Think about NPCs that hire you to kill the person you are escorting. Think about bandits ambushing you, and offering to pay you to let them kill your VIP. And then think of the consequences when the relatives of that person find out what occurred.

all very good plot twists. i'm finding that the possible plot twists are almost endless. i don't think any of the 30-40-50? quest generators planner so far is based around a plot twist. they're all more of less straightforward quests so far. once the various possible types of straightforward quests are well covered, i may go back and make "twisted sister" versions of them. that way you never know if it a straight or twisted quest. ; )

last night i finished up a first cut at both the sacred animals and the escort quest. both are straightforward, but they work. using regular badguys did the trick for the sacred animals quest, although the herd is still just a random animal encounter that might kill both hunters and player alike. making the NPC a follower made the escort quest pretty trivial to code up.

One simple way to deal with applying consequences to escort quests is to simply have a registry / adventure's guild where you pick up the quest. If you're registered as the escort for someone, and that someone fails to arrive, well.. you fail the quest. Be careful of things like on death hooks, because often they don't make sense. For instance there have been times when playing Elder Scrolls games where I've killed someone and was witnessed by someone else, who I then killed, but yet you still get reported.

If you're going to have reporting mechanics, then you should spend the effort to make them work well with the rest of the gameplay. If I exterminate all of the witnesses before they can get to a guard, I should not have a bounty taken out on me, unless somehow my name is registered with regards to the people in question (i.e. I was hired for an escort)

How about an escort quest where the npc is valuable alive. Perhaps they carry an antibody to a plague, or have valuable information It's in yours and your enemies interest not to actually kill the npc, meaning you don't have to worry about their unexpected demise, but that won't stop the enemies trying to kill YOU to take the npc from you...

looks like we have a new quest! (or two!)

perhaps escort the "sacred virgin" or "beautiful youth" to the nearby band they are supposed to become the leader of, while the badguys want to use them for a special sacrificial ceremony or something like that. many backstories possible for that basic plot / scenario.

(i just copy and pasted all of the above into the todo list for caveman). so its on the list! <g>.

One simple way to deal with applying consequences to escort quests is to simply have a registry / adventure's guild where you pick up the quest.

in this particular case, its a stone age setting so the society is not that organized. picture about 35,000 bands, average of 6-12 cavemen each, spread over a 2500 x 2500 mile area (about the size of the nothern hemisphere of the new world).

but the game does track actions against friendlies. actions against friendlies will cause all nearby friendlies to become hostile - but you can still attempt to yield. and all cavemen you encounter are persistent in the world even when not nearby and an active target in the simulation. so if you kill a friendly and they turn hostile, assuming you get away somehow, the next time you encounter them, they'll remember.

Herding like a sheepdog where the dog can selectively 'threaten' to repel the individual sheep with directly opposite force to contain them and guide a general direction of the group (or to drive back a straggler). Simple but lots of running about, and unless any 'humans' being herded are as dumb as sheep, possibly only of limited utility.

reverse of this would be a 'follow me' (and maybe a 'stay') command, and then constant watching for stragglers who willfully or not dont follow the command

One simple way to deal with applying consequences to escort quests is to simply have a registry / adventure's guild where you pick up the quest.

in this particular case, its a stone age setting so the society is not that organized. picture about 35,000 bands, average of 6-12 cavemen each, spread over a 2500 x 2500 mile area (about the size of the nothern hemisphere of the new world).

but the game does track actions against friendlies. actions against friendlies will cause all nearby friendlies to become hostile - but you can still attempt to yield. and all cavemen you encounter are persistent in the world even when not nearby and an active target in the simulation. so if you kill a friendly and they turn hostile, assuming you get away somehow, the next time you encounter them, they'll remember.

You might be amazed at what stone age societies were capable of. Just because reading/writing wasn't a thing doesn't mean such information as crime cannot be reported (word of mouth, etc.)

We have plenty of evidence of prehistoric man trading between tribes, etc. So communications definitely existed, even if you didn't have wanted posters.

reverse of this would be a 'follow me' (and maybe a 'stay') command, and then constant watching for stragglers who willfully or not dont follow the command

i implemented them as temporary followers.

there are two ways to interact with party members such as other band members, followers, and pets - you can select them and initiate dialog, and you can issue orders to anyone or everyone within earshot, even during combat.

dialog options for all cavemen include request items, give gift, teach, learn, trade items, trade map info, gamble, staunch wounds, plus various types of talk actions.

follower dialog options include: check health, dismiss, exchange items, and ask to join band.

orders include:

fn i B2_orders_menu
m0 "Orders..."
m+ "Wait here"
m+ "Follow..."
m+ "Goto..."
m+ "Target..."
m+ "Attack"
m+ "Sneak"
m+ "Stop sneaking"
m+ "Maintain distance"
m+ "Run away!"
m+ "Stop what you're doing"
m+ "Alarm!"
m+ "As you were"
m+ "Cancel"
ret menu(13)
.

details....

Follow - some party member

You might be amazed at what stone age societies were capable of. Just because reading/writing wasn't a thing doesn't mean such information as crime cannot be reported (word of mouth, etc.) We have plenty of evidence of prehistoric man trading between tribes, etc. So communications definitely existed, even if you didn't have wanted posters.

in anticipation of possibly adding fame and reputation type stuff to the game, i've already got that covered. the original version of the game back in 2000 featured Bethesda style "radiant AI" for NPCs at settlements - Ie they went about their daily lives. i've started adding some of that kind of behavior to this vserion. as part of that, the leader of friendly cavemen you encounter may walk up to you and engage you in dialog. one of the possible dialog options they may initiate is "exchange news". its also one of the "talk" type dialog options available with all cavemen you talk to. this game mechanic provides the mechanism by which news and reputation can travel across the game world.

Althang type gatherings where members of multiple bands come together for a while to trade and visit are also on the todo list.

defensive wood palisade walls and the ability to ask an ally to join your village or to join your allies village have been implemented.

but at the moment, theft and attacking friendlies are the only actions that affect relations with others. and they only affect relations with any witnesses. you don't have a "reputation" that precedes you (yet).

A little out of topic, but I would like to add an anti-frustration feature from The last of US.

This game being a sort of escort mission for a huge part of the story, Eli (the one you escort) is not the huge load that escorted character tend to be. Thanks to some clever tweak, for example, Eli can't be detected by enemies. It is unrealistic as an enemy will walk right in front of her and not see her, but it prevent the player feeling cheated by the computer because he has to endure the consequence of not his action, but a computer action.

Even if the objective of an escort mission is to escort a NPC, if he willingly and stupidly jump into danger (like fighting a boss character with bare hand and hundred level stronger because the boss dared step in front of the NPC) it is only frustrating to see him die and the mission failing.

The most important questionis : do you really need escort missions? :D

The most important questionis : do you really need escort missions?

only storyline based quests / quest lines need them - and only when the story includes escorting someone.

i'm just trying to get "requisite variety" in the types of quest generators in the game. and "escort" is a plausible type of quest / mission. all quests are voluntary and optional on the part of the player, and can be abandoned at any time for any reason by the player.

a number of other quests (such as rescue pet) include "escort" stages (such as escort pet back to owner).

procedurally generated world. 2500x2500 miles

6.25 million square miles? That's roughly twice the land mass of Europe.

Even large games like World of Warcraft are only around 60-80 square miles. Skyrim is around 20 square miles. There are also games with huge empty areas, like Star Wars Galaxies claims about 200 square miles and some street racing games claim 200-500 square miles, although much of the space in these games is empty shells for long stretches of road, basically rings where the game designers claim all the empty space inside the rings as their world size.

Even with a large number of procedural quest generators that's going to be a nightmare to fill with entertaining content.