New Quest Type: Wilderness Patrol

[Annex]

Wilderness Patrol is a new type of quest that utilizes existing wilderness maps, turning a section of the map into a traditional, repeatable quest. Player characters undertaking a Wilderness Patrol must advance to specific Milestones placed in the wilderness area, claim each one in a specific order, and reach a final Milestone. After reaching the final Milestone and completing all victory conditions, player characters are rewarded with experience and a chest, ending the quest.

Wilderness Patrol quests are intended to solve a number of problems:

1) Quests maps take a long time to build. Wilderness Patrol quests reuse existing wilderness maps, thus removing one major step from the development cycle.

2) Wilderness areas require a lot of effort to build yet many players essentially skip them or even worse, consider them a hindrance when traveling to traditional quests. Wilderness Patrol quests turn that weakness into a strength, as sections of the wilderness now become traditional quests.

3) Wilderness Patrol quests will turn long wilderness runs into medium duration quests, adding the missing pieces to a quest story chain. For example, reaching The Chamber of Raiyum currently requires a two minute wilderness run. Reaching Chains of Flame from The Chamber of Raiyum requires a 5 minute wilderness run. By adding two new Wilderness Patrol quests, Wilderness Patrol: The Valley of the Dread King and Wilderness Patrol: The Burning Mountain, player characters now complete a series of 4 quests instead of two, with the Wilderness Patrol quests leaving player characters at the entrance to an existing quest.

4) Wilderness Patrol quests represent a very important function often seen in traditional Dungeons & Dragons quests, keeping the frontier clear of monsters.

5) Wilderness Patrol quests allow quest writers to chain together quests that otherwise lack a coherent story.

6) Wilderness Patrol quests can fulfill player desires for Exploration, Idea, and Slaughter type quests.

7) If developers think it wise, kills in Wilderness Patrol quests can count towards Wilderness Slayer counts. This will further encourage players to run the quests.

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Building a Wilderness Patrol quest requires a quest designer to perform the following tasks:

1) Choose an existing Wilderness Map.

2) Select an intended path that player characters will follow through the wilderness.

3) Select the level for the Wilderness Patrol quests. This level will be the exact same as the level of the parent wilderness map.

4) Place 4 or more Milestones on the intended path. A player character must reach a milestone and click on it to gain credit. Player characters may take any path desired to a given Milestone but each Milestone must be used in the correct order. This represents the need for player characters to fulfill their mission, patrolling the wilderness and eliminating hostile threats to civilized lands. Player characters who avoid or sneaking past enemies are shirking their duty and will receive no reward.

5) Place new monsters along the intended path. These threats will count towards a minimum requirement for slain enemies and add combat bulk to the wilderness area, ensuring a kinetic experience while running the quest. Once again, avoiding and sneaking past enemies will result in quest failure. (Exception: See below.)

6) Place new encounters along the intended path. These encounters are intended to reward players who enjoy exploration and idea based situations that reward brains over brawn.

7) Close off all existing dungeon entrances within the Wilderness Patrol area. Player characters must leave a Wilderness Patrol quest before starting another quest.

8) Choose a spot on the parent wilderness map where player characters will arrive after completing the Wilderness Patrol.

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Additional features:

1) A Wilderness Patrol map contains all monsters and encounters of the original map, plus additional monsters and encounters required to complete the Wilderness Patrol. This advantageously rewards players for playing Wilderness Patrols, turning poor experience tasks into quite good experience tasks.

2) As mentioned above, all existing quest entrances are closed on a Wilderness Patrol quest map. They are still there but player characters may not enter them. They must focus on the task at hand. Of course, this limitation actually exists to prevent unintended game events.

3) Wilderness Patrol quests allow for all traditional difficulties: Casual, Normal, Hard, Elite, Reaper Mode 1-10.

4) Wilderness Patrol quest areas that encompass existing wilderness encounters include those wilderness encounters and associated chests.

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Potential problems:

1) It may be that, after walling of a wilderness area for a Wilderness Patrol quest, existing monsters and encounters do not scale properly with quest difficulty. If this happens, the quest designer has two options:
a) Strip all existing encounters and monsters out of the Wilderness Patrol quest area.
b) Leave all existing encounters and monsters in the Wilderness Patrol quest area and accept that they will not scale.
There is no correct solution to this problem. It is a design choice.

2) Players coming to quests late will still find it necessary to make long wilderness runs. For example, let us say a group undertakes quests to run Wilderness Patrol: The Valley of the Dread King, The Chamber of Raiyum, Wilderness Patrol: The Burning Mountain, and Chains of Flame. A new player joins as the group prepares to enter Chains of Flame. That player will need to make the long wilderness run to Chains of Flame. Wilderness Patrol quests solve some but not all problems associated with wilderness areas and existing quests.

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Saltmarsh

The Saltmarsh campaign, as originally designed, includes a very large wilderness area. It would make an excellent place to introduce Wilderness Patrol quests. For example, a Saltmarsh campaign might progress something like this: The Haunted Lighthouse > The Sea Witch > Wilderness Patrol: The Saltmarsh (extra) > Wilderness Patrol: To the Lizard Men > The Lair of the Lizard Men > Wilderness Patrol: To the Lair of the Sahuagin (extra) > The Sea Voyage > The Lair of the Sahuagin: The Upper Halls > The Lair of the Sahuagin: The Realm of the Devourer

The two (extra) Wilderness Patrol quests allow the quest designer to get maximum use out of the Saltmarsh wilderness area and throw a wide variety of stand along encounters at players.

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In summation, Wilderness Patrol quests would take a current liability--large wilderness areas that go underutilized--and turn them into exciting quests most players will enjoy. The large amount of real estate inherent to wilderness areas will allow quest designers to create encounters that please all sorts of players in a traditional quest format while also bridging quests located far apart in a wilderness area. Very large wilderness maps could easily support numerous Wilderness Patrol quests, adding new and exciting life to existing assets.

Thank you for your consideration.