What should happen to you if you sleep in a bed that doesn't belong to you? I was thinking about strange, odd and creative things I might be able to do if I required a rest mechanic and the need to sleep in a bed periodically. In a game like Morrowind you're simply told "resting here is illegal" or you instantly become the enemy of a barracks full of mages if you dare sleep in the wrong bed. This just seems too dull. What if, instead, you could wake up immobilized, with a mad scientist character saying, "ah, good, I've been looking for a suitable test subject for some time now." Or what if there was some notion of a social point system with faux pas lowering your score, which in turn acted as a social reaction adjustment with NPCs commenting on your bad behavior when you seek quests or business with them? Or is a more straight-forward consequence just easier to understand?

To be honest in most cases in RL it seems more along the lines of "If you can get to a bed legally, it would just be weird to sleep in it". You would probably only see something along the lines of someone waking you up, and/or some weird comments/questions.

Maybe syncing it up with NPC daily routines? If you start and stop sleeping while no one is around to see you, no consequences.

If you sleep too late (maybe another mechanic for sleeping too late? Could easily get annoying) someone will find you. More often than not you'll just be asked some weird questions. If you've broken into the house maybe the guards are called and you wake up being handcuffed or the guy grabs a bat and chases you out of his house.

Every so often though, throw in that curve ball of a mad scientist or some other strange and unique situation. It just depends on who's bed you slept in and what their mood was that day.

If you sleep in someone else's bed, at least have the common courtesy to invite them to yours first ;D

That's the rule, by unanimous decision.

Sleep is a very vulnerable time for a person. One of the big problems with sleeping in 'public' beds is security: what about all your stuff?

You could have a mechanic whereby if you sleep in an 'insecure' bed, then an NPC might steal some or all of your stuff. You could *even* have people try and kill you in your sleep, though that might not be much fun.

You'd have a chance to wake up and catch them in the act, which would entail some kind of battle, either to kill them or till they run away. You could buy traps and devices to help with this - something you can set up above or behind the door to make a loud noise when somebody enters.

I agree with the idea of syncing it up with NPC daily routines. It shouldn't just be a 'random chance of being found if the bed is flagged as insecure' thing.

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Original post by Wavinator What if, instead, you could wake up immobilized, with a mad scientist character saying, "ah, good, I've been looking for a suitable test subject for some time now."

In Oblivion you could be visited in the night to be recruited by the Assassins' Guild if you were seen to murder in cold blood (quest description).

This is, I think, the only occasion I can remember when the standard resting mechanic has been played with in such a way. I liked this addition to the game, which serves as a decent proof-of-concept for perhaps some more involved consequences of crashing in a stranger's bed.

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Original post by lithos To be honest in most cases in RL it seems more along the lines of "If you can get to a bed legally, it would just be weird to sleep in it". You would probably only see something along the lines of someone waking you up, and/or some weird comments/questions.

I think it's worth bearing this in mind as well - to make a player spend an hour escaping from whatever sticky situation their clandestine power-nap has landed them in might just become annoying.

Having said that, if it is established that the game progresses in a way where the character is mostly flitting around on the winds of chance, the player will probably accept a massive departure from their current objective when they wake up on the other side of the world or in an underground cave complex.

Two thoughts. I think it's very good when a game behaves as if there's nothing unexpected to some game element and then it turns out there is more to it - the surprise then enhances all the rest of the game - the "anything could happen at any time" sticks to all the game elements, which must of course be limited because of practical constraints. It'd also be nice for an unknown, hidden intelligent force to follow and act on the player - games are very much atheistic - but if a random act of uninterested kindness of meanness correlates with the player much later waking up on the operating table with an Igor grinning down on him or tucked in under a quilt with warm fire going, breakfast in bed and big bonuses to suitable attributes, it gives the world another dimension. Maybe that was just one thought.