[Nomic02] Proposal: Quests

[Dylan O'Donnell]

A proposal for four new rules:

  For It Is Your Sacred Task [Psmith]

  There shall exist a Roster of Quests, which can contain zero or more
  Quests. This Roster and any Quests on it are part of the state of
  the game. A Quest has associated with it: a colour; three different
  rooms on the map (labelled "home", "locate", and "goal"); and a value.

  Some tokens may be designated "quest tokens". A quest token is
  associated with a particular Quest. Multiple quest tokens with the
  same name can exist; if two or more Quest tokens with the same name
  are ever in the same location, all but one of them are removed from
  the game.

  Whenever a player's location is equal to a room that is a "home" room
  of any Quest, a quest token associated with that Quest is created with
  the name "<colour> primary", where <colour> is the colour associated
  with that Quest, and a location equal to that of the player, unless
  the player is already carrying such a token. Whenever a player
  carrying a quest token with a name containing the word "primary" has
  his or her location equal to the "locate" room of the associated
  Quest, the name of that token shall be altered to substitute "primary"
  with "secondary". Whenever a player or players carrying a quest token
  with a name containing "secondary" have their location equal to the
  "goal" room of the associated Quest, the value of that Quest will be
  added to the appropriate one of the players' tallies, all tokens
  associated with that Quest will be removed from the game, and that
  Quest will be removed from the Roster.

  If at any time there are fewer than three Quests on the roster, the
  active player may create one as an action. To create a Quest, the
  player, in strict order, gives it a colour name of their choice
  different from any other Quest; chooses by Random Selection a "home"
  room from the set of all rooms not including Mornington Crescent, a
  "locate" room from the set of all rooms not including Mornington
  Crescent or the "home" room, and a "goal" room from the set of all
  rooms not including Mornington Crescent or the "home" or "locate"
  rooms; and rolls a 20-sided die. If the result of this roll is 17 or
  less, the value of the Quest will be that many brownie points; if 18
  or greater, the value of the Quest will be one point of Puissance. If
  the player, having commenced creating a Quest, fails to complete this
  series of rolls by the end of the turn, he or she will receive one
  demerit and the Quest will not be added to the Roster.

Rather wordy, I'm afraid; but I think it's workable enough. The idea
being to give people further incentive to be moving around the map
even if they're not finding it possible to lay their hands on prize
tokens. (I've excluded servants and suchlike from claiming or
redeeming quest tokens; this doesn't stop tokens being in their
possession, of course.) If multiple players all reach the Quest goal
at once, they all score full value; this is to cover situations like
the Dot-Com Bubble's bursting and several players changing location at
once.

-- 
:  Dylan O'Donnell                     http://www.spod-central.org/~psmith/  :
:   "Hello. Well, that was the sound of Roger's Wah-Wah Rabbits, you heard   :
:   them eating endives there, that's very cheap at this time of the year.   :
:   [...] But now we're going to talk about shirts."    -- Bonzo Dog Band    :