SirGog's Quest Creation Contest - with prizes :-)

[sirgog]

Having seen the interest in MysticTheurge's excellent Quest Creator forum game ( http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=138786 ), I've decided to run one of my own.

Where MysticTheurge's creator is a collaborative effort, where everyone votes within significant restrictions to shape the quest as it comes together bit by bit, this contest is different. This is a far more individual effort, and I'm offering substantial prizes to the highest-placed entry that comes from a player on my server (Khyber).

This is a contest to design a complete quest or complete wilderness encounter area. You have the freedom to design whatever you want - a very long low level quest, an over-the-cap raid party explorer zone, or a stand-alone level 9 quest to aid the level climb from 7 to 10. Whatever you want.

My next posts will contain info on the sort of information that you will need to put into a complete entry. But to get things started, those considering entering should post a synopsis of the quest you have in mind. This should contain a little on the party's motivation, some of the foes they will encounter, and a little on the 'feel' of the quest. For example:

"Infiltrate the lair of the kobolds in the Waterworks sewer. Find out about the fate of two prisoners, rescue them if possible, and slay key leaders of the kobolds to ensure that they cannot menace Stormreach again."

OR

"Explore the Orchard of the Macabre, a wilderness area flooded with undead and human cultists of the Black Abbot. Defeat as many of the Abbot's forces as you can, and discover any points of interest which may contain lore or treasure that can help you defeat the Abbot later."

OR

"Navigate the maze-like Inferno of the Damned. Use portals to travel between copies of the same dungeon in the realm of the living and the hellish realm of the dead. Slay four Fire Elementals, then find their spirits in the hellish side of the dungeon, slay their undead counterparts there, then engage Cinnis, the greatest of the undead fire elementals in combat and vanquish him".


Contest Rules:

Entry: Anyone with a forum account can enter. Entries must be in this thread. Entries close in 4 weeks (Monday April 7th, 5pm my time - Sydney, Australia timezone)

Judging: If there are ten or fewer entries, I will open it up to a vote between all of them. If more than ten people enter, myself and any other judges I appoint (PM me if interested) will shortlist six entries (not including judge entries), and then open it up to a vote on the forums. Judges (including myself) can enter the contest and are automatically shortlisted, but cannot win prizes.

Prizes: (Note: These are ONLY available to players on Khyber. If first place is taken by someone with no toons on Khyber, the prize will pass down to second place and so on. I'll be entering - but if my entry wins, prizes will also pass down. Also, if a small number of people enter and this falls flat, I reserve the right to reduce/change/withdraw prizes)

First Place: Your choice of:
1) 250k PP
2) A smiting rapier (sadly, this rapier is Vicious as well... +2 Vicious Rapier of Smiting)
3) 25 Major Mneumonic Enhancement potions
4) A pair of +1 Holy Burst Dwarven Axes of Righteousness
5) A pair of +1 Weakening Longswords of Enfeebling
6) One Tome of Legend piece (whichever one I have in the bank, can't remember)

Second Place: Your choice of one of the remaining prizes above.


Final note
If you don't like the idea of this contest, please feel free to PM me, but don't clutter up the thread saying "I hate quest design contests" or "You shouldn't make a contest, Mystic is already doing that". There's 200 new threads per day on these boards, if you don't like quest design contests, feel free to look at one of the other 199 that may interest you. And this contest is very very different from Mystic's one. By the way, saying "OMG this thread is teh suxor!!!" only bumps it anyway, defeating your purpose

[sirgog]

Information required for each entry:

Note - this is required by the end of the contest, you can put up an outline of your quest with less than this, but you will need fill this in later to be in contention for prizes

Basics
Quest name
Quest level
Party size (standard or raid group)
Quest overview. For example: "Infiltrate the lair of the kobolds in the Waterworks sewer. Find out about the fate of two prisoners, rescue them if possible, and slay key leaders of the kobolds to ensure that they cannot menace Stormreach again."


Map Info
Substantial description of quest map. This can be done in several ways, for example in text (example is The Shadow Crypt):

"15 rooms, all square and 100ftx100ft, 3 each colored red, blue, green and yellow, one of each color room is an underwater maze (no enemies), one of each of two colors is dominated by a pyramid (gentle incline, climbable at full speed), one of each of the other two colours are fairly empty but contain four fountains, and the last of each color is a maze of see-through walls (closed portcullises). The remaining two rooms form a 100ftx100ft entry hall (with two rest, two res shrines) and a steeply-upward inclined corridor leading to the final fight, which also occurs in a 100ftx100ft room. Doors do not function rationally - each door teleports you to a random other doorway somewhere in the quest. Upon generating the instance, where each doorway teleports to is fixed"

Alternately, an attached image can be posted (these MUST be linked to Photobucket or a similar site). If 3-D mapping is important to your design (as it will be for my entry), consider using Google Sketchup and post relevant screenshots.


Objectives, Foes and Rewards

First, state the quest objectives. These can be as simple as "Slay 20 Hobgoblins", or more complex.

Example quest objectives:
1) Obtain the Offering of Blood
2) Defeat the three Aspects of Vulkoor
3) Deliver the Offering of Blood to Calryx, in the uppermost levels


1) Defend the Library for 15 minutes until reinforcements arrive.
2) Defeat Basthul
Failure: Coyle must not be slain. (On failure, the party is booted out of the quest)


Or for an encounter area:
Rare Encounter: Defeat Agrid Charros, Elf Pyromancer.
Explorer: Find the Gate of the Thirteenth Eclipse.
Slayer: Destroy 10/25/50/100/200/400/750/1500/3000 Doom Kittens.


Second, detail foes encountered (even if this is apparent from earlier questions). Give details on any and all named foes. For example (The Shadow Crypt):
The first room consists of a fight with 8 wraiths, including one orange-named one. The underwater maze rooms contain no enemies. The pyramid and fountain rooms all contain flocks of 6-8 Phase Spiders, possibly including orange-named ones which award extra XP if slain. The other colored rooms each contain 8-10 Wraiths, again with a chance of orange named ones. The corridor leading to the final room contains 4 each of wraiths and phase spiders, plus an orange-named Human Rogue. The final room consists of three battles - one against a red-named Spectre of Calla (spellcasting red-named spectre), followed by the Shadow Council (4 red-named Wraith arcane casters), followed by Brother Nerezza, a high-level red-named vampire fighter with the inherent abilities of a vampire to dominate foes. (this is from memory, may not be 100% accurate)


Thirdly, detail optional objectives, including foes encountered pursuing them. For example (Gianthold Tor):
Slay the white dragon and its giant protector - after completing the quest, the party must continue into new areas of the fortress, battle orcs, giants and giant skeletons until reaching the final room, where they must battle a purple-named White Dragon and a purple-named Stone Giant. The giant is a high-level divine caster which frequently casts Greater Dispelling, Symbol of Fear and Cometfall, as well as engaging in melee combat. If either the dragon or giant is slain, it is automatically returned to life (as per True Resurrection) unless the other foe is slain within 10 seconds.

Finally, detail rewards. For example:
After the battle to protect the Crimson Spider Queen, the party receives one level 16 chest. After the final battle, the party receives another level 16 chest. If the party has slain more than 80% of the ogres in the dungeon, the final room contains one more level 16 chest. If the party has killed none of the Crimson Foot spiders throughout the entire quest, they receive one level 17 chest. Chests scale up normally on hard and elite. XP award: base value 7000 on normal. End reward: Standard level 16 choices. Favor: The Twelve 8/16/24. I'm probably wrong on the XP there.

Please try to keep it balanced - an entry with "Slay the Kobold Warrior that is guarding a trio of level 19 chests" will not be considered.


Details of traps, hazards and other effects.
Detail any other effects that the Devs would need to know, were they to code your quest. For example:

(Shadow Crypt): After the party have been in the quest for 30, 45 and 60 minutes, DM text taunts the players with messages like "Oh, come on, it's only a little maze - nothing for an adventurer of your renown" or "I do have plans for my evening after I finish you off, so do hurry up".
(The Shroud): Foes encountered within The Shroud benefit from the Mandate of Shavarath. This grants immunity to charm and banishment effects, and improved saves.
(Prison of the Planes): Once the Prison Rooms have been activated and are coterminious with their respective planes, the rooms are impacted by minor planar effects - for instance, casting Fire spells in the Risia room results in only half damage.
(Waterworks 1): The first corridor and several later rooms contain energy traps. These deal about 10 damage (30 hard, 75 elite) and fire multiple times if not disabled. All can be easily spotted and disabled with no failure chance by a Rogue with basic level-appropriate gear, easily avoided by players with basic twitch skills, and can be disabled without the Rogue having to cross them.
(The Cursed Crypt): Several rooms contain falling-floor traps. Rogues can disable these as they could any other trap - if even one party memeber steps on these sections of floor, they fall out permanently.

[sirgog]

(reserved to list entrants, entry synopses for ease of voting)

[sirgog]

Synopsis of my entry:


Quest Name: An Icy Heart

Quest Level: 17
Party Size: Raid
Quest Overview:
A cabal of powerful frost giants seeks to bring eternal winter to Xen'drik. They have seized Isoleta, an ancient giant fortress, initially designed as a planar orrery, and there, with the aid of the renegade silver dragon Goltarrath, they have performed the rituals necessary to conjure a colossal portal to Risia.
The raid party must approach the ancient orrery through a frozen tundra, infiltrate Isoleta, isolate and kill as many of the Cabal members as they can, and then confront and destroy Goltarrath and any remaining Cabal members in an epic final confrontation. As they so, they must cope with the unnatural icy chill of Risia, and survive the onslaught of frost giants, ice paraelementals, tundra gnolls, the progeny of Goltarrath, and traps and guardians (including Mithril Golems) left behind to guard Isoleta by the giants of old.
This is a combat-focused raid. Although there are puzzles, traps and other such features, these are a minor part of the quest. In addition, this raid offers multiple routes to completion - you can rush straight to the climactic encounter, in which case the quest is short but extremely tough, or you can complete optional objectives to make the final battle more manageable, as per The Crucible.

[KIELBASEE555]

quest lvl 16 or higher
objective save all or % of most of the people.
quest location in any grave yard area, in any of the house's.
concept-- stop the pleage

start out in a large quest zone area.
you have about 100 to 500 NPC's all over the zone.
some where in the midle of the zone some evil wizards have the capability to infect NPC's to become the dark bone skellitons.
its not fast, but if your team lets it do so. you could watch all 100 - 500 NPC's become agressive dark bones looking to kill your party team.
run around and kill off all the wizzards who are infecting any/all NPC's and your team as well. I belive that the protection from evil spell is not used very often. make the PFE spell needed to keep your team from becoming dark bones. kill all enimy's and save all or most of the NPC's as well. maybee in higher spells you even could be able to cure and rezz dark bone infected NPC's.

[Fartzalot]

Defend Stormreach Fort

Open level no entry requirements. Up to raid size parties.

Stormreach has started a colony on a large previously undiscovered island, built a fort with teleporter. Bad luck in siting the colony and the fort has placed it in the middle of a devil spawn pit of immense proportions. The whole island was a key part of the devil plan to destroy stormreach that resulted in the loss of the market tent. There are spawn portals scattered around the island, which need to be shutdown. But this is not easily possible as each portal needs to be shutdown within a few mins of each other or they all fire up again. There will be caves, tunnels, infested mines, corrupted forests with spawn portals. Some are heavily defended and require elite troops to get to and shutdown others are lightly defended and can be dealt with by training adventurers.

XP and loot will be based on party member level and spawn portal level the party controls.

Just one instance with multiple parties in play. Devils and monsters spawn in sufficient numbers to be very cahallenging. Mages that raise skeles, wraiths lead devil groups. If the spawn points are not cleared and shutdown their numbers grow till they have an army and they storm the fort.

A system wide message to alert players and they can tele in and man the walls.

For the storming of the walls no chests of course but a chance of consumables or collectables lootable from the corpses.

Attacks should occur at different times so that all players have a chance to defend Stormreach Fort. Parties would need to explore outside the walls between attacks to mop up, and discover the location of the spawn points, and plan the coordination of the portal shutdown.


The idea is to allow lowbies to get where the action is and interact with higher level chars. Sometimes the lowbies will need escorting past dangerous spawn portals to get to a portal they can manage. A high level party will travel with them to get them past the dangerous portal then they return to their portal of choice. Multi party cooperation would be req. Lowbies will get fried when they stumble on a strong portal. While high level parties will easily despatch a portal but have poor loot and XP for the trouble as it was too low a level for them.

[Artagon]

Quest Name: Rescue Goodblade!

Quest Level: 3
Party Size: Solo/Party
Quest Overview:
Well-known Entrepenuer and Coin Lord, Gerard Goodblade, has gone missing!! Last seen at Madame Yeleneth's pleasure palace in the marketplace, he has been missing for several days now.
Adventurers begin by tracing Goodblades' path through the pleasure palace, first disabling the guards at the door.. (passing a number of scantily clad NPC women and men in luxurious settings, hot-tubs, etc..) They will need to question several bystanders to find out which room he used when he arrived, at which point Madame Yeleneth will unlock the door and let them in. Observant adventurers will notice a switch hidden behind a tapestry. Pulling the switch opens a door which opens into the dark back-alleys of the marketplace (at night). Adventurers will encounter several pickpockets and perhaps a general vendor or two as they wind through the alleys to come upon goodblade huddled in a shanty in fear for his life! Apparently, the 'Sword of Tesyus' really IS a magical weapon, stolen from one Chief Yarkuch, and he wants it back! The party now holds off an ambush, and finds a black-market magician to create protection for Goodblade. Goodblade is pleased, and offers as reward to tell the secrets of the sword,one of the three items they retreived for him on arrival to stormreach, or a random item. If they choose the secrets, the sword becomes a +1 elemental longsword of their choice, the three items are a cask (trinket) of CLW 3/day, +1 transmuting returning dagger, and a scroll (trinket) of haste 1/day.

Approximate XP value, 2k on normal.