Lycia Rework and Quests!

[Nayru Al-Saiduq]

So as y'all may have noticed over the last few days, each of the Lycian locations has been given a LOT more info to work with, tracking their development over the last few years in-character, and in some cases retconning bits of them to work better in a more cohesive storyline. Caelin for example dissolved into a Mad Max / Borderlands style, bandit-infested shithole in the wake of multiple invasions and lacking military power, whereas Laus and Santaruz, being stronger countries with better economies, are now locked in a struggle to determine who will be the next leader of Lycia - while Araphen plays the long game and builds up its forces for reasons unknown. Western Lycia now has its own plotline as well, dealing with the ever increasing danger presented by the ruined Ostia as Worde and Thria struggle to cope; Thria has balkanized into a malfunctioning blender of Attack on Titan, Warhammer, and DEUS VULT: FANTASY EDITION, while Worde and Ryerde explore their building relationship. Oh yeah, and Ostia is going to feature a lot more heavily later on, spoilers lol.

To put it simply, Lycia has always been a bit samey - Khathelet and Tuscana didn't really have any distinguishing characteristics and both felt the same to be in. It didn't really matter where you started topics either, everywhere was bandit infested and everywhere was monster infested, and Ostia wasn't really THAT dangerous. So one big pillar of this project was to try to make each of them feel unique while allowing a better plotline involving all of them to actually work out. The OTHER pillar of the project, though, was doing so in a way that made it possible and hopefully relatively easy for players to effect it. I don't wanna just do some themepark ride where Araphen pubstomps everyone or Santaruz destroys Laus because why not lol, but rather give players the ability to better influence its development. Which is where quests come in.

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So, quests. What are quests? The general idea is to use them to run more common events of varying sizes rather than just the occasional giant event, allowing for an easier influx of the Fame resource, which uh frankly is pretty much unused currently. They also allow us to play with a bit more set-piece events in SOME scenarios while still allowing people to branch out and just generally work towards a goal. This initial release is, to be perfectly honest, a test - stuff will probably be changed and fixed over time as we as a community find out more of what works and doesn't work. Collaborative storytelling has always been a focus on WotW and the ideal is that this will help us get into it a bit more easily.

Just for clarity, doing stuff on your own is still fine, it's not like quests are the only way to kill bandits. It's just meant to be an easier way to get involved in plot. And like, yo, I'm just gonna be real here, at the start they're gonna be fairly simple, once we get stuff going the ideal will be to have a mix of generic 'kill quests' and plottey stuff.

The tentative plan so far for quests is as follows:

• Finishing a quest rewards 1 area fame to everyone who stuck through it from start to finish; less at higher fame totals
• One character per quest, one quest per character. No alts, no double dipping.
• Quests qualify for your Plot topic slot.
• Number of ongoing quests may vary, we'll start off with 3ish and see how that works.
• Quests may vary heavily in size and setup; some may be guided, others may allow mid-quest reinforcements.
• Site conduct rules apply. 48 hour inactivity = skipped. Repeated skips = no fame.

The Quest Board, located in the Lycia subforum, is where you can find quests for the time being once they get posted anyways lol. If things work out it may be expanded elsewhere in the future.