Thoughts: Rupees, ranks, skills, professions, items & quests

I'm merely throwing around ideas here, and would like some input on how this all sounds--whether it's good or bad. What I appreciate most is someone suggesting how my ideas could be better if they were different in some way.

It's apparently been established that rupees and ranks will be earned on HC, and that skills or certain items can be learned through the expending of ranks. However, it has not been established how exactly these rupees and ranks will be earned, so I'm here to propose this, uh... Quest system, I suppose you could call it.

A quest in terms of this is roughly determined by setting a goal and meeting that goal. Maybe you're trying to master a spell, perhaps you're going out to slay monsters for their hide to be used in the craft of armor, venture into the depths of a dungeon to recover a precious artifact, hold a political debate with your opponent in running for office, deliver precious goods (or intercept such goods from being deliver), or even just walk across Castle Town to meet up with someone. Virtually anything can be a completed quest, so long as (a) a conclusion is reached, regardless of whether you succeed or fail, and (b) it takes at least a few pages of role-playing. These quests will be the main method of earning rupees, ranks, spells, and magic-tier equipment.

A quest proposal may be submitted to a pinned thread... or perhaps a (sub)forum... which... doesn't currently exist. Let's call it the Quest Bureau. You can submit a quest at any time--whether you've started the quest, are in the midst of it, or have already completed it. Submitting a quest sooner allows you to hammer out the details with a judge, while submitting it later prevents you from setting things in stone. (For instance, you may have set out to slay a vampiric creature, but could end up becoming a vampire instead. While either is a reasonable outcome, they have vastly different forms of reward.) You would have to give the quest a name, what it involves, the players and their characters in the party, and the rewards you would expect to receive. A staff member would either then approve the quest, or otherwise declare what prevents it from being a suitable quest. (Rewards are too high, goes against the canon, etc.)

Normally users would make quests for themselves, but quests involved with the storyline somehow could be posted by staff, and may feature rewards beyond the usual.

There isn't a very precise measurement of declaring the "difficulty" of a quest. Although irl, holding an interesting-yet-idle conversation would generally be easier than slaying a Moblin, the opposite is often true in writing. In the same vein, post count and length should not determine rewards, so long as the length of posts is reasonable. (Needless to say, short quality posts are better than lengthy, rambling ones.) To this end, it is deemed all quests should have a very roughly similar level of difficulty. If a quest has higher-than-normal rewards, that can be justified by giving it certain prerequisites (which often may involve completing other quests beforehand), making it a special plot quest posted by staff, or giving it costs in the form of ranks or rupees. However, I advocate that no quest has more than two levels of quest-prerequisites... by which I mean, to start and complete a quest, you should not have needed to complete more than two quests beforehand.

Though exact rewards should be left open to interpretation, there could be a rough five-rank system. Each quest starts with a basic reward of five ranks. If another player's character was added to the party, then the reward would increase five ranks. If the same player's character was added to the party, then the reward would increase by only three ranks, then two ranks with a third character, one more rank with a fourth, and zero after that. The rewards will be split up amongst the party when the quest is finished--how exactly they're split up is decided entirely by the players. Ranks may have to be done out-of-character, but all other rewards could be done in-character.

Anyway, once it's decided how many ranks a quest will earn, one can 'exchange' these ranks for other rewards. A single rank is equivalent to ten rupees. Most common-tier items cost zero ranks. The rank cost of magic-tier items and skills will be listed within the Library (which is another thread that doesn't exist). The cost of such items fluctuates with a character's PWC (with a Wisdom spell costing twice the ranks/rupees to a 2-Wisdom character as a 4-Wisdom character), and some items or skills may not be obtainable if a character's PWC doesn't meet specified criteria.

Sometimes, the cost will be so much that not only will no other ranks be earned from the quest, so the character's own ranks and rupees must be expended for the reward. However, this "exceeding the limit" thing can only be done if ONE reward would exceed the limit. Multiple rewards--such as two rank 3 spells, or a rank 6 spell and 10 rupees--cannot be combined to exceed the limit.

As noted in another thread, a player could submit items and skills to the Library, which they could then put as rewards for their quests. Now then, onto that Library thing.

There would basically be a single pinned thread somewhere listing in alphabetical order all the available skills, and then all the available magic-tier items. The only real difference is that the prior reside (mostly) in the user's head, while the latter are tangible objects. Each item in this listing would have its name, acquisition cost, PWC attribute, fields, and effect. The appearance of an item may be specifically described, but may also be left open to interpretation by role-players.

The acquisition cost of a reward varies with the power of the effect, and often varies with the recipient's PWC. For instance, a Fire spell has the Wisdom attribute, so its rank cost would be affected by the recipient's Wisdom score. The exact cost would be shown for each level of Wisdom in all cases this would apply, but in general:
- 5: 75% of the cost
- 4: 100% of the cost
- 3: 150% of the cost
- 2: 200% of the cost
- 1: 400% of the cost.
A handful of spells or items may not have a PWC attribute however, and thus have a static cost for all characters. I noted in another thread the existence of "rank zero" skills, but I would personally like to advocate against the existence of such skills. Those racial bonuses could instead apply to skills that would be rank 1 assuming 4 in every area of PWC.

To give an example of an item's fields, take the Fire Rod. Its fields might be: Destruction, Fire, Magic Item, Rod. The Fire spell might have: Destruction, Fire, Spell. The Fairy spell could have: Fairy, Transformation, Spell. Bombs could have: Explosive, Tool, Ammo. Fields are, essentially, standardized tags. This would aid in, for instance, an item that some affects all Fire spells, or to aid a class which specialized in Transformation spells. Perhaps it would even be possible for a Regular-level character to learn a skill that gives them +1 PWC to all costs of spells or items of a field in which that character specializes (with some sort of downside perhaps, such as -1 PWC to all spells or items that lack the field). Naturally, there would be a post in this Library thread (likely the first or second post) that lists all existent fields. Naturally, more fields could be added over time, and suggested by members. For instance, someone might want to make a Deku-centric class that draws power from plants or items attributed to Dekus, like Deku Nuts or Deku Shields.

I would be more than willing to run this Library thing. It's actually right up my alley.

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Oh, and quests would pretty much be graded by staff in a manner similar to how dungeons were on HS, I suppose.

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On that note, I'd like to introduce Professions. While I imagine this system would go unused by most players, Chaos James showed some interest in it. Essentially a character can hold a profession, a trade, or a skill that may or may not be used to raise some cash. Cooking, blacksmithing, political debate (kinda iffy on that one), etc. Alternatively, they could hold a regular job that didn't center around a skill--such as Post Officer, Town Crier, or Waitress--although such jobs could also be open to the interpretation of involving a skill. Virtually any trainable trade could be used for this--even basic survival skills--although some may not earn all the normal Profession rewards.

I would like to note now that any character can hold a regular job, like Genzo's old Deku Barber, without having to go through this system. However, they wouldn't receive the benefits of the Profession system.

Earning this profession in the first place would have to be earned through a quest reward, taking a full five ranks of the reward for said quest. (However, there is a way for a character to be a blacksmith or town crier or such--and getting the benefits from it--without having to complete a quest. More on that later.) Earning the profession places the user at the first level of whatever profession they've chosen--a First Level Chef, or Blacksmith, for instance--out of ten possible levels.

Moving your profession up a level requires a quest to be completed. Advancing to level two requires two ranks, level three requires three ranks, and so forth, until mastering the profession by advancing to level ten costs ten ranks. (From earning the profession to mastering it, that's 59 ranks total.) On a side-note, one cannot advance from the first level to the third level by combining the rank costs of levels two and three.

If it is a money-earning profession, such as cooking or blacksmithing, then its level functions directly as a means of making rupees. For each quest your character completes, they earn an extra sum of rupees equivalent to 5 times their Profession level. A beginner only earns 5 rupees per quest, while a master of their trade earns an extra 50. This earning represents the average amount of labor a character does between quests, and thus does not need to be role-played specifically into each quest (although it certainly could be).

A single character can take on multiple professions, but they can only gain the rupee bonus from one profession per quest.

If it is a crafting profession, characters are able to craft magic-tier items starting at the fifth level, by completing a quest of their choosing. At level five, they can craft rank zero or rank one items; Lv6 allows them to craft rank two; Lv7 rank three; Lv8 rank four, Lv9 rank five, and Lv10 virtually all items. Crafting an item takes half the materials (ranks/rupees) of questing for it normally, rounded down, but now falling below 1. So long as the cost of crafting the items doesn't exceed the reward limit, multiple items can be crafted in a single quest. How exactly the quest goes about is completely up to you, but obviously in must entail crafting the item (whether it be gathering the materials by slaying monsters, shopping around Castle Town for the items and running into mischief, or whatever the case may be).

There may be benefits for other non-crafting professions as well, such as a politician being able to affect the laws of a town, or a mailman being able to manipulate the system somehow. Generally, however, a profession should only have one steadfast and growing benefit aside from earning extra rupees.

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You may have seen make reference to "Magic-tier" items and "Common-tier" items. On Mirror Shield, I used a basic tier system to define the rough value of an item. There were God-tier items, Magic-tier items, and Common-tier items.

God-tier included things that were definitely one-of-a-kind canonically, or ridiculously powerful. Overpowered effects included the ability to make an individual effectively invincible, undetectable, or invisible; or had an "undodgeable" and "unblockable" offensive effect; was capable of widespread destruction; etc. For instance, the Master Sword, Din's Fire, Majora's Mask, and the Magic Cape were all considered god-tier for different reasons. These items were effectively unobtainable under any circumstances (as I believe they should be on MC).

Magic-tier items included most magical items; devices with complex mechanical components; explosive items; items which somehow enhance the user's power; anything which induces warping; organic items such as animals (although mundane plants would be common); and most magical songs, such as Song of Storms. A crossbow, a fire rod, and bombs are all considered magic-tier. They are considered valuable, and need to be earned somehow. On HC, such items would be listed alongside skills in the library, and would need to be earned through quests.

Common-tier items roughly included anything which could reasonably exist within medieval Europe, including certain "modern" things like Pictograph Boxes; mundane plants; Hyoi Pears, and other simple items within the Zelda series which are common and exist for simple practicality. Iron Boots, a Deku Shield, swords of all varieties, and so on were all considered common. On HC, I would also advocate that mundane vehicles and residential property be common-tier, though I fear some might disagree with that notion. Anyway, these items would not have a cost within the role-play, so long as they were obtained in a reasonable fashion (e.g., taking a weapon from a slain Stalfos, or buying a house before or during the role-play, but not suddenly owning an entire city or something). The sole exception to this is Picori, whose Lost & Found racial ability lets them find common-tier items in unusual places.

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So, up until this point you might be thinking that ranks and rupees are rather similar. They are both earned on quests, and both expended on quests. The only real difference is that rupees are tangible and are worth 10% of ranks, and they're tangible. You know, I'm thinking the same thing. I'm kinda considering if rupees and ranks should be one in the same... but if they are ranks, then they aren't really tangible and can't be given to other characters within the role-play, so I suppose they would have to be rupees.

On that note, I would like to say that a character's listed rupee amount would not necessarily how many rupees they have in their pocket. Rather, it's their 'adventuring fund.' They may in actuality be quite rich, but only use this many rupees for their questing and such. This primarily allows a character to role-play giving an NPC rupees, or flicking a rupee into a pond, without necessarily needing to sacrifice anything in order to do that. (Doing so is really just punishing creative role-playing, it feels like.) As such, the listed rupee amount would only need to be spent on quests, or purchasing items or services from other player-characters (such as crafted items).

But, I don't know, maybe someone could think up a pretty good motivation to keep rupees and ranks separate?

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EDIT: Oh, I almost forgot. All new characters should be able to start with the rewards of at least one completed quest. If a character starts with a 3 or higher in Wisdom, they gain ranks equal to their Wisdom which may be spent immediately and only on Wisdom Spells in the form of quest rewards. Both variants of Hylians gain an additional two points to do this with Wisdom spells, regardless of their Wisdom score. Gerudo gain three additional points to do this with Power and Courage skills, regardless of their PWC.

Anyway, my hope is that the system leaves a lot of open space and grants something akin to delicious level-ups, but doesn't encourage grinding too much nor makes newbies completely useless compared to someone who has a comparable level of role-play skill but has been here much longer. A character doesn't become all that more powerful, really, but merely gains a wider array of capabilities. A very small amount staff-posted quests that DO make the character significantly more powerful (akin to acquiring a dragon mount on HS, or learning a high-rank skill) could be reserved for Regulars and Veterans, perhaps.

So, yeah, those are my thoughts. What are yours?

Re: Thoughts: Rupees, ranks, skills, professions, items & qu

Just finished reading it, and it seems fairly well thought out and a great solution to the 'grinding' on HS. Great job on this Guy!

I think rupees and ranks should be seperate, rupees are more a currency to be able to buy items, trade with other members, buy stuff at shops, etc. Ranks should be for skills and spells and such that you learn over time, kind of like experience points. Would that work? It's kind of what you have already, just a little different. I think we should make a sort of HC Beta Forum and try this out with a few skills and such defined to see if it's as amazing as it looks. Kind of like testing out a Game or Campaign before selling it.

Re: Thoughts: Rupees, ranks, skills, professions, items & qu

I like a lot of your ideas here. As for the Quest System, I like the idea of having members being able to make up their own quests, to me thats great. I do also want to have staff created quests that members can take up as well. Say for instance, that there is a notorious thief in Hyrule Castle-Town and the Hyrule Castle Guards have issued a wanted notice for him, the wanted notice would be posted and the first member to, I guess "sign up" for it, would have the first shot at completing it. They can do this however they want, letting their creativity shine, and at the end it would be "graded" and a reward would be given. There will also be story driven quests etc...

Another quest Idea is for dungeons. I don't really want it to be like HS where there was a set of dungeons that everyone went through and cleared them of evil, the mosters return, clear them of evil, and it goes on and on. Instead, I want to have random original dungeons meaning a staff made quest will pop up saying that evil has set in the Lost Woods, a description will be written for it, and a list of possible rewards will be posted. The dungeons will be for 3-5 players, and all of them must be separate members (making this more of a group quest). They would complete it, it would be graded, and they would be given rewards accordingly.

One thing that I don't like as much is the way you said quest rewarded ranks would work. I don't think they should have to spend them right away, I would rather have them be able to stock up on them. Now this doesn't mean they can go on a spending frenzy, I still want the spells and abilities to be hard to learn. Being able to purchase a spell with ranks right after the quest is completed doesn't really fit in with what we talked about, meaning the way spells would be learned (through an actual process, not just "poof you can shoot fire from your hands!") I would like the ranks to be built up also because this would allow the purchase of more prestigious spells, or more difficult spells. Take the fairy spell for instance, this is a spell that can be quite useful, allowing you to shrink, fly around, and do fairy stuff (lol), This could require a Wisdom of 3 and say, 30 (random number) ranks to be able to start on the quest to obtain this spell. I don't know, those are my thoughts on that matter.

As for the professions, I love the idea of them having benefits outside of rupees that have effect on the world. Thats a great idea.

And as for the rupees and ranks systems, rupees I would rather have for more of a shop purchase thing etc... I want, for fun, to be able to have members purchase real estate from say Hyrule Castle Town and have a mansion there, or buy an area to open a shop. This would take rupees, as you said, tangible substance to be given to the government or whoever owned the property. Also, I'm not sure I like the idea of ranks purchasing items, I'd much rather have these be bought with rupees, meaning that if some shop owner had a rare magical item, they are going to charge a lot of rupees to hand it over to you, instead of you just getting it because you did something on a quest. What I'm saying is I'd rather have the tangible rupees for the tangible things such as items, and the ranks be for more character building things like spells etc...

So yeah, those are my ideas. Agree, disagree?

Re: Thoughts: Rupees, ranks, skills, professions, items & qu

I like the stockpiling and requiring quests to learn spells and abilities even after you've gotten the ranks. I just think that rupees should be used for most things, the main currency on the site. Ranks should be more akin to XP. It makes sense for them to be used for skills and abilities and having more skill at your profession, but not so much magic-tier items or exchanging them for rupees. I like being able to find common-tier items in RP reasonably, but this should only be to an extent. Making everything that isn't complex or magical free cheapens everything. For magic-tier items we could employ a D&Desque system where an item has a base cost and then varying costs for each enchantment added on that grow exponentially as more and more enchantments are added in addition to a cost for the enchantment itself. IE if this was the library of items and enchantments:

Sword:
Base Price: 10 rupees.
+1 enchantment: 40 rupees.
+2 enchantments: 60 rupees
+3 enchantments: 80 rupees.

Fire:
Mild heat: 20 rupees
Exploding: 40 rupees
Inferno: 80 rupees

Spatial:
Lightweight: 90 rupees



Then a sword with mild heat, exploding, and lightweight would be: 10 base price + 40 + 60 + 80 for the 3 enchantments, and then 20 rupees for mild heat, + 40 for exploding + 90 for lightweight. Then all that is added together to make an exploding light sword for only 340 rupees (but exploding an octorok... priceless)

Re: Thoughts: Rupees, ranks, skills, professions, items & qu

Magic-Tier objects could require both a rupee cost and a certain rank level or some PWC amount. The town idiot shouldn't be able to purchase an intricate magical item by just saving ranks and rupees up for weeks. They'd need to have, say, 3 levels in wisdom in order to understand HOW to use the item.

My two and a half cents.

Re: Thoughts: Rupees, ranks, skills, professions, items & qu

I completely agree with you.

Re: Thoughts: Rupees, ranks, skills, professions, items & qu

Alright. This damn board kept giving me errors earlier, but let's see if this post will go through now...

Thanks.

In the system I outlined, they're both used only as a currency to pay for expensive quests, or receive from quests. The only significant difference is that rupees have a tangible form and can thus be given or traded to other player-characters, whereas ranks cannot. Items and skills are effectively treated the same--it makes sense, considering the Fire spell and Fire Rod both have the same end effect. If you would rather have a spell do something that an item does, or vice versa, you could usually do it within the confines of this system. Thus, making a separate system for spells and skills (ranks) and items (rupees) as you suggest really seems counter-intuitive to me. They're both just a currency to expend on things you want, so why make them separate? .-. A real-world analog would be like having one kind of money for food, and another kind of money for entertainment. That only makes things needless complex and even frustrating.

You also seem to be implying that we involve some sort of shops--aside from player-characters trading amongst one another--which as of yet have not been mentioned. How would these shops work? What would you buy in them? Shops on HS did not work well at all.

I was under the impression Hyrule Castle was already in a beta stage with a few members getting ready to test the ropes. We could put the system out there, and see how it works. If it doesn't, we can just take it back--it's not like testing a game or a campaign before selling it, because we are not selling anything. Putting the system on this forum would be the same as an open beta, which is what many games--especially free ones--do anyway. Making a separate forum to test it... how would that even work? What would the purpose be? We would only have less people testing it, and would be slowing down the progression of HC.

Well, yes, I assumed dungeon quests would be quite common place. Quests are basically intended to be like HS dungeons, only much more dynamic. Considering the layout of Hyrule spans 40,000 square miles, it would be reasonable I think to create a small location--like a dungeon or an outpost--for the purpose of a single quest and not have the location bear a lasting impression on Hyrule or other characters.

I seem to have miscommunicated something here.

I want rewards for a quest to be roughly comparable and fair, as all quests are to have a similar 'difficulty' level. The use of ranks is just a ruler by which to determine an appropriate reward for a quest. They're not being 'spent' as soon as the quest finishes, as you seem to be implying. If someone wants a quest to give them just five ranks, so they can stock up ranks as you suggested, then they can. If they would rather forgo those five ranks, and instead learn a four-rank spell and ten rupees, then they can do that too. The five-rank rule is only a benchmark to determine what a reward for the typical quest should be; they are not earned and then spent within the quest.

The spell isn't 'purchased' right at the end of the quest, as you said. If someone went on a quest to learn a Fire spell, they would go through the process of learning the spell in the form of a quest. Their reward for that quest would then be that spell, not ranks which would then be immediately spent on the spell. If their reward would be some powerful magical weapon, then their quest would obviously have to entail them acquiring it somehow. The same would apply even if they wanted to obtain 50 rupees. I imagine the only reward which would not have to be explicitly earned in a quest is ranks (so an extra rank makes good filler for, say, a quest in which someone just goes out to obtain a four-rank item).

I was intentionally trying to avoid the 'purchase' of 'more prestigious spells, or more difficult spells' as you mentioned, since that encourages grinding and unbalanced characters, which all of my suggestions so far have been trying to avoid. Encouraging grinding leads to shoddy posts that don't aim to immerse the player into the world and have fun, but just accomplish X goal with the least amount of time and effort to obtain X reward. That was HS's greatest flaw. I intended for this system to reward the players with a wide array of similarly-tiered spells and items, not a handful of amazing godly spells as you seem to desire. I want a relatively new character to be able to do battle with a veteran and have a decent chance of coming out on top, which I imagine any reasonable person would want in a role-play.

What I tried to create was incentive to keep questing, but not to the extent that posts became rushed, nor that newbies who've only completed one or two quests wouldn't be completely powerless compared to veterans who've completed dozens. What you suggest with these high-cost spells throws mud in the face of a great deal of what my suggestions have been try to achieve.

The idea behind finding common-tier items is that it people do it reasonably. That should be obvious. It made more sense on Mirror Shield, I guess, where it was assumed all role-players were actually competent and no one was a douchebag who thought they could punch through steel with a single Power Bracelet.

What. No. What about bombs? Fire Rod? Deku Nuts and the Cane of Somaria are completely different, and don't adhere to that system at all. That's not to mention I imagine most weapons, if they were Zelda-esque, wouldn't have more than one or two related magical effects.



...Well, something that I seemed to not make clear is that this system specifically does not imply simple purchasing of items or spells to occur. Spells, skills, magic-tier items, and just about anything else you can earn (aside from perhaps property or common-tier items) would be earned through quests and not shops. In this system, ranks and rupees as currency would serve only two real purposes: paying for quests with relatively hard-to-earn rewards (anything with a rank cost more than 5, usually), or giving them to another player-character in exchange for some item they quested for or crafted. Needless to say, I agree with Adaar's sentiments, and am taking them a bit further.

Adding traditional shops seems like it would upset the balance to me. I personally disagree with needing to "purchase" or earn residences, especially if they would be expensive in comparison to a spell or magic-tier item (a residence would obviously be less useful). However, I do agree that mounts or other forms of transportation should need to be earned. A horse for instance, I would imagine as a rank 3 or 4 magic-tier item with no PWC attribute.

I do not agree with keeping rupees and ranks separate. They are essentially one in the same, only the prior is tangible and the latter is not. I still believe it would be best to have only rupees and forget ranks, just to make things more streamlined and easy to understand. Of course, we could I suppose just combine them into something else entirely...

So what you're saying is, for example... a swords crafter should be able to make swords more effectively than a general blacksmith? I can agree with that, although the Profession's level-up crafting system would need to be reworked accordingly.