Story / mission reports / tokens

Please read the following and keep in mind that it will make more sense towards the end where I bring it all together. I'll skip all the padding to get the idea across, you're experience designers and I'm sure you are more interested in the mechanics of what I’m suggesting and not the pitch.

[I've been employed as a games designer for almost 10 years, so I hope you will read the following and consider the presented ideas at the very least. I know that that almost sounded like a boast, but I read some many unrealistic emails about how to improve games (this one and pretty much every one I've worked on) that they all begin to sound like they are from 14 year olds with the belief that they are right and no idea of how things work :) That said, on with the show...]

With the hostilities between the two sides missions are more able to influence players enjoyment and suspension of disbelief than ever before.


These two ideas expand the depth of missions whilst working in the current framework.

Meetings:
Players meet with an NPC. This can take many guises for example, a hostage situation. Player/team goes in, kills hostiles, meets NPC, (and perhaps using the /follow) escorts to exit.

Bomb planting:
Similar to the defusing of a bomb mission currently in place, but a player plants the bomb instead.



Many players have commented on how it would be good to play a mission and not have a kill fest as it's getting repetitive - and I agree :). To that end I suggest 'passive' missions, requiring player interaction of machines, NPC's and if possible the classic button/activation system [seen almost everywhere in video games].

Deliveries
Simple. player couriers an item to an NPC, mission done. This is essentially the repair mission, but using an NPC as the mission end rather than a machine and does not have to occur in a dungeon.

Observing / following
Further to the current identify mission, shadowing a NPC through a non dungeon area, Tir city or Newland desert for example. The entity that set the mission may wish to know where the target's destination is.

Bomb defuse
Similar to the current one, but involves standard rooms in civilised areas rather than dungeons in the middle of nowhere. I believe this fits in well with the war setting, and is a good example of how every player could effect the world.


And now the really interesting bit...

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Chain missions.
The premise is simple, rather than just 1 mission, the player (or team) finds themselves solving the first mission and then another mission is given to continue the (and I hate using this word) quest. This is where the non-combat missions really come into their own.

Consecutive missions with a central theme or premise that tags together various types of missions.

For example:
A delivery mission leads to a locate and return mission, which leads on to an assassination mission.


This would lead to more story based missions and thus increasing immersion.

This could of course open up the token system a little more for those higher level players who have a very hard time collecting tokens. Missions in the chain could potentially get more difficult, and thus the rewards could too.

Also a team could acquire and loose team members during the chain.

Missions within the chain could be localised or all over RK.

Chains can be as long or as short as feels best to play and ply that to the players level.

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A large suggestion I might add to round this off is that more missions and GM-set quests need to be reported to all players. The key is that many players feel as though nothing is happening in their world story wise even though each player is doing mini heroic quests on a daily basis.

I don't know how you would implement this, others have mentioned a newspaper or a portable console or even a radio audio channel of some sort. I'll leave that to you :) :)

Thanks to you for your ear, and to any players who are reading this also.

Citruspunch
Lvl 27 Solider. Rk2.