have more contributions soon. I edit game 1 and have most certainly been instrumental in the increasing activity in that game despite not playing there. Despite my roleplaying I have and always will provide any assistance to anyone who asks. I play the game for the game, I put the well being of the game ahead of all my actions be it alliance leader or newsletter. PN> While I'm quoting this bit I'd just like to say that my mailing was the result of an extreme bad mood/day and I really should have withdrawn the mail. Sorry. PN> Heres an idea which a friend of mine came up with while we were talking today: It seems rather strange that the learning curve of weapon skills are the same for a ace as it does for a beginner, surely once you're ace it becomes a lot more difficult to improve and thus you shouldn't get such big increases, say with the training from char to char the difference of the two characters should be divided by 10 and thats the increase gained, so the new chars can train off older ones and be worth while. Also the weapons masters in the shops would be given a value of 100 or 120 weapon skill so it too would slow as you get better, surely you can't learn a set amount of weapons skill in one training? One day you may really be into it and another not, and certain characters would be more willing to learn, perhaps this is where charisma could play a bigger part. > CC> I can see the result of teleport from an update, but I lost a Temple > Quest - thanks to this brilliant idea of only allowing one every two > weeks I have to wait until NEXT turn to try to get one. That is the sort > of info it would be useful to keep a copy of. Why can all updates > automatically process I0, I99, P0 and any Quests offered? PN> I hit this problem in the face today, I had 2 EM recruits both rather good, high 50s and because of the stike the game week had roled on and I could not get them. But the TQ is slightly different, if no one else has asked for a TQ then it may still be on offer, I got a TQ which was 2 turns old as there were few people in town and so no body else bought a TQ, I got it, 540gp for Giant scorpians(2) 4 sectors away. Werewolf 5 secs for 500. Maybe the TQ is still on offer. A way to get a recruit from last turn would be most useful. > CC> No idea. Why, do you have HRP-only alliance? PN> no it isn't, we just like them on a whopping slice of toast. (JPG spots the beginnings of Dwarf throwing, or whatever it was, again.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 03 May 95 10:40:21 MEZ From: CHBRIN5@nyx.uni-konstanz.de KH> If I had read the last three digests before starting Quest a year and a half ago, I wouldn't have started playing at all. Hey guys (and girls) stop whining| Quest is a great game| That's why we are playing it still after years. KH> You are comparing Quest to an ideal play-by-mail game in an ideal world, both of which don't exist. Now lets make some comparisons to other existing pbm games: KH> 1) Price: Quest gives you more results for your money than any other pbm game I know. Do you know what a turn in Legends costs? And KJC is giving away Quest turns cheaper than any other company. For my 25 turns with KJC I just payed 3 German marks per turn (a special offer from KJC) including postage to Germany. Now I play at a German pbm company and I pay 5 marks per turn PLUS 2 marks postage. KH> 2) Features: Quest has more features to explore than any other exploration type game I know. I got bored with Monster Island after less than a year. In Quest I'm still learning new things every turn, although my three groups have 100 turns between them and I have all the information from the digest and the FAQs. KH> 3) Customer Service: KJC is handling thousands of turns every week. No wonder that an error occurs once in a while. Of 25 of my turns, one got lost and I had to ask for a replacement. And none of my 25 x 15 orders got mistyped. Thats not bad. I have had much worse things happen to me in other games, like my input being exchanged with some other guys, so that both of us had completely nonsense turns. In the strategy pbm I play (Austerlitz) I have to send in my turns on disk, because otherwise there are too many typos. KH> 4) Errors and grammer: I'm not a native English speaker, so who am I to judge KJCs grammer? But I do program and I know how difficult it is to make a computer talk sense. Doing tables with a computer is easy, but letting the computer describe something in correct grammer is mighty hard. And there are more errors in a typical Quest digest than in a Quest result sheet. :) (JPG> good job that smiley was there.. grrrr... :-) KH> So, thats all I have to say about that. (quoting Forest Gump) I'm not KJCs PR manager, though they might offer me the job after reading this. :) You try to write a better program than Quest, run a dozen games with thousands of players and then complain about Quest again. Or if you are not a programmer, just show me another game that is better AND better run than Quest. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 03 May 95 04:33:12 EDT From: Steven Fairbrother <100255.130@compuserve.com> SJF> If there is a strongly worded letter of complaint, Kevin usually gets to read it. Chris' letter was so out of the ordinary that even I got to see it and asked if there was anything we could do to recover the printout. Hence we've decided to try and store every quest printout for a couple of weeks after processing. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: maximus@IAEhv.nl (Frank Maximus) Date: Thu, 4 May 1995 01:50:25 +0200 (MET DST) Because someone asked for them, here my list till now. I hope it helps him completing a 'complete' list of ASL's ASL's ALS-level Monster Did it go off? 3 5 Kreshs Yes 3 1 Venus Man Trap Yes 3 1 Venus Man Trap No (Yes... Strange...isn't it? I had enough powders and powers!) 3 1 Kreourse Yes 3 10 Gnolls Yes 3 1 Kreourse Yes 3 3 Wolves Yes 3 4 Kobolds No 3 3 Kobolds No 3 11 Orcs Yes 3 2 Rats No 3 2 Sceletons No 3 2 Zombies No 3 1 Slime Mold No 3 5 Rats No 3 4 Centaurs Yes 3 1 Troll No 2,3 5 Gnolls No 2,3 3 Gnolls No 2,3 2 Gnolls No 2,3 8 Rats No 2,3 8 Orcs Yes 2,3 4 Cavemen Yes 2,3 1 Zombie No 2,3 9 Gnolls No 2,3 2 Zombies No 2,3 1 Green fungy No 2,3 3 Cavemen No !! 2,3 7 Gnolls No 2,3 8 Sceletons No 2,3 6 Gnolls No 2 9 Orcs Yes 3 9 Orcs No !! 2,3 2 Cavemen No 2 6 Orcs Yes 3 6 Orcs No !! 3 5 Orcs No 3 5 Rats No 3 2 Cavemen No 3 5 Gnolls No 3 2 Kobolds No 3 1 Doppleganger No 3 11 Kobolds No 3 8 Orcs No 3 4 Centaurs No !! Success with them... Frank Maximus -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 3 May 1995 14:26:47 +0100 (BST) From: "C.H.E.B." <ctc@coventry.ac.uk> CC> To continue the long-running saga of where's my 100th turn, I received a reply from Kevin Cropper. He's promised trying to get enough space to keep copies of everyone's turns and says that my account has been credited with the turn; I'll let you know when I get my next turn back. Very nice of him, but I'd prefer my turn. Anyway, he's admitted that there is usually a backlog on Mondays/Tuesdays and suggests that they aren't very busy at the end of the week, so turn around times might be better if turns were sent then. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Neil Benson <9365040@mull.sms.ed.ac.uk> Date: Thu, 4 May 1995 19:53:54 +0000 NB> Is it just Scotland or are all the postmen in the UK on strike? Here's how it goes in Edniburgh: Post managers unhappy with two Bank Holiday mondays in a row (May Day and VE Day). So they cancel May Day holiday. The postmen all go on strike. Tuesday, post managers want extra Christmas-like shifts done becuase of backlog; postmen not happy - strike again. Wednesday, it's sunny in Edinburgh so the postmen take another day off. Thursday, it's still sunny and there seems little point going in for only two days this week, take another day off. Tomorrow I think they've organised a trip to Butlins in Ayr while this weather keeps up. Meanwhile the postboxes are all full, no letters are being delivered and I've lost my bloody first half-decent quest ever becuase I'll miss the game week! Am I bitter? No, just glad Paul Noble doesn't live in Edinburgh or he'd get a little upset. NB> Glad you guys are still here though. Saves me having to actually play the game, but still have all the fun! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: roger.littlefair@unn.ac.uk Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 16:08:09 +0100 (BST) New Email. was cnv5@heaton.unn, but is now... roger.littlefair@unn.ac.uk RoJ> Please can you print this to save me telling everyone? JPG> Done, Roger. :-) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- JPG> And that is, I believe, the lot for the day. Thank you for reading (and Chris C, I hope you read it all this time... Steve's mail I mean. :-) All that is left to say, again, is.. Happy Questing people! Oh, and that mage recruits with only a skill of 42 suck. :-( >>-Josh-> "Dreamer... Nothing but a dreamer..." Up