Talk:Communications

From Neverend

What about communciations...

Example how does one communicate with a camp that is at least a continent away from another city/town. W/o being there..

Should i send it via messenger? Homing Pigeon? Cellphone? if its a cellphone wheres the tower? can the tower be attacked? or affected by harse weather? Sattilite? Phone lines? Fiber Optic cable? Radio?

All of these can be accessable according to what the technology level of a town is.. If City is the Size of a MegaMetropolis then it would have several communication sites.. or mediums and wouldn't be easily taken down unless targeted ... If city was being attacked you make want to disable communications so that reinforcements from neighboring towns and inns can't be accessed. How well would it be secured..

Can the communications be hacked? Sniffed? EaseDropped? copied? would a cities defenses be crippled if a loud mouth guard give up what there rotations where to a particular whore/prostitute that you have some influence over..

Especially when doing research for the king...

and would you have a rumor mill? and would you have those that would make false rumors? And would you have the clueless who basically would exagerate what they heard until it no where near what actually happened.

Dolar sends you to find a dragon that burned down his barn. You assemble a dragon fighting team.. The Rumor Mill (unreliable communication) tell you that the dragon was bigger then 3 mansions.. Your friends friends.. Tell you that the only dragon of that size lived in a cave 30 miles from here but has been sleep for ages.. Dolar's closest of friends tell you that Dolar's dragon is actually a cat that scared the shit out of Dolar's during one of his drinking spells and knocked over a well placed candle near his alcohol and then burned down his barn...

Dolar is a excessive drunk..

I like the idea of NPCs spreading information by themselves, but it would need to be tested enough with random intervals to prevent an NPC from spamming "I heard there was a dragon in a cave nearby." The information could spread like a virus, passing it on from one NPC to the next in idle conversation, but eventually it would get diluted and expire after so many repetitions. Recent rumors, however, would help players understand what's going on. NPCs would see firsthand monsters attacking, or murder, thievery, nudity, sex, or anything that goes against the town rules, then gossip about it with others. The player can get an idea of what happened recently from firsthand and secondhand gossip, but after that rumors would fade over time as NPCs find new things to talk about.

Real time quests could involve "pinging" the area for monsters or bandits, then telling a player about them and offering a reward.

Guards could also use rumors to warn people, such as "there are monsters about" or "there is a murder suspect on the loose, be cautious."

Immediate threats would work in a similar way, as someone sees an attack, shouts, a guard hears it, the attacker runs away, the guard chases after him and tells other guards about the attacker, who chase him.

NPCs who are attacked by monsters can run and tell others about the attack, and that immediate help is needed fighting the monsters or defending/healing NPCs. An assault on the town would give awareness of a town attack and that defense is needed while the attackers need to be stopped.

As we all have seen in numerous video games, when one is on a quest, one needs to enter a town or an area and approach all npc's and see if they have any useful info to give out for that one individual and the quest they are on. One then decides to use or disreguard that info... Now as for an online game where numerous people and or teams of people are on various types of quests, it may be needed to either code a single npc with numerous responses (each response is geared for a specific pc player or team) or a single npc has a single response for a specific player and if you approach an npc that is not geared for you and your quest, you'll simply get either no response or useless chatter (but they may cause an area in the game to be heavily populated with npc's waiting for contact with a pc player)...I do like the idea of a npc spreading dis-information though...As for team's on a quest,if a team splits up so as to go to different areas and gather info,or if the quest demands the team splits up to gather info,then communication between team members will be a vital need.