Quests

So, I've said in the past that Orison will have no quests.  Perhaps that was a bit too hasty.  Perhaps there is a way to do quests right.

A friend of mine completed a rather large project with the help of the graph database Neo4j.  That, and an Extra Credits episode about MMO quests got me thinking.

So, we have these player built cities.  The cities contain residences, which spawn NPCs, which can then be recruited into armies to fight against antagonists.

Why not model familial relationships, and other relationships, between NPCs?  It's all deep backend work, which is not time critical.  But then again, why?

Suppose that we had a database of hundreds of stories, all of which depended on a specific relationship between some characters to make it understandable.  If we tracked the relationships between NPCs then we could, for a given city, search the database for relationships that exist within that city and spawn some optimal number of quests.  Given a small enough number of quests per city and a large and varied enough database of quests to draw upon, there is no reason why this could not be a driver of procedural content.

Let's give an example.

Quest: Daughter Trouble
Relationship template:  (male, adult(a))-[father, loves]->(female,  young adult(b))-[loves]->(male, adult(c))-[fears]->(a)-[hates]->(c), (a)-[desires]->(item, valuable (d))

An easy relationship to search for within Neo4j.  But then a script could be written with entry points via talking to any of the three NPCs, and several outcomes determined by what choice the PC makes.  Does he deliver (d) to (a)?  On what terms?  Has he spoken to (c) who has pledged his portion of his families wealth to making the marriage happen?

So, quest writing in this system becomes a process:
1: Specify the initial relationships between your actors, material and immaterial
2: Specify the script based on all possible entry and exit points
3: Specify the changes in the relationships that result from the script

The last should not be neglected, as a dynamic relationship graph means a dynamic quest environment for the players.

Also, there is the opportunity for some few quests to incorporate relationships between the PC and the NPCs.  There should be avoided, however, the chaining together of quest and consequence to make 'quest lines'  as these are terribly annoying.