Roguelike quest system

[tangar]

Roguelike quest system

Wanna share an idea considering quests in rlg (and especially *bands).. It's mainly applied to my variant (Tangaria), but general concept could be used anywhere.

Quest system is't present in V because quests are not really good suited in *bands, good analytics about it there.

In addition in PWMA (and Tangaria) there are more problems:
- in PWMA quests influencing V-based economy (not too much though because of a lot of RNG in completing it/reward).
- quests to kill certain enemy are just boring.
- players often forget to take quests as it's very rare to complete them and you got dull rewards; most just play without them

Those problems came because quests in roguelike games often implemented like in traditional MMO/RPG-quests (kill 5 chickens, bring 5 ribs), while it should have it's own, roguelikish type of quests - to encourage players to have an adventure, with a proper risk VS rewards rate.

/rfe to improve quests and to encourage players to play in more roguelikish way - implement this minimalistic (and yet deep) system:

Retrieve an ancient relic fragment from the dungeon vault // reward: gold
- every (or some) dungeon will have an item which could appear only in the vault on the bottom level of the dungeon. It wo't appear often (as vaults appear not too often) - so you'll have to look for it. Sounds like a good adventure;
- at low player's lvls such relics will appear in small vaults, while at end-game only in Great vaults;
- after you pick up this item - you can not use 'Word of Recall' scroll. So you have to get back with this relic using stairs (which is quite dangerous). So it's like an optional way to turn the dungeon into NO_RECALL;
- while you holding this relic - there is a tiny chance to summon monsters around you (minor curse of summoning from V) - it makes way back more fun!

Actually this type of quests come from original - from 'Rogue' where the player had to retrieve Amulet of Yendor and bring it to the surface. Oldies, but goldies. This is the right truly roguelikish quest system.

Benefits:
- to encourage players to get into the vaults and take the risk
- strong anti-cheezing (vaults provide it)
- easy to rebalance (to set certain gold amount as reward and rebalance it with gold drop table)
- these quests are still optional, so you could play without getting into quest hunt if you do't want to get additional risks
- adding variability; some dungeons will be easier to complete, some are harder. Sometimes if you will kill everything on sight you will have too much exp to visit all dungeons - so you will need to play more strategically, sometimes to avoid battles. It's adding yet another strategy to 'win' the game - like with completing all available quests (to do it you will need to spend a lot of gold for consumables, but you will get additional money back after completing quests) OR avoiding quests (be more economical in terms of consumables in general).
- make the game deeper and bring back some traditional Yendor'ish flavour - as there appears yet another goal and challenge - to complete all quests - gather the whole Relic from fragments

So.. The idea is to give additional motivation for players to get into the vaults. As right now *bands are quite winnable without getting your foot in most vaults. Quest=vault=NO_RECALL could be really good way to solve this problem.

[fph]

I appreciate you bringing in new ideas, but the no-recall part sounds incredibly boring to me. How is "climb up by finding 54 sets of stairs ond 54 levels that have no challenging monsters" supposed to be fun?

[tangar]

In my variant there are separate dungeons which are mostly ~7-10 lvls deep (and only one quite deep - `Angband` which is 25). So it's alright there.

But even in deeper dungeons it could be fun.. As you are not simply finding stairs, but actually have a cursed item in your backpack which summon monsters upon you sometimes - what makes gameplay quite harcore and fast-paced. In 99.9999% players do not mess with items which have such curses on them, but actually it could be really great to have such adventure.

Another way to solve the problem of deep dungeons (could work even in V): make NO_RECALL work only for 5-7 levels, after which you could recall back. Eg:

1) you took a relic
2) you have two curses on it - NO_RECALL (last 5 levels) and SUMMON (different relics could have different curses - some will summon demons, some undeads, etc).. Hm maybe even add there moar curses - like siren, aggro, etc (not at once, but make every relic different).
3) now you can't recall back until you will take 5 stairs up. When you did it - curse removed, you are free to go

Also it's optional quest.. so you could just abandon it if it's too harsh.

[NotMorgoth]

Portal vaults in DCSS could be seen as a type of mini-quest.

When you enter a level with one of these, you get a message like "this level contains a portal vault, find the entrance before it's too late."

You then get a limited number of turns to get to the entrance before it disappears, with an indicator (the sound of a ticking clock) giving a rough idea of how much time is left and how far you are from the entrance.

Entering the vault takes you to a special level depending on the type of portal, eg ice cave, volcano, wizard's lab etc, with themed monsters and loot. These can be quite challenging, and may themselves contain quest-like elements, eg the volcano may be flooded with lava after a time so you have a limited number of turns to grab stuff before escaping.

[tangar]

Yep, portals are good.

Also I have a dream to play Zeitnot mode:
https://tangar.info/en/blog/roguelike-zeitnot

I hope one day it will appear...

[EpicMan]

ToME (the *Band variant) had some quests, in particular there were quest levels needed to complete to gain access to the house in each town. The win condition was quest-based (beat Necromancer, beat Sauron and find the One Ring, destroy or wear and beat Sauron again, then beat Morgoth).
Anyway, look at ToME or read spoilers (Lord Dimwit's guide) to find out about those quests.

Poslikes have quests that are special levels. For that matter Vaults in *Bands are sort of mini quest levels.

Outside of *Bands ADOM and Caves of Qud both have quest lines.