A fellow game-design friend pointed me to this thread about auto-generating quest content. It's definitely worth a read. http://h-world.simugraph.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Library.TipsForRandomStoryGeneration Somewhere in my rooms and rooms of scattered books, I have one that outlines 20 or 25 major plot arcs. Im thinking about combining the method spoken of in the above thread and adding to it these 20 major arcs to expand the enjoyment of the writing. Any other ideas for updating this method?

Wait, what sort of game are you trying to make? For most shooting games, that system might work, though you'd have to be careful about dialogue and such.

Example story arcs would be 'rescue random prisoner', 'destroy enemy facility', 'deliver object to character', 'survive/run gauntlet'? That could work on a crude level...basically, if you're ceding control to the computer, you won't get quality assurance. The best story generators don't write interesting stories. On the other hand, you're not dealing with the same paradigms that those used; you're sort of doing a Chinese menu system with multiple menus. Still, don't expect seamless storytelling. And you can't allow for character development. Or you could, but it would take lots and lots of work.

Why not write everything yourself? Or is there a particular reason you want client-side generation?

If you go to the link that was in my post, you'll see that a decent degree of sophistication can be achieved this way. The writer there actually created on the best 'roguelikes' of all time.

Im developing an MMO, and I want to create fresh storylines for the thousands of players. Of course the majority of quests will have to be hand-written so as to follow several main story arcs, but if this could be developed further, it would add more content with little production time.

To make a further distinction...a randomized 'mission' system wouldnt be hard because my definition of 'mission' is action without story. So youd merely randomize a LONG list of variables (#of enemy spawns, #of types of spawns, #of locked doors, #of bombs to disarm....).

But what Im looking for is more of a randomization of quest giver, quest goal, quest methods and actions, and quest rewards...and perhaps some auto-generated filler text that makes sense.

Anyone working on anything like this?

you possibly want to take a look at the mission booths in Anarchy online, my friend...

While reading this topic, I came up with a strange idea. Of course, thise would require a lot of coding to be able to get made, but could be worth the amount of work.

Let's say Each Player Character came up with a random number(5-7) of relatives. Let's say that each player character comes up with a Family Home, and that Perma-death is handled through lineage, that is when your character die, the son of the character take sthe duty on where it was left by the preceding character, possibly with the handing down of some valuable family property.(This is VERY important for the following)

Now let's imagine that for each relative, there is a number of aleatory basic quests, dubbed neighbourhood quests for further use, for imersive quality. The most basic quests could just be "your mother sends you on an errand to get some parsley from the herb market" or "Your dog has ran away, but Mr. Salmon has said he had seen it around the pond. You should get it back." These have absolutely no implication over the rest of the world.

Now let's start to imagine what would happen if a higher level neighbourhood quest (Still very ow level quest anyway) was "Your uncle comes to see you and asks you for help for a little revenge over that neighbours that lets his tree grow right over your side of the fence, and the shade starts to make your vegetable garden look like a great desert" you could have diferent outcomes: Diplomatic way (ask the neighbour politely about it, result depends on your diplomatic skills since it is interacting with an NPC), bribery way (result depends on your generosity, and triggers more such quests, as the neighbours starts getting hungry for more bribes), violence way (cutting down the tree) or extreme violence way (cutting down the head of the neighbour).

Each quest ending would trigger a new quest in the neighbours house, and since this would happen on a very large scale, then I think, most of the quests would still look very much alike, but would make it more immersive ("awwww, mum! I don't have time to get that parsley! i have gnomes to kill!" "Am not sure you'll not find your stuff packed when you come back, our dave, then..." everybody has got this kind of argument at least once right?)

Since you lived in a FAMILY house, you would need to take care of your family and run the simple quests before choosing to go and raid the lair of the fabulous dog-men, which seem to be VERY interested in bones indeed and may even have kidnapped, if not eaten, the earthly remains of uncle-Billy-may-he-rest-in-peace.

As the level of your neighbourhood quests would rise, the possibility to have common quests with some people in the neighbourhood would rise, triggered by the fact that at some point, your neighbourhood levels were equal, then, two fathers could have had a row in a bar over what one "shouldn't have said about our sharon" and ask you to go and find the other father to ask for repay, thus making a possible encounter with the playing character son, and then, eithre coming to a possible friendly conclusion, or PvP duel in the early morning.

Another one could be a GM enacted quest, as most of the able-bodied males in te neighbourhood tend to disappear, night after night. (since your next life happened to be sitting, or acting in the family house, it would be a good idea if you investigated the case...) To some extent, you may find clues that most of the fathers disappeared after a night at the pub, possibly leading to the Barman being corrputed in serving drugged beer, so as to make men fall asleep, and someone comes late to collect them, that leading to a hunt in the sewers of the city if there are any, or maybe some handy cave nearby, making of one of the disappeared fathers a demented god-sacrificing mad-priest. At this point, either the son rejoins with the rest of the furious sons and slays his own father, or he chooses to defend him against the furor of neighbourhood. From his attitude may depend the kind of neighbourhood quests he may get later on. Note that this could work with a mad scientist or a secret army being raised to take the local lord down, or anything.

As a résumé, I would say that this system requires to have a fair amount of Neighbourhood quests written in advance, but would allow for a more flexible gameplay, since most of the evolution of the quests would happen behind the scene, on the branching tree of Neighbourhood quests, with loops and such. The possibility to have two or more different trees for each "D&D alignment" could be a plus...

Maybe some sort of ga might be in order?

You make a few hundred (or less) storylines, and the comp makes a few thousand out of random variations to your storylines.

At the end of each quest, the user rates it. This is the evaluation function.

Story genes would be a bit difficult to make tho...

From,
Nice coder

yes, but would it actually be both the trouble of coding, and if you came home with a game which had this kind of features, would you like that?

In addition to the system described above, I would say that, if implemented in a MMORPG, it would make eachplayer's experience different, and would allow some leeway for Role-Play, with Tavern scenes like "...oh yeah, that was bad enough, but wait until you hear what happened to me!". Moreover, in order to avoid possible repetition of patterns, then it would be possible for the developpers to implement new Neighbourhood Quests in a little time, I belive, as a Server Update, which would then auto-create content, if it happened for the implementation of a Major Quest. A sort of continuous update. And those who would be less appreciated could also be cancelled in teh same time... I suppose, at least.

Yours faithfully,
Nicolas FOURNIALS

I don't have time to read that thread right now (though I will try to in time), but it seems to me that if you allow the computer to create these random, "generic" quests, the player will feel as though they are on meaningless, "generic" quests.

What gives meaning to a story (and to quests) is a sense of something happening. Killing 100 random enemies, saving 30 random people, and destroying 4 random buildings is meaningless. But killing one meaningful monster in order to rescue one meaningful person will give a meaningful reward to a player--who deserve something meaningful for their time and money.

It's one thing to rely on these sporadically as a gameplay mechanic, but it is not a substitute for good, solid writing.

Maybe the problem is that Westerners (in general) are objective-oriented people. We do something in order to reap a reward. Some Eastern religions preach that the substance is in the journey. If I kill 30 "[typical RPG adjective] rats" in a cave so that I can receive a [insert typical RPG object reward] and as I leave the cave I see those rats respawn, the journey that I undertook will be meaningless. I have become a slave to the reward and the journey is an obstacle. In reality, the journey (playing the game, not receiving an item reward) should be WHY we play the game not what we have to overcome to feel a sense of value.

@DGAF : As a matter of fact, I think that, since you skipped the development of the thread, you have missed the theories that have been developped here. One involved the creation of character-oriented quests in a tree-form evolutionnary choices, with possible relations to the neighbouring characters, which, once again, makes them both World- and Character-oriented AND related. Nothing can happen without the character and his neighbourhood. I think it could work. but that's only my opinion you've got for that...

yours faithfully,
Nicolas FOURNIALS