Delivery Office

[Harvin]

I would like to introduce an idea that was realised in a Mud I played in the past.

Namely, in that mud, there were bounty hunter offices in each city. There, one could declare a player to be "hunted" and pay an amount of money he\she thought would encourage other players to finalise his\her offer. Of course, those offices were also the places one could go to and check, who was currently "on" the bounty list. To prove that a bounty hunter completed a mission, he\she was to deliver the head of a hunted victim as a token. Then he\she would be paid exactly the amount as it was stated in the offer.

However, as this idea seems to be highly invigorating for a PlayerKilling (although many Underdark characters would probably gratefully accept that), therefore I would like to change and expand the possibilities of such system.

Mainly, I wish not to focus on arranging character death simply by paying a bounty hunter - in fact, I thought of rearranging the whole "pay for demise" concept into "pay and wait for your order to be realised". A great example is Express Deliveries, which concerns quest deliveries, not, however, character-declared deliveries - and here is where the concept comes into play - the new idea regards enabling players to make delivery orders on a normal, gaming basis, not just a quest basis. Let's consider an example:

"A cook from Waterdeep has the urge of obtaining a lemon for his lemon juice. So he goes into the 'Delivery Office' and declares that he would pay 1 gold to whoever delivers it first. So he gives 1 gold to the Delivery Office clerk and checks everyday the Office in hope that someone has accepted the task and fulfilled his\her part. Meanwhile a so-called "delivery hunter" enters the Office, presents such lemon and redeems his 'bounty' in exchange."

I hope I presented it clearly.
I am aware such implementation would certainly shrink some players' willingness to travel to distant places, while others might feel encouraged to take up a long journey.
Now, I come to the conclusion that it is better to leave the things as they are.
Nevertheless, I believe that the presented concept will spring new ideas to the readers.
Thank you for your time.

[Selveem]

That's actually a very interesting concept.

I like it and with some builder magic, it's even feasible.

[Kallias]

I like it. Player initiated quests.

[Harvin]

Now it occurs to me, that one can always roleplay and pay another player for his\her request. That agreement, however, exists only between the two players - others do not even know such work was even openly offered.

[Kallias]

You could always just use the bulletin boards, but the logistics with certain players and certain times can cause conflict. I also think it would be neat to give/receive glory through the system.

[Raona]

I'm sorry to say I'm skeptical - who would offer coin in place of just doing it themselves, at least if the amount of coin was enough that collecting it was even close to the as much work as obtaining the item?

The general idea I think has merit - but I don't see it as sustainable if it relies on players to put in jobs. They can do so now with the notice board system, and few people do. I don't think automating it or making it easier would really help, I'm sorry to say!

Am I missing something?

[Lathlain]

From a technical perspective, I can see difficulties in the 'quest giver' assigning exactly what item they want delivered.

Every different item in the game (there are exceptions, but shh) has a unique vnum - an integer value. To use your example, there could theoretically exist 'a lemon' with a vnum of 5 and 'a zesty lemon' with a vnum of 50. There'd be no way for a user to specify between the two, but what if they don't want a zesty one because it simply isn't fit for purpose? What if someone brings vnum 68 - 'a lemon mousse'?! Tragedy! That's not worth 1g at ALL!

There may be ways to get around this, but I foresee them being a little quirky (eg. manually creating a pre-generated shopping list that the player character can pick from, or relying on the player character to say the -exact- string name of the item they want, and will accept nothing else). Coupled with the fact that we'd have a hard time getting outstanding orders to survive game restarts/copyovers without implementing some very purpose-driven hard code, this could be a pretty massive job to get working!

Please forgive a cynical builder's nay-saying on an idea that's actually very interesting! I just wanted a way to convey that I was scratching my head very seriously on the possibilities The larger part of this idea in its current form would probably have to be implemented with hard code though (for strangers to the notions of hard code and area code, FKMUD only has one current hard coder, as opposed to a small force of area coders).

The obvious alternative would be to have something a little less player-run. For example it would be achievable to create a randomly generated 'market' of sorts that paid for certain items to be delivered until a quota is met. There are already bartering posts in a few towns and cities however, and I'm not honestly sure how different this would be to that.

Wow, this didn't turn out to be half as constructive as I'd hoped it'd be when I started typing. I'll just be quiet now!

[Bellayana]

I think that this type of thing would benefit the players that cannot get on at the same time- Some players and characters are on different timezones and would not hear about each other. If there was a shop set up to get these characters connected it may make the game more interesting. The Bounty Hunting shop I've seen in other muds as well. Player Killing here needs to be set up by intense roleplay and needs a lot of foundation in my opinion and I've learned it is best to talk to the player of the character you are going to try and "kill" or "kidnap" that way they know what is going on. Remember death is very bad, but it doesn't always mean the end of your character in fact it can add some flavor. Overall I like this idea and would love to see something that players can set up, but the board is a tool that is not utilized as much as I'd like to see.