Quest Digest 14/1/95 (54K long) From: ">>-Josh->" <J.P.Gallagher@durham.ac.uk> Date: Sat, 14 Jan 1995 01:20:16 +0000 Here is the Digest again, as sent out to an e-mail list of Quest players semi-regularly. It consists of posts and comments on posts from people on the group, and can be sent to you for just the small price of an e-mail to the above address. Don't miss out on this once-in-a-life-time offer! >>-Josh-> "...All I do is keep the beat, and bad company..." ---------------------====================+===================----------------- JPG> Hello again folks, welcome to another edition. First the usual bumph for those new to the list, and we have quite a few this time (59 people now by my count). JPG> If you want anything sending to everybody on the list, please send the piece just to me and I will include it in the next digest. This stops people getting swamped with e-mail. Mark clearly what is private and what is to appear in the digest... stops embarrassing accidents! JPG> I apologize to all that I didn't get this out earlier; it is twenty to one in the morning and I am paying the price! Right, here we go... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Neil Benson, ex leader of the RKM, wrote: NB> I'm a retired Quest player, having left the game about two years ago. My presence upon the various incarnations of Kharne was quite widespread and infamous at the time. Ever heard of the RKM? NB> I'm considering starting up again, but I would like some info on the various worlds. I used to play in games 1, 2, 4, 5, 8 and 12. I'ld lie to start in a different game this time, but sticking to a ten day turnaround and hopefully avoiding most of the kids now playing. Can you help with this? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frank Maximus wrote: >MJL> Also a comment to HQ-prices. I think their to high. I've played for 20 >turns now and all I managed to gather was about 600 gold, if this also >should cover buing items and hiring more savage swordsmen and mean >mages, this would mean a serious deficit. A price of about 1/2 as much >would still make it difficult to build HQ's, but would make it possible. FM> I'm now at turn 26 of a quest game, and walking with 1900 goldpieces. Totaly I got > 2500 GP now. Just a good hint: Walk into a dungeon and examine EVERYTHING! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Allan Hooper wrote: AH> I'm also someone who cant seem to find a good temple quest - the best I have done or been offered was 400 gp's for an IMP (!?!) which took all of two melee blow and no offinsive magic before he poped his little cloven footed clogs . I dont think Luck effects it that much if at all but then again Luck effects most things so I might be wrong.... AH> In a follow up on my awareness effecting who strike in melee combat I belive that character type makes very little difference on who strikes just the characters weapon skill . For examples when my group was just begining my BT and HM regularly hit just as often as the fighters and in a 10 turn old fight with another group (they tried to steal from me) one of my EM traded blows with a dwarf fighter for 3 consecutive rounds of combat getting himself seriously wounded in the process (however victory was ours as they ran after just four rounds leaving 1D 3SW 5LW to our 1SW 7LW) AH> Finally on really silly things - I believe the first group I ran for 35 odd turns was one BIG series of mistakes . They were *really* crap and would have probably have been beaten by a new group . Main mistakes were that I kept changing weapons on my fighters (clubs , swords , flails , axes , etc ) which ment they had sod all weapon skill (BTW this was before the I99 order) . I recuited totaly useless characters 21SK HF anyone? And didnt rob until turn 30 or so because I thought something really bad would happed if I got caught.... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chris Clarke wrote: > JPG> Now, down to the digest. Firstly, Chris Clarke has sent me her > draft FAQ for Quest. I will include it at the bottom, as it is 36K long > *phew*. Also included, in Appendix A :) is part one of Chris's story... > see what you think. Actually, it's part one of *one of* my stories. JPG> Sorry Chris! DS> Does anyone have any idea how to get themselves goo temple quests. > something to do with charisma or just purely luck? If it is luck, > would luck of Novala improve my chances? CC> I always use a high charisma HP (60+ char). Some times I get 60 gps orcs, others 680 Jackal. > CC> This is going to be for a PC, isn't it? Boo hoo. I used to do my maps on > a spreadsheet, believe it or not. CC> Actually, a friend of mine did an excellent colour map in DPaintIV. JPG> Mine are currently in DPaint, but b&w, using the old map symbols. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Kai Hortmann wrote: >MJL> The program is build after the KISS-method (Keep It Simple Sucker). This >means that I've used character-graphics(quite a job finding a character >which looks just a bit like the terrain-type) for displaying the map. The >screen shows 78*17 locations in color, you can then move around by >using the arrow-keys or by jumping to a specific koordinat or town. The >full map is 255*255 locations and should be sufficiant to map the whole >of Kharne. There is also an overview map, that shows you a loose >picture of the world (mountains, forests, roads, water, towns and >special locations). KH> Did you know that such a program already exists on Compuserve? Someone sent it to me, as I don't have Compuserve access. It maps 200*200 locations and includes a graphical overview map on which you can move blocks. The doc doesn't say anything about shareware, so I guess it is free. KH> About mapping Kharne: Is it generally known that travel costs one gold per space travelled? You can use the information about travel costs in each city to determine the coordinates of the city. You just need two cities with known (relative) coordinates that the unknown city has travel connections to. KH> If travel from city [x/y] costs n gold, then the other city either has a x-coordinate of x+n or x-n or it has a y-coordinate of y+n or y-n. Knowing the approximate coordinates from the little overview map helps. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Neil Benson (after I sent the official alliances stuff through): NB> The upcoming changes to the game sound very interesting. Although, I must say that KJC were planning these things over two or three years ago. It's good to see that progress is being made, however slow. NB> I'ld love to participate more in the mailing list and get really involved, but until I get back in the game, I think I'd better just listen in for a while. But if anyone wants help with alliances then I'd be only glad to help. I still maintain that the RKM was the biggest and most efficiently run alliance in any game. It wasn't always the most popular, but that was primarily because the warmongering parties who ran the miliatry side of things had the biggest numbers of kills. My own group in game 5, were responsible for over 20 character deaths, not including magical ones. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Chris Clarke in reply to a letter from Allan Hooper: > AH> First when your recruit a new fighter cast strength to get his skill up *then* buy him the weapon this gives newly recruited fighters 60-70 weapon skill to begin with. CC> *EXCELLENT* this didn't even *occur* to me. I will put it in the next copy of the FAQ, attibuted to your good-self. Thank you. > AH> I would also could not stress enough the importance of contact with other players - my oldest group only found mage skill after 8 cities , numerous towns and villages and !*80 turns*!. I now know of at least four other locations that sell it just by asking another player, if only....... CC> Absolutely. I had zero information in G1 and frankly those two groups were a disaster. In a fight with my youngest group at turn 25, they would have lost, because my subsequent groups had map and shoplist info as well as the spell-list. > AH> With monster statistics the easiest way would to be get the Asl level > required to cast at it. If people sent details of what they fought, > their Asl and if they cast spells or not we could get a rough toughness > rating for monsters . CC> Again an excellent idea - I'm forwarding this to Josh and I hope that he will put this part of your mail into the next Digest, so everyone on the list will help. JPG> I did do! Plus the earlier ideas which were so cool I thought they ought to go in! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Chris Dickson wrote: > EL> I was wondering how my party is doing, so I decided to send you some > stats: (munch) > EL> So, how am I doing so far? What aspects of my party should be > improved? I am thinking about adding a HP or DP. > How far down a dungeon can I go with this party? CD> Very, very respectably. Certainly there won't be many if any parties that will be able to push you around, and if as I suspect you have been playing more or less since PBM Express started offering Quest then you may be one of the more powerful parties in the game. I'm sure you'll be one of the best informed parties at least! As to improving your party, this depends on how you want to play the game. You could get a load more elven mages, train them up to high skill, learn lots of lovely death spells and go PC killing. Ditto you could get a few more priests and rank Call Monster, Ythcal's Touch and so forth and go and thug things. Or spend time working on your thief and make a mint. I don't think you'll have too many problems in the first few levels (perhaps the first 6 or so?) - the problem is finding one with that many levels! I would get up to 15 characters though just in case you lose 1 or 2 down there. > DS> Does anyone have any idea how to get themselves goo temple quests. CD> Yes, Steven Fairbrother. (sorry!) > My team in game 14 (61 turns c. 7000 exp) has never been offered a > quest worth more than 300 gold whilst my team in game 16 (16 turns > 2400 exp) was offered a blinding quest to kill a dragon!!! Is it > something to do with charisma or just purely luck? If it is luck, > would luck of Novala improve my chances? CD> Theories I've heard include amount of experience in the party, strength of religious affiliation, number of TQs recently performed and hence "reputation" and the charisma of your first character (first as in character number 1). CD> I believe all these things may help but the thing is essentially luck-based. One of my mates once had five successive TQs worth an average of over 600x15 - I wouldn't mess with him! The quality of the monster you have to face is also a factor but often you get easy prey for big money or an impossible task for low pay. I would be prepared to believe in a degree of correlation between all these things and payoff but there's no easy way to get consistently good TQs. Anyone who found/knows one is a megastar. I've heard someone claim to have a 1260 per character TQ, by the way, but I'm sceptical. I don't think adequate research has been done into the effectiveness of 702. CD> I may get crucified or at least flamed for this but I feel that the amount of money you can get for a good temple quest is disproportionate to the amount of effort you have to put in... and I would even go so far as to support a slight toning down, perhaps lowering the limit to 500 GP a head. It's turned out that you can by and large judge how good a party is by how many TQs they've done and not a lot else. To get a good party in Quest, all you have to do is lots of Temple Quests. The turns do get a bit boring now and again though. CD> What does anyone know about Library Quests? They seem to be a LOT of travel, quite a bit of trial and error (finding the exact location of a geographical entity) and relatively meanly paid (the only pay I've ever heard of was 424 per head). For the amount of time one would take you could do at least half a dozen TQs, and possibly earn upwards of 50,000 GPs... JPG> Approach it from another angle. It was a looong time before I started doing Temple Quests, and I was getting nowhere fast. Now I am catching up. A general balancing is needed. The price for skins going up has helped matters, but spell components need bringing down I think, especially in Game 11 where they are still at the phenomenally high costs! CD> I was offered another sort of quest not so long ago, I had to go to another settlement and cast Ritual on a building. (I knew the spell had to have a use!) I've accepted it but it's not particularly well paid, 110 GP per PC or 110 GP total or something. Anyone know anything about these? > > RF> KJC made it lkie this so as to prevent people from starting several > > parties and then simply transfering the money to their original one... > > BUT! I too think bank transfers should be allowable.It could be done that > > aftera certain number of turns, the possibility of using bank transfers > > would be granted to parties, as then, it would have been prooved that the > > refered party was here to play...15 turns would be a reasonable time... CD> Nice idea. One of the best things about It's A Crime! is that new orders come into availability every few turns. This would be ideal. However I would suggest 20 instead of 15 to dispel all thoughts of possible rule-bending. > MLJ> I read your comment about scanning maps and can see your problem, > but it would be some serious business to scan a map. Scanning the map > to a picture-file isn't a problem, but converting the picture to the codes I > use for mapping the terrain-types would be a major one !!! This would > mean some nasty graphic-recognition-rutines (probably Neural Network > or some other kind of Mumbo-Jumbo) and is just to much work at the > moment. maybe later??? CD> Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps... with the electronic versions of Quest when the KJC BBS gets underway, there could be some sort of groovy auto-mapper, Steve? > MJL> The program is build after the KISS-method (Keep It Simple Sucker). This > means that I've used character-graphics(quite a job finding a character > which looks just a bit like the terrain-type) for displaying the map. The > screen shows 78*17 locations in color, you can then move around by > using the arrow-keys or by jumping to a specific koordinat or town. The > full map is 255*255 locations and should be sufficiant to map the whole > of Kharne. There is also an overview map, that shows you a loose > picture of the world (mountains, forests, roads, water, towns and > special locations). CD> Sounds brilliant but 2 points; some Quest players are colour-blind. I've seen a map done where different colours represented different terrain types done by a colour-blind person. It was very hard for a non-colour-blind person to tell the difference between the colours he had chosen. (Apologies if I've offended anyone colour-blind!) Secondly it is rumoured (!) that the big map of Kharne is only actually 200 squares by 200. JPG> It is. I measured it. > MJL> When adding a new location you type a number-code symbolizing the > terrain, Towns and special locations can also be named. > I've just added a feature to make block-fills, so this should help on filling > in the map. I've also planned making a drawing mode where you paint > the map with a selected terrain-type and a function to move blocks of > the map around. The last is for fitting the map-pieces together. Also a > printing function hopefully, though this is tricky. The program is working > at the moment, but aren't user-friendly, in fact it isn't friendly at all. I'm a > bit busy at work at the moment, but I hope to be finished with the first > version of the program at the middle of february. CD> It sounds wonderful. Best of luck with it, and thanks for making the effort. You say that you'll post it to the group... what will you do about copyright restrictions? There was a Quest mapper advertised in the back of a First Class not so long ago but at quite a price. I imagine that it was not very successful. Several people have tried Quest mappers. Perhaps KJC might consider endorsing one or more that people have written? > AH> Right I must admit that I havent read all that much about the official > alliances but 50,000 really isnt that much . After all 5000 gps isnt all > that hard to come by and most alliance will have more than 10 members - but > then again they may not all want to give lots of money to the alliance > but thats when loyalty comes in . As for existing alliances entering for > cheaper than new allainces (I dont know how much this fee is - how much > is it?) I think this would be unfair to the new allaince as the > established ones will probably have more members capable of raising lots > of cash . Not to mention they will still have the respect and > reputation they have gained over time . CD> Here comes my diatribe on alliances. I'm probably going to get roasted alive for the following opinions (not Oxford University's, by the way!) but here goes... CD> Alliance leadership should not be easily available to every party, it should be a privilege available only to a chosen few. (Hmmm....) Game 14 has the problem of (what seem to be!) bad alliances. Not evil, just bad; some alliances put messages in successive Game Newsletters, others keep sending in newspaper adverts, but they have a bad reputation for not being an active alliance; the leader may never/rarely write to members, the leaders are unknowledgeable, unhelpful or rude. Furthermore there seem to be alliances that exist... but their existence has no point, because they perform nothing as an alliance and have no significant effect on world affairs, so to speak. Several alliances close down, or "never really start", and just peter out without telling anyone. Not that I'm discriminating against small, or beginning alliances, but I just do not like go-nowhere, do-nothing ones. It is also very difficult to tell how good an alliance is without actually being a member. I believe Game 15 seems to have far less problems... this may be due to it being younger, or having more active players, or a neutral game newsletter editor, or just longer deadlines. CD> Also people seem to vastly overestimate the level of knowledge of the "average player". I'd say even someone who's only been on the list for a couple of weeks knows more than perhaps 50% of alliance leaders. Anyone who reads Chris Clarke's FAQ is at least at the median of Quest knowledge and probably in the top 15%. I don't claim to be a polymath on Quest, merely an interested player always keen to learn more. Loads of the fun nowadays is discovering new things about the game... or its players! CD> With this in mind I would restrict starting new alliances to parties with at least 50 turns' experience and even more than 30,000 GP in the bank. I do not see the logic of a second and subsequent HQ costing more than the initial one, as there are surely more functions and duties that the party's characters would have to perform when they're setting up their first HQ? Any party 50 turns old and with 50,000 GPs in the bank is knowledgeable enough to be the leader of a good, important and worthwhile alliance. Now this also means that if you're starting up a new party you have to do a HECK of a load of work to get to alliance-leader status but this is no bad thing; any party who knows what they're doing can easily earn a few thousand GP per turn if they try hard enough. If you try hard and make a concerted enough effort then you will get the money together. JPG> This would give players at least one long term aim in the game, up until turn 50; to get 50,000 gp. For other ideas and improvements, see Stefan's post below. CD> The other thing to note is who says that the alliance leader has to raise all the funds himself? As far as I can tell the alliance system has been designed that alliance leaders will have to rely upon their allies lending or donating funds for the alliance to be successful, not only at the start, but throughout the alliance's life. I'll be interested to see when alliances start to charge for membership... and what members have to say about it... CD> It is a little tough on players in new games which have not been running 50 turns yet I do admit but again if I can use an It's A Crime! allegory, it's a bit like week 21 when the Mob Boss rules come in and the game takes on a completely different flavour. Similarly I don't propose reductions for existing alliances, if an alliance is worth its salt then it'll be able to come up with the cash. If it can't then it shouldn't be allowed official status. This may seem awfully serious - note, this is from the perspective of someone who will never run their own alliance but is lucky enough to have knowledgeable friends who let them know of the trials and tribulations - and my party is by no means good enough to waltz into the elite in one turn. It's just my 2 GP worth. (Been waiting weeks to use that!) > Josh talking about sillies CD> One silly mistake I make time after time is missing settlements with wilderness movement orders, mainly because I don't read my turns and maps carefully enough and I don't keep my own maps. It can get particularly annoying when a load of Buy and Sell and Join orders all go down the pan. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- JPG> Now, Stefan's post of ideas. Long, but worth reading... I will leave out all the SA's in front of the paragraphs. ************************************************************* * The future of Quest? * * Critisism and ideas of Stefan Andersson * * and the Eight Gods alliance of Quest game 6. * ************************************************************* Written on the 11th of January 1995 The idea to write this kind of article came up one day when I asked myself what Quest was, is and can be. Quest is a very fun play by mail game well worth the money, but how can it be that fun? What is it in fact that makes it the best PBM and worth all the time we players lay down on it? It's hard to say, but for some it is the possibility to meet other people, to write to them and discuss not only Quest, but also other hobbies related to this (roleplaying games, computer games etc.). But what about the game, then? What is in fact the meaning with playing Quest? It's sad to say, but as it is now it has become a game of mostly a lot of fighting, fighting and fighting. Fighting against what, why and how? It could be so much more than this, with a little more effort from the programmers, who according to the KJC flyer, continuesly improve the game and make changes. Most of us know by now how much work Steven does on the Official alliances implemention, and that is really great (Especially as I am the leader of a big alliance...). But soon, when more and more people become aware of the fact that Quest just is a game of fighting and becoming the most mighty group people will quit playing, and the number of players will drop drastically. Groups will soon reach a point when the roof is reached, when there are no more challenges. I have for example now a mage ready for Total Death, and to get a mage to this stage is probably the main goal for the mages. Players will quit, and player groups will be a rarer sight on Kharne and the game will slowly dieee... This is a dark scenario, but it might be true. But it's not to late yet to do something to prevent this. Not at all! It is now we have to make the game more of a roleplaying game and to give these 'completed' groups new goals and challenges! There must be more opportunities than improving your group stats. Now some of you say that you can do dungeon explorations, quests and fight monsters. But right now all this in the end is a matter of getting money and experience and get your group better. What can be done to make the game more attractive, also for the old players which have played Quest for some years now? Much, I say. There are many things which are impossible to implement in a computer moderated game, but much can still be done, without THAT much programming work. To start with, I include parts of an article written by a good friend and ally of mine, Harald Riegler, Austria: _______________________________________________________________ Some days ago I had a long conversation with Harald Hocht and a friend (also game 6 player) where we talked about our motivations for continuing Quest. The main concern turned out to be the lack of roleplaying demands. Thus I wrote a list showing my wishes and ideas for the future. At first some comments about recent improvements: - New print style: Very Good! - New map: Symbols good, grid horrible! - Rumours: Idea very good, but only real rumours should be accepted. - Party Profile and shield emblem: Very Good! Wantlist: - Horses (hopefully soon available). - More original quests (Search for ancient weapons and artifacts taking you all over Kharne). - Ruins, castles, forgotten temples of ancient gods. - A new god incl new spells (A pantheon isn't peaceful forever). - Useful items (retrieved by a quest, or as a payment for a quest). - Religious quests (Fulfillment bringing you a lot closer to your god). - More NPC's (Friendly and hostile). I hope that this will help to improve quest in the future. _______________________________________________________________ ...many thoughtful ideas there. I will come back to my comments and ideas later. I continue with another article I have received from one of my alliance members, Michael Nielsen: _______________________________________________________________ Thoughts about Quest The year 1994 is nearly at its end, so it is time to look back at the year and see what improvements KJC Games have made to the Quest game during the year. My personal opinion is that the improvements are next to none. They introduced new terrain symbols, which look just as they were taken from the maps of Warlord. That can hardly be called a major improvement to the game, in fact ,many prefer the old map symbols instead of the new ones. They introduced the group description to the game, I must admit that I like this improvement. It is good to get a description of the groups you meet instead of just their group name, number and how many they are. But unfortunately many groups have not yet made a group desription. But the above mentioned improvements, the rumour card and the powder pack is the only improvements done to the game during the last year. KJC Games claims they have used a lot of time on the accounts and to improve some of the other games, but what about us, the players of the Quest games? KJC are now running nothing less than 17 games of Quest, which means that there are more than 10000 positions in Quest up and running. I think it is time that KJC Games begin to improve the gameplay in the current games instead of adding more and more new games. I want to see new improvements, such as the horses and the official alliances. I want to see KJC adjust the faults there are in the current gameplay. Is there anyone out there who has been able to fire a crossbow during a battle in a dungeon??? Another fault which Stefan discovered when he tried to kill the last member of the Twilight of the Gods. How can a weak elven mage run away from a battle, carrying the equipment of 10-12 deceased group members (13... -Stefan)? It is simply not logical. It says on page 15, line 19 that a group retreating from battle will often drop some of the equipment, but has anyone experienced this except when the group retreating also lost one or more members? I think it would be a good idea if we all looked at the faults and problems in the game of Quest and wrote a letter to KJC Games, asking them to correct these problems. One letter alone can't impress them, but if several Quest-players began to write asking them to correct the problems and make the promised improvements, we have a chance that they will finally begin to do something. _______________________________________________________ ...Much critisism there! But it was very constructive critisism I think, with many thoughtful points. After looking through my old alliance newsletters where we have had some discussions about Quest, I have the following ideas to put forward (Note that they are not only by me): The following points are to improve the balance of the game and to make the game more 'playable', improving the rules. * A FLEE-FACTOR LIMIT TO BE ABLE TO ENGAGE OTHER GROUPS IN COMBAT. Right now there are many fights, and the most funny is to fight group to group on fair and rather equal terms. But then there are these groups who destroy everything by only aming at one thing - to terminate the opposite group as quickly as possible. I have the opinion, and I think many other fantasy-fans share it, that on the battlefield a strong fighter-based group should be the mightiest. Of course they can need some help and assistance from mages and the like, but it shall NOT be as now, when the mightiest and most feared group is the one with a lot of mages (10 out of 15) who can totally destroy and kill another group with their spells and high skills in missile weapons. The tactics used are a very low flee factor and a lot of engage orders. No melee fight is started but the opposite group is effectively killed by the spells and missiles. This must be stopped! It should not be done by taking away the death-spells, then the mages would loose their might and they wouldn't be as useful in a group as now. One way would be to set a limit of what the flee factor must be to engage another group into combat. 30% would be a good value. If you have lower than this, a fight would simply not occur, no spells cast and no missiles fired. Now the mage-group must re-consider an attack on the melee-based group. What happens if they stand the magic and missiles, they might have good armours and spell- protection, and it goes as far as to melee fight? What will this group of a lot of wimps have to put up against these mighty warriors? * BETTER STARTING CONDITIONS FOR NEW GROUPS IN OLD GAMES. New groups in old games should get a larger amount of cash from the start to quicker become stronger. Maybe the recruits should get a starting experience of 100-200 xp per member? I don't think older groups would complain too much, since the worst thing that can happen is that my mighty 100-turns group happen to get into fight with a beginner group and kill some of the members, leading to the other player quit playing. Unfortunately this might lead to misuse in the meaning that players start up new groups and strip them of the money and items and give it to their older group. Either this should be solved so that a player only can START UP three groups in a game, or the extra-money part is skipped and the group only gets some extra experience to faster be able to do temple quests. * SEPARATE SPELL RANKINGS AND ASLs FOR MONSTER- AND PLAYER- GROUPS. The mages and priests should have two separate spell-rankings and ASL's. Then they can decide an ASL and ranking for player groups and one for monsters. As it is now mages risk to use up their powers on small creatures before they meet a player- group. It is a big difference between what you want to use against monsters and player-groups... * SPECIFIC ATTITUDES MUST OVERRIDE EVERYTHING ELSE. The way the attitudes work right now must be changed (and will be so with the official alliances introduction, but how?). The specific attitudes you can set against 8 targets must override EVERYTHING else. If you specifically say that you want to attack a group if you meet them, there shouldn't be a higher force preventing you from attacking them because you happen to have let the alignment float too close to the same god they follows. This is silly! There are groups who like to play without caring about the religions and alignment, and that Sundonak should stop two of his followers to fight an honourable fight for glory is just inacceptable. There is just a tiny part of the groups that FANATICALLY follows a god (and having +22 alignment towards Sundonak is not to fanatically follow him, but a result of a lot of fights...). * A FOLLOW ROAD ORDER. There should be an option to follow a road in a given direction without knowing every exact bend and how the road looks like some squares ahead. I have heard rumours about such a routine in Monster Island and I have also heard that it would be too difficult to program such an order, but I don't see the big problem. It shouldn't be too difficult to work out a code for this. * RECOVERING FROM ENERGY LOSS TAKES TOO LONG! The procedure of recovering from energy-loss is too slow! If you happen to have walked one day with too much load, it won't take weeks to recover! Just by making a mistake on a turn, entering wilderness after getting a big money-reward, you ruin several turns after that because you can't move as fast as you need. This is just a trifle and only annoying, either the weight of items and money should be reduced or the recovering time should be much shorter. 'Unfortunately I haven't got a car, so every time I have been at the shop buying food and have to carry all the bags home by myself I have to rest for about a week before my legs feel fresh again...' It just doesn't make sense! The following points are to improve the roleplaying aspects of the game, giving the groups more goals and to improve the fantasy athmosphere. Some ideas might require a lot of programming, some less, but they are not impossible to implement. * ALIGNED SETTLEMENTS. Cities could be aligned. There could be good, neutral and evil settlements. The neutral city would be as now, the good ones would not have any evil temples and robberies and groupfights would be harder punished than just throw the group out of town. Evil cities would be a bit like pirate towns with no law at all. No punishment for the thieves and groupfights would be a normal sight and an attractive spectacle for the citizens. In evil cities the engage order should work fine and spellcasting should be allowed. A heaven for fighting groups! The 20 cities of Kharne would be split like 5 good, 5 evil and 10 neutral cities, and new groups should always start in one of the neutral cities (and always in a city and not in a town). Another alternative is to keep the 20 cities as they are and turn 10 of the worthless villages into aligned cities. * BIGGER PRICE-VARIATION IN THE ALIGNED CITIES. The prices of the items on sale in the cities should vary more than now, so a group could earn a living on being merchants. One city could be extremely cheap at weapons while another could be expensive and so on. It should vary so much in prices that a group could consider buying/selling items to get money. These big variations in prices could be only in the aligned cities so all new groups have the same starting conditions. This would also make the merchant-journeys more hazardous and dangerous... * CHARACTER TRAINING BETWEEN GROUPS, MORE EFFECTIVE TRAINING. Groups should be able to train eachothers characters. In this way a group could travel around selling their services much cheaper than the temples and combat schools. The two groups should be in the same town or wilderness square to be able to train. The format could be: 'T(rain other group) (Teacher character's number) (Other group's number) (Character in the other group to train)'. The weapon skill that should be trained is the weapon the teacher has equipped. If the trainer have both a melee weapon and a missile weapon he will use the melee weapon. The trained character must also have this type of weapon equipped, and 100 xp will be used up BY THE CHARACTER THAT IS TRAINED. The skill increase could be the difference in skill divided by 10 rounded up, and maybe the trainer should get some experience by the training session. The difference in skill. This procedure should also work good in your own group. The increase as it is now is too small to make it worth using up the experience on training between two members of the same group, but with the system described here, an ace-fighter with weaponskill 97 would give a so so-fighter with weaponskill 36 an increase of (97-36=61. 61/10=6,1 rounded up gives us an increase of 7 points). And suddenly training with your companions is an interesting opportunity... * ANCIENT MAGICAL ARTIFACTS, GUARDED BY MIGHTY GUARDIANS. Some special magical artifacts should be designed and added to all the games. They should have individual names and own blurbs. They should be carefully put out on Kharne by the programmer (Steven or Kevin...). In dungeons, ruins, castles, and such places. They could be found through pure luck, or by getting a HIGH-level quest from a temple. These artifacts should be guarded by a 'guardian', a monster so mighty that there are some requirements to even dare attacking it. A minimum of 80-100 turns played, and maybe also some other limits, as at least 1000x(number of members) unused xp in the group. This limits should not only be a requirement to attack the guardian, but also to be offered these high-level quests from the temple. When a group is ready the temples will begin to offer these quests on the shop-printouts for this group. The artifacts could be extremely good weapons, armours, a magical book that halves the casting cost of spells, A flying carpet to give a group a faster way of moving in the wilderness, and item that automatically cast a Map Wilderness spell (level 2?) at the end of the turn, an item that constantly give the group +10 on the toughness when they possess the item. It's only the imagination that sets the limit for what the items could be. When such a great artifact is found, a rumour will automatically appear in the news-papers you can buy in towns saying that for example 'The Sons Of Twilight (1677) have found the Demonslayer'. This will lead to a lot of false rumours put in by players about mystical items, but there will also be the real revelation about who actually has found such an artifact... The quests for these artifacts can be given to at most 10 groups at a time, and it will only be they who know if the item exist when it is rumoured in the newspapers. It would be a great competition between the groups who are on the quest. This will give old groups new goals and when a item is found, they have to watch their backs to not loose it against all the hungry groups who are after them... * MORE MONSTERS, MONSTER PRIESTS, MIXED MONSTER GROUPS. More monsters should be invented (this was rumoured to be on it's way, but have we seen it...?). Groups of monster-priests, casting miracles? Mixed monster groups with several monster classes. * PRAYING IN TEMPLES SHOULD BE MUCH MORE EFFECTIVE. Praying in temples (paying tithes) should give the group doing it a guarantee of 1 skill point raised and if the alignment is strong towards the god the temple represents the increase can be 2 points at a turn. It must be more effective praying at temples than in the wilderness. * HARDER PUNISHMENT FOR THIEVES. Robberies... The sneaky thieves must be harder punished than now, when the group is thrown out of town and can re-enter at the same turn. Either they will be forbidden entrance in the town for, let's say three turns, or the thief might be put into jail and the group must do an unpaid quest to release him. If they refuse to take on the quest at the turn after, the thief will be killed and gone forever. * NEW SPELLS. There were rumoured (from Kevins mouth) that more spells were on the way and that they should have individual numbers for the different games. Was this just rumours...? Could be fun indeed with some new spells: 'Force fight' (Forces the enemy to fight some melee rounds), 'Light' (Works as a torch), 'Fast feet 1, 2, 3' (raise the number of movement points by 50, 100 and 150%) are just some ideas. * HORSES RAISING YOUR MOVEMENT POINTS. Horses should definitively be invented! Why does this small improvement take such long time? They could double or triple the movement points, and they should dissappear when the group enters a dungeon. * AN ISLAND FOR HIGH-LEVEL GROUPS. A 'change world' spell should NOT be invented. To let groups travel between the games would destroy the whole balance and kill some of the games. A better thing is the island-idea someone came up with. An island which only can be reached by the more experienced groups with one big city (with great recruits!) and a lot of VERY nasty creatures in the wilderness. There should also be a mega-dungeon, bigger than all the dungeons in the normal Kharne. There should only be one negative thing... Only ten of the members of the group will survive the journey from the island... If the group has more they will have to expell some of them. But the super-recruits in the city of the island might make it worth the expelling... * GROUPS SHOULD BE ABLE TO LEAVE SHORT MESSAGES. Make it possible to leave messages a little here and there, in wilderness and in dungeons to help or confuse other groups... * MAKE DUNGEONS MORE MYSTICAL. Make dungeons more interesting. I have explored a 6-level dungeon, and I did not find anything special but gold, items and gems. There were far too little monsters and there would be nice with levels not reachable by jaunting. To reach them you must find the special key that opens up that door blocking your way to the stairway, or mention the answer on the riddle spoken, by a new order. And finally some comments and questions about the official alliances idea as it was introduced in the e-mail of -94, and note that I haven't the mail here so some of the questions might be answered if I only should have read the mail more toroughly...: * A SEPARATE ALLIANCE TURN-CARD. Will the alliance head be forced to use his own orders to do alliance orders, or will he get a special turncard with his turn? If he must use his own orders, this will effectively take away his group from the game... * IMPOSSIBLE TO ROB HQ, OR NEW PUNISHMENT FOR THIEVES. If the alliance HQ could be robbed, the way the thieves are punished must be changed. If the thieveing group doesn't risk to loose anything, there will only be one big looser - the alliance. Groups could do robberies, robberies and a lot of more robberies and succeed some times, but when they fail, what happens then? As it is now, the alliance wouldn't get anything out of it... * LOWER PRICES ON EXTRA HQ AND SERVICES. The large amount of 30000 gold for the HQ might be acceptable, but paying as much as 50000 to set up another HQ in another town is ridicilous. The prices for getting and maintain the services are a bit high too, only the really big alliances, with A LOT of groups in the town MIGHT get a positive result at the end of the turns. Someone mentioned that it would be to easy to set up new HQ if it was cheaper and that the cities of Kharne would get to many new shops, but I don't think I agree with this. I guess it would be ideal to have 4 HQs in the four corners of Kharne and I guess the alliance doesn't just want to put up a HQ, but also be able to offer some kind of services? They cost a lot too... * ALLIANCES WITHOUT HEADQUARTERS. I think you should be able to set up an alliance without paying any money. Then you won't have all the nice things an alliance with a HQ has, but you should be able to tell the program who's your members, so no fights can be fought between them. We are entering a time of much more groups with the nasty spells (Death-spells, disintegrating spells and so on...) and an alliance can't, as before, afford accidental fights if some of the members dies each time. An alternative is to take away the limit that is to the specific attitudes (maximum 8 attitudes), or raise it to 100 making it possible to set a friendly attitude to all your alliance friends. ...and that should make it for this time. I hope I didn't waste your time and that you found something interesting in this article. It should have been distributed to the Quest-players on the mailing list including Steven and Kevin, so I hope many reactions will come on this and that KJC take us seriously when we suggest improvements to the game. It's about 25 people positive to the ideas in this article (The Eight Gods alliance...), and I bet many of you agree on the points... You might think that many of the ideas I put forward only benefits the old and experienced groups, and that might be true in some cases, but it is we who need motivation for continued play. I have played Quest for four years now, and I lead one of the biggest alliances in game 6, I can say we are the biggest. Some of the players in my alliance (there are around 25 players with over 40 groups) only continues play for the fun of the alliance and the alliance newsletter. If I would quit, some of my members would follow me, and some of the alliances in the game would also quit, because there would not be this big alliance to challenge any more. With this I say that it is we old players who are the most important for Quest. If one newcomer would quit, it would mean a loss of one group, but if an old and well-known player took his groups out of the game and quit it would lead to a loss of more positions. It's about time we get some kind of reward for our playing. New groups already have a good motivation for playing - getting experience to be able to take on temple quests, trying a dungeon, learn spells etc etc. But they will also come to a point when they possess all the monster blurbs. They possess all the spell blurbs. They have a complete spell-list. They have most of Kharne mapped. They have a skill 99 thief. They have a mage with Total Death. All their fighters are aces at their weapons. A fight with another group would guarantee some deaths. Then there should be more options, only available when you are at this stage (like the island-idea and the artifact-quests mentioned above). It can't be the idea you should quit Quest at this stage!?! IF that would be the case, you play for 3-4 years then there are nothing to do, and KJC don't intend to give you any options, it would be very sad, and KJC wouldn't be especially popular... But as I said in the beginning, there is much to do to motivate us old players to continue! And my experience is that KJC DO listen to our ideas, it's just a pity it takes faaar to looong to implement the ideas. I am studying computer science at the University myself and know there isn't too much work needed for many of the ideas. NOW I will quit! (Quit writing that is, not quit playing Quest. I will probably do it some more turns... And don't think I think Quest is a bad game! I just want something to happen! I want motivation for another four years of play!) Stefan Andersson Newsletter editor of game 6 (The Demon by the Campfire) Leader of the Eight Gods alliance of game 6 Player of the following groups: Sons of Twilight (1677) -G6 Twilight Crusaders (1887) -G6 Souls Of Pain (1838) -G15 Lords of Darkness (1627) -Crasimoff E-Mail: t94stean@und.ida.liu.se Snail-Mail: Stiglotsgatan 24, 2tr 582 39 Linkoping Sweden PS: Today (12 January), when I after my exam at school went to check my E-Mail, I had amongst other letters received one from Harald Hocht, a game 6 player who have been in the game for as long as I and also a member of my alliance. He should put his group on holiday now, for about half a year, as he thought that KJC don't do anything to improve Quest. He was tired of all the promises and no action. Exactly what my article is about... *********************** THE TOTAL END ************************ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ JPG> Thank you to those who have read this far. I realise it is a lot of material to wade through, but if you have the time, it is definitely worth it. JPG> Steve (of the Quest programmer variety), I hope you have read these ideas too. I happen to be very much in agreement with much of what has been said above, although I am not ready to quit the game. The alliances will be a wonderful addition, but introducing the other ideas would keep the game one step ahead. JPG> I now have a suggestion that I voiced before, that may need some criticising, I don't know. Quest players would enjoy more complex quests and characters. How about letting some of the players write NPC's, their dungeons and motives, or blurb behind an item/spell/quest and then let KJC use this pre-created information, or the best of it, in the games. This saves anyone at KJC having to be creative 24 hours *when* more complex and plot-oriented quests are introduced, and gives the players extra involvement in the game. The player created info could be used only in games that the player isn't present in. JPG> This is a generalisation of my earlier idea that those who could program in the same language as Quest is written in (which is?) could be given a programming guide and be allowed to write modules for inspection and inclusion in the game, at KJC's whim. I would still like to see this, but I can understand the technical difficulties behind it. JPG> One last comment; I thought Chris's FAQ was very good, definitely something I would have liked to have around (together with a spell list) near the beginning of the game. I was still picking up tips when I read it. For those who know my group stats though, you'll know why that is! JPG> You may be glad to hear that that's it. It is now 1.15 am and I'm off to bed. Thank you to all who have contributed to this issue, and, of course, happy questing! >>-Josh-> "...All I do is keep the beat, and bad company..." <yawn> Up