Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-26553378-20171110211534

Intro
Currently the extant of quests is roughly this:

"I don't like them dirty commie- er... orcs, go kill 'em for me!"

"I'm hosting a party, and I'm lazy, but the baker is too expensive, so you should make me some " alternatively there's the three stinking days quote stuck in which is entertaining.

These really don't provide much immersal for the roleplay aspect of the game. I have some ideas to fix this, but first I think that I should point out that if they don't already trolls should have a mini-quest line that's something like "I've had nothing but mutton yesterday, mutton today, and probably mutton tomorrow, get me better food" now, I'll admit, that's not good, however, get the quote right, and add a request portion, and I think it would give a little smile to players.

Now on to the true suggestion. This would of course be toggleable (serverside) in the config files under a name such as "Improved Quests"

Raiding farms
Orcs did this all the time, as did human soldiers, and probably others. The thing is, no-one ever liked this, even if the troops were on their side. My proposal is that every so often farms should be raided by enemy units. In the case of orcish farms, the slaves would be "liberated" (essentially meaning captured then despawned) by good troops, and the slavemaster would be cursing them for stealing his livelyhood, while in manish/hobbit farms they would be complaining about the terrible orcs attacking them, and stealing their food. Either way the slavemaster/farmowner would then request that the player defend their farm.

If the player denies the quest... oh, well. The raiders would still be there, and attack the player if they get too close. If they accept they would then be obligated to attack the raiders. Either way the raiders would steal crops (similar to bunnies) and slaves until all of the desired "resource" is taken, or until they have taken large enough losses to scare them off. You would not need to kill them all, however some factions would require more losses than others. think spartan troops vs athenian troops.

When the troops flee the quest will complete, and when you turn in the quest it will give rewards based on how successful the attack was. (scan for crop blocks/slaves beforehand, then again afterwards, it could be a little off, but it should be accurate enough)

if the raiders had success then:

Complete - The farm owner would insult you, there would be no negative effect beyond that though.

High - comment on at least they have enough to plant again in the spring, or at least a few slaves are left over. this would return the rewards of a little higher than a kill 30 quest, but with no coins.

Medium - "You've spared me from some real trouble, many thanks ", or something similar. You would gain a little more align than the High rewards, but would also get some coins

Low - "You are truly a great defender of the people", this would gain a large amount of alignment, some food based on what the farmer is growing, and a high amount of coins.

Raiding Them Yerself
Now that you get payed to save the poor farmers from tormenting raiders, it doesn't make much sense that you can simply collect bonus spoils from the farm. Instead what should happen when you take crops is a counter goes up, when this counter hits 4 or so you lose alignment, and it resets. However if it is really that tantalizing you would be able to bulk buy their growing crop from them, and they would send out a farmhand to harvest it for you (leaving the crop drop on the ground, and possibly extra seeds)

Siege
Now for the sieging of cities. Ever heard the saying "rape and loot and pillage", well, it was an actual military tactic... well, the first part is just them being jerks, mostly, it is actually a genocide tactic... anyway, the idea is that as an army passes through an area they attack small cities and villages, stealing crops, livestock, weaponry, and other resources, leaving the populace to die and rot of starvation, or more commonly killing them all on the spot. There was an ancient empire that did this, believe it was the ottoman, maybe something else. Anyway, when they stopped conquering, their empire began to collapse because that was their main source of income.

Ok, now that the explanation type bit is done, the actual idea. In a city or village there would be a small chance of it being besieged. 3-7 (or even more for larger cities) invasions would spawn outside the wall. the troops would be configured to "raze (note, it is changed, do not worry), loot, and pillage" Their goal would be to seek out valuables, and any trained soldiers first, then kill any normal units that put up a resistance, after they emptied every chest that is within reach, and taken every valuable block and goblet in sight. When they are done with all this they will light fires on wood/thatch blocks in the city, and if rhunic, light khamuls fire as well.

Yeah, the city will die if it doesn't have a decent army garrisoned. This is where you come in. every single NPC in the village would be giving a single quest: To save the village, and rid them of the invading army. This quest would almost certainly require reinforcements, whether its a group of buds also getting in on the quest, or a hired army being dragged into this. battle commences, you fight for your life, and more importantly for a crap ton of alignme- er... the lives of the towns people.

You duke it out with the invading forces, when there are only like 5 guys left... or the town has turned into nero's heaven (if you don't get the reference look up "Emperor nero, human torches") After this is done, either everyone's dead, or you can go get some rewards, these are on the same "success of the enemy" scale as before:

Complete - ha, ha, you're funny. Corpses don't have feelings, or working vocal cords for that matter.

High - You were likely the determining force in this battle, and the towns-people will thank you profusely, giving you large amounts of alignment, but no money or resources.

Medium - You won the battle for the towns people! more or less at least. You will be rewarded with much alignment, money, some resources (maybe), and extremely rarely a "ballad/epic of <insert your name" lore text/promotion in the army (this will be explained in a soon-to-be other suggestion about RP immersion)

Low - Way to go! very few losses, amplify the rewards from medium!

None - Well, not quite. The enemy never breeched the wall, or if they did, never got anything. The worst that happened is that the soldiers fulfilled their duty of serving to the death to protect the village. There is a medium chance of a ballad/epic being made for you, and you may get a promotion based on your current rank.

What on earth is a ballad?
A ballad or epic or whatever you wish for it to be is a literary work which highlights the mighty deeds of a hero. Typically in something close to rhyme, at least with a rythem. Anyways, this is just a loretext in which the protaganist is excessively exulted, and has their name replaced by yours. Optionally we could have the player select gender so pronouns are correct in this, or whoever designs the ballad template(s) could design them to be gender neutral.

Anyway, I feel like I forgot one of my ideas for in this one. Ah, well. This should provide some ideas to make a more RP oriented version of the mod, that is still sandbox in overall nature. 