Writing ACR Quests/More Challenges

Bonus Skill Challenge

In our example above, there's a skill-check-looking conversation option. This is the kind that I told you not to use before, because it would roll everything and tell the PC what will work-- but in this case, we have a knowledge check (which is a passive skill-- the PC wouldn't know that they're missing an opportunity if they failed the check), so I've put it inside the conversation, as a way to let PCs who would just "know" this stuff get away from the extra walking.

So to do this, let's reference back to those steps, as we now have two new steps to be concerned with: Step 0: The PC hasn't heard of the job Step 1: The PC has been told to talk to the mercenary Step 2: The PC has talked to the mercenary, and has information to report Step 3: The PC has reported back to the inn keeper with information from the mercenary. Step 4: The PC has found the centipede den Step 5: The PC has reported back and been given the next task in the quest

These two.

Then, what we'll do is put a skill check on the PC conversation option:

If the PC makes this skill check, then the results of the knowledge check appear as the first option to pick. If they fail, they only get an accept/decline to go scouting for a centipede den.

But, also, we need to take an action on that same node:

If the PC has made this check, they know where centipedes lair, and are thus on step 4. But the NPC asks about the next piece, so we also have to take an action if the PC accepts the next part of the quest, to bring us up to centipede butchery.

If the PCs follow the path of the next post, then they will actually get to step 4 by walking up next to the centipede den, and will get to step 5 by bringing that information back and taking the next step.

Trigger Challenges ("Scouting" quests)

Back to the sketch of how the quest is coming together, we've a fairly-straightforward bit of tooling to do to cover the transition between these two steps, should the PC not have fancy knowledge skills (or if, perhaps, the PC had angered the dice gods and rolled a 3.) Step 0: The PC hasn't heard of the job Step 1: The PC has been told to talk to the mercenary Step 2: The PC has talked to the mercenary, and has information to report Step 3: The PC has reported back to the inn keeper with information from the mercenary. Step 4: The PC has found the centipede den Step 5: The PC has reported back and been given the next task in the quest

We provide some standard triggers for the task, so grabbing one of those...

And drawing it around the centipede lair...

Gets us started. Then, upon checking the properties of that trigger, you can get into its local variables.

We're only getting into quest numbers and states here, because all we're asking the PC to do is find a thing. But an interested person might look at the other (currently-empty) variables on this trigger to get an idea of how one does the bounty type challenge (usually "raids" or "assaults" in NPC conversations).

But with that, we make another simple conversation edit to Eldata, just like the one we did for the last turnin, and everyone has a chance to get up to quest state 5.

Clearing / Slaughter Challenges

If you'll recall a little ways back here:

I mentioned a second action inside of our conversation that I said to not pay attention to. In my infinite sneakiness, I started a second quest in that second line.

This is like starting the arc, which we did here:

but we're calling this 010_sel_centipede_kill this time, to keep the mass slaughter of centipedes separate from the quest arc. Doing it like this (as two quests, instead of 1) has an advantage: it will mean that we'll be able to re-use the killing of centipedes elsewhere if we want (and we do-- that will show up at the end).

Then, to make this quest work, we need to set on the centipedes that they're appropriate creatures to kill to advance this quest.

The lower state is the quest step that you're on when you want to start having killing things increase the quest step by 1, and the upper state is when you want it to stop. So killing centipedes can bring a character's state of 010_sel_centipede_kill from 1 to 11. It's important to note that you can put the same quest on many different creatures if you want-- the effect, then, is that you need to kill a total of ten things, and that any of the creatures you set these variables on will count as part of it.

Then at the turnin, we need to check both quests in our conversation nodes to make sure that the right options appear at the right time.

And then on completion and accepting the next step, we need to update both quests again.

It's just like we covered here:

Setting _arc to 6 and _kill to 12.

So our quest looks like so:

• Arc Step 0: The PC hasn't heard of the job
• Arc Step 1: The PC has been told to talk to the mercenary
• Arc Step 2: The PC has talked to the mercenary, and has information to report
• Arc Step 3: The PC has reported back to the inn keeper with information from the mercenary.
• Arc Step 4: The PC has found the centipede den
• Arc Step 5: The PC has reported back and been asked to kill a handful of centipedes to reduce the threat
• Kill Step 1: Has Killed 0 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 2: Has Killed 1 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 3: Has Killed 2 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 4: Has Killed 3 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 5: Has Killed 4 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 6: Has Killed 5 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 7: Has Killed 6 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 8: Has Killed 7 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 9: Has Killed 8 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 10: Has Killed 9 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 11: Has Killed 10 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 12: Has turned in the centipede murder
• Arc Step 6: Eldata tells the PCs that the killing of a few centipedes made everything worse, and asks them to contain the threat.

Bounty Quests

To effectively talk about the quest from here out, I need to spell out where the rest of the quest is going-- it is, in short, a lot of violence and bug guts. The PCs will be quoting Starship Troopers in no time. So all of the remaining steps, and the ones we're focusing on here:

• Arc Step 0: The PC hasn't heard of the job
• Arc Step 1: The PC has been told to talk to the mercenary
• Arc Step 2: The PC has talked to the mercenary, and has information to report
• Arc Step 3: The PC has reported back to the inn keeper with information from the mercenary.
• Arc Step 4: The PC has found the centipede den
• Arc Step 5: The PC has reported back and been asked to kill a handful of centipedes to reduce the threat
• Kill Step 1: Has Killed 0 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 2: Has Killed 1 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 3: Has Killed 2 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 4: Has Killed 3 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 5: Has Killed 4 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 6: Has Killed 5 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 7: Has Killed 6 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 8: Has Killed 7 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 9: Has Killed 8 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 10: Has Killed 9 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 11: Has Killed 10 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 12: Has turned in the centipede murder
• Arc Step 6: Eldata tells the PCs that the killing of a few centipedes made everything worse, and asks them to contain the threat.
• Arc Step 7: PC has tripped a bounty in the centipede lair and slain a slightly-larger centipede
• Arc Step 8: PC has held the entrance to the den against swarming centipedes
• Arc Step 9: PC has pushed back into the corridor where the centipedes charged
• Arc Step 10: PC has taken the pit that the centipedes were crawling out of
• Arc Step 11: PC has returned to Eldata, and been asked to find and kill the really big one.
• Arc Step 12: PC has killed one of the kinda big ones between civilization and the really big one.
• Arc Step 13: PC has killed the really big one.
• Arc Step 14: PC has returned to Eldata, and somewhere in these 14 steps did enough stuff to justify some good (for a level 1) gear, which they picked from a list.

I'll go over the example of what takes us from 6 to 7, but these steps are all familiar ground once you've done one of them. New trigger; new quest state; (maybe) new resref; new waypoint to spawn at. But same steps, new numbers.

Inside our area, we're going to draw a quest trigger, like we did with scouting:

If you can manage it, triggers tend to work well when placed in choke points or obvious paths to walk. If they're squirreled away somewhere counterintuitive (or, more specifically, somewhere that you wouldn't look for the quarry), it tends to result in quests not getting done-- or only getting done by metagaming, which is bad times for newer players.

then, open the trigger's properties...

... and this should look familiar, because we used we did it with scouting. But we have a few new ones to draw attention to... ACR_QST_SPAWN_CRESREF is the Resource Name of the creature you want to spawn. We know what it is in this case because we made centipedes ourselves back on the first page. ACR_QST_SPAWN_WAYPOINT is the Tag of a waypoint that you want the creature to spawn at, so we need to edit the waypoint to also have that tag:

Now, it's important to note that there's only one quest state advancement involved here-- even though you might think there'd be two steps (one to trip the trigger and one to kill the thing), but we don't do that in case the PC fails to kill their target. They would never get a second chance if we persistently stored that the creature had spawned, but like this they can retry the next reset.

Defense Quests

Again, quest summary and what we're doing...

• Arc Step 0: The PC hasn't heard of the job
• Arc Step 1: The PC has been told to talk to the mercenary
• Arc Step 2: The PC has talked to the mercenary, and has information to report
• Arc Step 3: The PC has reported back to the inn keeper with information from the mercenary.
• Arc Step 4: The PC has found the centipede den
• Arc Step 5: The PC has reported back and been asked to kill a handful of centipedes to reduce the threat
• Kill Step 1: Has Killed 0 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 2: Has Killed 1 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 3: Has Killed 2 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 4: Has Killed 3 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 5: Has Killed 4 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 6: Has Killed 5 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 7: Has Killed 6 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 8: Has Killed 7 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 9: Has Killed 8 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 10: Has Killed 9 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 11: Has Killed 10 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 12: Has turned in the centipede murder
• Arc Step 6: Eldata tells the PCs that the killing of a few centipedes made everything worse, and asks them to contain the threat.
• Arc Step 7: PC has tripped a bounty in the centipede lair and slain a slightly-larger centipede
• Arc Step 8: PC has held the entrance to the den against swarming centipedes
• Arc Step 9: PC has pushed back into the corridor where the centipedes charged
• Arc Step 10: PC has taken the pit that the centipedes were crawling out of
• Arc Step 11: PC has returned to Eldata, and been asked to find and kill the really big one.
• Arc Step 12: PC has killed one of the kinda big ones between civilization and the really big one.
• Arc Step 13: PC has killed the really big one.
• Arc Step 14: PC has returned to Eldata, and somewhere in these 14 steps did enough stuff to justify some good (for a level 1) gear, which they picked from a list.

Now, this should be a lot of familiar concepts, thanks to the challenges we've been tooling over the last several posts. The defense quest is also a trigger-based quest, and so it's going to go down into the area with waypoints and a trigger (in this case, two waypoints per trigger-- one waypoint says where the monsters spawn, and one waypoint says where the monsters are trying to go). So the scene looks like this right now:

And then we have a number of variables to set:

So, to explain how the creatures are assembled here-- it's not terribly complex to do, but it's a lot of data to enter. Unfortunately, a defense quest is effectively asking the ACR to spawn an invasion, which means we need to gather a lot of information from you.

Mechanically, the logic is pretty simple-- the defense quest will keep spawning creatures you specify (one would hope minor ones) that you specify at specific intervals, and it keeps doing this throughout the quest. In this case, testing suggests that a tiny centipede every 12 seconds is enough to threaten a level 1 without rolling over them. To do this, I set DEF_QST_TRICKLE_DELAY to 12.0 and DEF_QST_TRICKLE_SPAWN_1 to abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny.

While I'm not doing it here (because, level 1 quest), if I wanted to spawn two things every trickle, I could add a DEF_QST_TRICKLE_SPAWN_2 and set it to something to make it go. If I also set it to abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny, then it would spawn a pair of tiny centipedes every 12 seconds.

DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_#_# works similarly, but the first number is used to determine the wave, while the second number is just used to build a group of them inside of that wave.

So, what I did...

• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_1_1 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_2_1 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_3_1 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_4_1 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_5_1 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny

Every wave, we just spawn an extra tiny centipede. but let's say I hated noobs, and just wanted to murder them, I could do this...

• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_1_1 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_2_1 = abr_cr_ve_centi_small
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_3_1 = abr_cr_ve_centi_medium
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_4_1 = abr_cr_ve_centi_large
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_5_1 = abr_cr_ve_centi_huge

Now the first wave is an extra tiny centipede, the second wave is a small one, the third wave is a medium one, the fourth wave is a large one, and the fifth wave is a huge one. Of course, while the trickle continues to spawn.

Now, if we were looking to challenge parties, or wanted swarming hordes, we can make larger waves too. For instance...

• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_1_1 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_1_2 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_2_1 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_2_2 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_2_3 = abr_cr_ve_centi_small
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_3_1 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_4_1 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_5_1 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_5_2 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_5_3 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_5_4 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_5_5 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_5_6 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_5_7 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_5_8 = abr_cr_ve_centi_small
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_5_9 = abr_cr_ve_centi_small
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_5_10 = abr_cr_ve_centi_medium

Now wave 1 is two extra tiny centipedes, wave 2 is two tiny centipedes and a small one, waves 3 and 4 are just a tiny centipede, and wave 5 is a rush of seven tiny centipedes, two small centipedes, and one medium centipede.

You can also add more waves if you want by just adding more variables with a higher number in the wave slot, or remove waves by just deleting them. (in theory, the number of waves can go up to Int32.MaxValue, but please don't spawn two billion waves. That's mean). But you can't skip numbers, in waves or groups. The ACR will start counting at 1 and grab things until it doesn't find a number.

So...

• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_1_1 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_2_1 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_4_1 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny
• DEF_QST_WAVE_SPAWN_5_1 = abr_cr_ve_centi_tiny

This is only two waves. But the builder probably wants four, and could get that by changing waves 4 and 5 to waves 3 and 4.

For builders planning things-- the quest is failed if an enemy creature enters the defense trigger when there are no PCs in that trigger (so you could tool a very harsh defense quest where no one may cross this line by making the trigger a narrow line that PCs can't stand in, and you can make a more-relaxed "stand here and fight!" type of quest by making the trigger large and chunky and occupying a lot of space).

And the quest lasts until it checks for a wave to spawn and doesn't find one. So the total time between tripping the trigger and success, if the point is successfully defended, is (initial delay) + ((number of waves + 1) * (wave delay)).

Big Fat Bags of Loot

Again, quest summary and what we're doing...

• Arc Step 0: The PC hasn't heard of the job
• Arc Step 1: The PC has been told to talk to the mercenary
• Arc Step 2: The PC has talked to the mercenary, and has information to report
• Arc Step 3: The PC has reported back to the inn keeper with information from the mercenary.
• Arc Step 4: The PC has found the centipede den
• Arc Step 5: The PC has reported back and been asked to kill a handful of centipedes to reduce the threat
• Kill Step 2: Has Killed 1 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 3: Has Killed 2 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 4: Has Killed 3 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 5: Has Killed 4 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 6: Has Killed 5 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 7: Has Killed 6 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 8: Has Killed 7 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 9: Has Killed 8 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 10: Has Killed 9 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 11: Has Killed 10 of 10 Centipedes
• Kill Step 12: Has turned in the centipede murder
• Arc Step 6: Eldata tells the PCs that the killing of a few centipedes made everything worse, and asks them to contain the threat.
• Arc Step 7: PC has tripped a bounty in the centipede lair and slain a slightly-larger centipede
• Arc Step 8: PC has held the entrance to the den against swarming centipedes
• Arc Step 9: PC has pushed back into the corridor where the centipedes charged
• Arc Step 10: PC has taken the pit that the centipedes were crawling out of
• Arc Step 11: PC has returned to Eldata, and been asked to find and kill the really big one.
• Arc Step 12: PC has killed one of the kinda big ones between civilization and the really big one.
• Arc Step 13: PC has killed the really big one.
• Arc Step 14: PC has returned to Eldata, and somewhere in these 14 steps did enough stuff to justify some good (for a level 1) gear, which they picked from a list.

Again, previous posts are assumed to be giving you a lot of background here. So the first thing I want to draw attention to is how much XP PCs are likely to get for doing this quest:

• Skill Check w/ Drunken Mercenary: 0 - 10xp
• Returning to Eldata with information: 10 xp
• Finding the Centipede Lair: 15 xp
• Killing 10 centipedes: 10 xp (combat, no loot)
• Returning victorious from centipede slaughter: 20 xp
• Defense Quest and a series of bounties: 70 xp (combat, no loot)
• Report Back victorious: 25 xp
• Kill the Boss: 5 xp
• Final Turnin: 20 xp
• Total XP for this: ~185xp

So, for level 1s, we usually want to drop about 1.25 * XP in loot to keep them reasonably on track. Which is about 230. You tend to be able to nudge up values a -little- bit if you're dropping items instead of gold (as selling them means that take-home wealth is half the quest reward, so that won't break things). So I'm calling it 250 in gear for payment here-- Eldata wouldn't have a bunch of cash, but she might have just... stuff... that she got while trying to collect tabs. She tends bar in a frontierey place. Perhaps not expected, but it makes a kind of... very D&Dey... sense.

So OE gives us a perfectly-good script to make someone in a conversation give the PC an item-- but for this kind of reward, it's important to -not- act on every party member. If any of these are set to All Party, then the first person in party picks a reward and everyone is stuck with it. But maybe the wizard learned his lesson, and wants that fortitude ring, and the tank says "Man, screw this chain shirt. I'm only wearing it for lack of starting gold and I wanted a longbow-- gimme that banded armor!"

So, new action lines-- ga_give_item, and then the Resource Name of the item in the sTemplate field, and 1 (or however many you want to spawn-- if it was arrows, maybe 20 or 50 would be a better number). More than one action line if there's lots to give. Make -sure- that you advance the quest state on the same node as when you give awards. If you give loot on a different conversation node either it's an earlier node (and you're exploitable) or a later node (and you're going to screw players out of their rewards).

Residual Repeatable

Now, if you're thinking about making sure that all of the work you've done gets play, and if you want to encourage people to work in groups if they find people who need to do the quest they just did, what you can do is add a repeatable onto the end that they can pick up and get a little something for their participation.

Now, this is very simple setup-- it's just like the setup we had in step 5, but we want the arc to be on 14 (the post-rewarded quest state) and the _kill quest to be on 12. Then we set the _kill quest back to 1. But to do this, you need to set the override flag on the quest.

Because the state was 12, we have to tell the ACR that we know we're setting a quest backward, and that's OK-- which is what that flag is for. And then we just let the existing centipedes carry the quest up to 11. So we have a different conversation node for arc = 14 and kill = 12, where we give some little niblet of reward (like 15 gold and 10 xp).