querying the world and player driven sidequests

[Omnomnom]

I was thinking of adding a query system into my game that allows the player to query for information about the world through NPCs, books and libraries.

For example there would be a "Query" action associated with NPCs where you could enter a keyword and the NPC would either say "i've never heard of X", or would spit out information about it. The keywords would be simple single names for things so there would be few parsing issues.

The chance of an NPC knowing about a given keyword would depend on how commonly known the information was and the NPC type (eg a weaponsmith is more likely to know more about a weapon than a farmer). Their knowledge also determines how much detail they can provide. This would be useful for figuring out if certain plants were edible or poisonous, what certain potions do, more information about specific monsters, etc. But the main reason I was thinking of doing this was to allow the player to research their own sidequests.

Here's an example of what might be possible:

You find a history book for sale in a village. It's a long boring procedurally generated list of events that have happened in the history of the world. One of the passages mentions a powerful magical item called the Moon Scepter. That might still be around somewhere right? You query the villagers for that term to see if they've heard of it. None of them have. In inspiration you go and ask a local scorceror, who might know a bit more about legendary magical items... He recalls a legend that the scepter was made by a cult which was hunted down and destroyed in their temple in the valley of shadows, but he doesn't know where that is.

You decide to journey a long distance to the city where you can ask a cartographer where the valley of shadows is. You also access the large library in the city where you discover the necromantic powers of the scepter and how the king sent an army to destroy the cult that built it. The scepter itself was never found.

From a cartographer you learn the valley of the shadows is in the far north. Very dangerous location, so you get supplies and hire two mercenaries and head out. A bunch stuff happens on the way involving hostile creatures, but you make it north with both mercenaries.

In the north you ask local villagers if they have heard about the valley of shadows but it is made clear that they are hiding information. You eventually bribe a villager who tells you the location of the valley of shadows and the abandoned temple in it. You decide to head out.

On the way you are ambushed by half a dozen human attackers. Thanks to your mercenaries you survive. You find a note on one of the attackers reading: "three outsiders have been talking about the valley of shadows. If they head out that way kill them". You continue heading for the temple, but now it's clear the place is not abandoned.

At this point you now have a dungeon and a quest item to fetch, but the quest itself is more personal because the player has made it for themselves. It hasn't been forced on them through a sidequest by some mage in the city who simply tells you "Fetch me the Moon Scepter from the Valley of Shadows (5000XP)". Also the world is able to react to what the player is asking about - eg planning that ambush.

Technically this doesn't seem too much of a big deal to do, it's a lot of work but it isn't complicated AI. It's just a keyword search sitting on top of procedurally generated names for weapons and places and linking references together so that each library or book would have a hidden set of keywords they would respond to and would only reveal limited info about it.

The only thing I worry about is that this searching by keyword of NPCs and books will make the game too boring - it might feel a bit like using google search in the game all the time. I am aware from experience that ideas I think are fun initially can turn out to be unfun, so I just want to check whether it passes the smell test for other people.

[corremn]

I like what I smell, err read.  Personalising quests in this way would be very cool, it just has to be done in a way that makes the player feel like he/she hasn't being lead by the nose to it. That will be the hardest part, making the game world rich enough and free enough to allow a player to feel like he is in a non-linear world. 

It sounds like a very hard job to get the "feeling" right, but if you pull it off if could be quite good.

By the way, why does the player want the Moon Scepter anyway. Does he want to start his own cult, raise the dead and take revenge on his home village, where they always said he will never amount to nothing. Otherwise he might just as well walk into a forrest and kill bandits for a living.
That is why you get the "go to the shadow forrest and retrieve the Moon Scepter (5000xp)" type quests. It is a black and white, quest/reward system that works very well.

I think only the main quest should be handled like this and the rest are just simple side quests that involve little "investigation".

[kraflab]

This sounds pretty fun.  The main concern I have is that what if I get used to finding quests like this, but then the item that really sounds cool doesn't have the quest.  Or what if I misinterpret a clue and head in the wrong direction.  It needs to be set up so if somebody goes in the wrong direction they still will get some clues leading them back down the correct path.  I do agree with corremn about the question of why the player is doing this.  If every quest involves a lot of running around, what initially was fun and intriguing will become tedious pretty fast (imo).

Perhaps it should be the type of thing where there is no benefit in hunting down a bunch of these artifacts, but only one or two.  Or perhaps you only want to do these quests for important story events.

I'm kind of torn though, because making a game where you exclusively play as a treasure seeker that gathers information and then hunts down the artifacts should be really fun if orchestrated properly.  It's really going to depend on a proper balance of difficulty of finding information.  Too difficult and it gets tedious.  Too easy and it's not very interesting.

I think having only a handful of these artifacts actually exist would be pretty interesting.  Situations where the player has been just exploring about and slowly building up little tidbits of knowledge such as that an item is in the north, and maybe someone remembers a nearby village.  The village doesn't exist on your map but someone remembers its location.  It can be really interesting but I think it has to not be the main focus of the player.  Because if I boil this down, it can turn into "go talk to the sorceror" "go to the library" "go talk to the village elder" and it becomes the same as any other set of random quests except you get no reward until the end.

tl;dr It sounds fun, but be careful about how it is implemented.  There is a fine line between fun and tedium

[Pueo]

Great idea, but what if the player just jaunts into the bookstore and never finds that history book?  Or he finds the book, but decides to use it for kindling instead?  

The only thing I worry about is that this searching by keyword of NPCs and books will make the game too boring - it might feel a bit like using google search in the game all the time. I am aware from experience that ideas I think are fun initially can turn out to be unfun, so I just want to check whether it passes the smell test for other people.

As long as there is variety, maybe have a list of 15-16 weapons, quest lines, etc, and mix and match, I think it would be a great idea.

[AquaTsar17]

This sounds like an interesting idea, and one that actually makes use of talking to NPCs. I agree with kraflab though, in that this would make for interesting side quests but should not be the main quest.

My only suggestion is to consider how much detail you want to include in your world. In your example of a history book, how long is this list of events? Real history books are not 1 or 2 pages long (nor do real bookshelves only have 1 book on them). However, I think it's extreme to expect players to be interested in reading 50 to 100 pages of randomly generated (or even designer created) history for just one book they found somewhere. While this can really give the world a rich and detailed history, it's probably irrelevant for most players. Especially if it just leads to side quests.

What if books or sources of key words were similar to the queries? So, rather than reading a book to learn about events you just get short poems from bards. It would make sense regarding why it's short and why it's about some past event. Another option would be that when you read books the character reads the whole thing (or part of it), but the player is only shown parts of it that are of interest. In other words, the character only finds a few interesting antecdotes (important keywords which may or may not lead to a quest) and that is what the player is shown when the book is read. This way the player can still search for information, but does not have to do as much work to sort through unnecessary or irrelevant material.