SpookySquid
knighthawk
Something I'm still undecided upon is how I'm going to divide out the time IC. Would you all rather the majority of the time be spent in the dungeon interacting with each other and such, or spent attacking villages and out doing the Dungeon Keeper's bidding? Perhaps a fairly even split?
Personally I'd like to always be 'On Mission' for the Keeper, but with a variety of objectives which would sometimes keep us indoors while at other times sending us out into the world. How quickly the minions perform their tasks (both in-world and in real life) would be taken into account when calculating how much of a reward they would get. People who are prompt and eager would be able to complete more missions and get greater rewards, while people who disappear for a week without posting at all would fall by the wayside, rather than everyone else having to wait for them.
If someone knows they're not going to be able to post for a while the Keeper can send their character on a 'special assignment' which would take them over the mountains to distant parts until they return, allowing them to still gain a measure of progression to help them keep[ up with the other active players.
Some examples of missions I'd like to see handed out would be:
- Destroy the local farms to draw soldiers away from the town/castle
- Raid a mine for rare resources
- Investigate an abandoned dungeon for secrets and treasures
- Capture a lord's son/daughter for ransom
- Corrupt a hero to join the Keeper's forces
- Trick Octi into giving a cabaret performance to improve troop morale
- Interrogate prisoners to discover weaknesses in the town's/castle's defences
- Bribe a local trader to provide new equipment
- Perform a dark rite to summon a powerful new minion
- Use dark arts to forge a new weapon
- Research new spells and technologies to aid the troops
- Infiltrate the local barracks/taverns to learn about enemy troop movements
And so on.
I'd see actually capturing a town or castle to be a drawn out affair, where we'd have to carefully sap their defences and discover their weak points before planning a battle strategy and finally invading. Depending on how much legwork we'd done, and how successful we'd been at our tasks, the final fight could be a huge conflict which would take days to complete, with waves of reinforcements arriving from other towns and castles slowly weakening our own armies until we either managed to wipe out the defenders or were driven back by the combine forces of our enemies.
Time would be a major factor, since if we started a campaign to take a town we'd have to act fast enough to weaken them with a string of successful missions before launching the assault without giving the defenders a chance to call for reinforcements. If we left it too long the lord would begin to worry about the rising darkness and would call to the city for heavier units or heroes to help defend the town, not leaving it long enough would mean the town itself would be stronger and harder to take down through direct conflict.
Of course, infiltration and espionage missions could assist us greatly, since we'd be able to find out all sorts of useful information (types and strengths of defending troops, state of enemy supplies, favourite sexual position of the lord's daughter, etc.) which would make breaking the defences easier.
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