"Free-Roam" Roguelike Development

[Pueo]

    After recently playing TES: Skyrim, I've shifted my roguelike focus to a more sandbox-y feel, where there is a main quest-line (and unlike Skyrim, finishing the main quest does finish the game), but there are also a plethora of side-quests, hidden artifacts, etc. 

    However, how do you go about making a game that's supposedly random, but also have meaningful quests and items?  Skyrim has a "Radiant" technology (I think that's what it's called), which is basically a fancy way of describing the typical roguelike "Kill X many of Y creatures" or "Go to X place and kill all the bandits."

[Alex E]

Skyrim's radiant system creates mostly simple quests such as "Kill this over here" or "Bring this to him". Things like that. Hundreds (Seems like it) of the quests in Skyrim are made by hand. There's just so many that you always have quests to do. You could have premade quests with random parts though. For example, you could have a quest to go kill whatever king and have the king's location be random. As well as have the specific weapon you have to use be random.

As I see it, "random" doesn't work very well for storylines, so maybe you could just have the environments be random.  The radiant quests in Skyrim aren't story related from what I can tell.

For items and weapons, it isn't so hard. Just assign some random stats and effects to some randomly placed items in random places.

[Snargleplax]

I've had some basic success getting a step beyond "kill X of Y" quests, by creating quests with multiple parts, using stereotypes for the parts rather than the whole.  The idea is that parts can combine in different ways, combinatorically increasing the number of possible quests.

For example, I currently have pieces such as "Rescue Hostage," "Kill Target," "Find Location," "Unite Pieces of Broken Item," and "Learn Fact."  A piece like "Find Location" can be created as a subgoal of a larger goal such as "Rescue Hostage."  Similarly, you can get a basic "Find Item" quest, or you can get several such quests as subgoals of "Unite the Pieces" (one per piece).  My plan is to continue adding content to increase branching factors, resulting in a large number of possible plot "shapes."

[Game Hunter]

Since this is a roguelike setting, unlike "set in stone" games like Skyrim, you may also want to consider the possibility of quests that are (or eventually become) impossible: it's the player's responsibility to determine if the quest is worth doing or if it's even doable at all. This lets you hand out quests that have a time limit, or require things of a player that cannot be done without assistance (such as NPC tag-alongs), or simple aren't feasible unless some random event allows the player an exclusive chance.

An example of the last case would be along the lines of destroying/conquering a town. By yourself, or even with a small band of helpers, this is very likely an insurmountable task, but if there just happens to be a horde of monsters rampaging its way through the area, and they just happen to cross paths with that town, then you could use the opportunity to seize control or set off some well-placed explosives or any number of contingencies set up in wait for a fortunate event.

I suppose the ideal is that you give the player a lot of ways to solve problems, and then you hand out quests that have amorphous solutions and ramifications to them. If the player is told to assassinate a political figure, they better do it either stealthily or have an escape plan, lest the consequences of such actions cause an unexpected demise (at least unexpected from their perspective). Perhaps you may also want to add "context" to the quest-givers: someone asking the player to "kill X many of Y" could very well have a motive, if the only Ys in the area are on private property, or are a rare species, etc.

Generally speaking, however, I'd suggest building up the environment with which the player can interact, then figure out just how creative you can get with the quests based on what you have. With any luck, a robust enough world will practically write the quests for you!

[Snargleplax]

Another way to go is to arrange for "quests" to arise organically out of the player's other needs, based on game mechanics.  I'm thinking here of Terraria, which has a complex crafting system that sends you all over the world looking for components -- not because an NPC said "fetch me X," but because the player wants X in order to craft Y.  I believe this approach could blend well with what Game Hunter is talking about, since scriptless quests like these are more about world conditions than an explicit storyline.

[Pueo]

Alright, so based on the replies, my general idea is implied and explicit quests, or quests that arise because you want something, (Collect leather to make a saddle!), but aren't exactly explicit (they come up because you want leather, not because you need leather); and explicit quests, (Conquer --city--!) which are hard-coded into the game.

Explicit quests still aren't necessary, but they are coded into the game as "quests", unlike implied quests, which are more "player-made", and based on game mechanics.  Some explicit quests are also going to have random segments, like the "Conquer --city--" quest might have a section based on finding information about the city (secret entrances, people who would help you, etc).  The person you might talk to about information would be random, as well as (possibly) the information you gain.