Exploration System
From The Seven Cities
Contents |
Exploration – Core System
Exploration is a core world system that touches Area design, Dungeon design, Society design, Quest designs, and spawn balance. Through the Exploration system, players will be able to discover new Raw Materials and exchange them for rewards while providing the crafting community the Ingredients it needs in order to progress and create Items.
Goals
- To provide variety and volume of Raw Materials without the need for Vast areas empty of everything except crafting placeables.
- To allow casual crafters to participate in the system, earn gold, and gain leverage to use when trading with crafters.
- To introduce dynamic changes to the world through seasonal or scarcity adjustments to the available Raw Materials.
Process
Exploration is done through the Crafting System, and is accomplished through the Explorer professions, both the General one and the Professional Focuses. A player who wishes to Explore activates Exploration Mode, much as he might activate Detect mode or Tracking. He then travels normally through the game world. Certain areas of the world will trigger a series of checks when explored by the PC, exposing a Raw Material depending on the Explorer's level, his Professional Focuses, and the scarcity of the Raw Material.
Raw Materials can include, but will not be limited to:
- Ores
- Gems / Crystals
- Woods
- Plants
- Fruits / Vegetables
- Animals
- Liquids
- Sand/Clay
In all cases except the Animal, the Explorer must use the proper collection Tool to collect a Sample of the Raw Material. Sample Quality may depend in the quality of the Tool. Tools are crafted by the various Base Crafting Classes and may be purchased from other PCs, awarded by the DMs, or given as static rewards by various Society quests.
In the case of Animals, the Explorer (and his party) must first kill the discovered Animal, then use a Tool to collect either its carcass or any useful parts it may have. The Animal itself, or its useful parts, are the Raw Material.
Either way, the Explorer returns with his Raw Material to the appropriate Crafting Society (or societies), where he exchanges the Raw Material for some reward.
Some possible rewards:
- Gold
- Reputation
- Increased cap for purchasing Ingredients
- Free Ingredients
- Other reward TBD
Once the Explorer has exchanged his Raw Material, the NPC Society receiving the material offers a corresponding Ingredient for purchase to the general playerbase, for a finite amount of time, with a per-PC cap on the amount available for purchase during that time.
Discovery
Discovery works via activation of a Mode ability, similar to Detect Mode or Tracking Mode. This Mode must set the PC to Walk speed and remain active as the PC walks through the game world. Crafting points will burn down while Explore Mode is activated. When the PC has none left, the Mode will deactivate and he can no longer Explore until his CP are replenished.
Returning a Sample of Raw Materials
When a PC gathers a Sample, several things happen:
- Teamside DB things.
- A generic item is placed in his inventory as a representation of the Material. Each Material will have its own item.
When a PC returns a sample to some Society NPC. several things happen:
- Teamside DB things.
- The item is removed from Inventory.
- A Reward is offered to the PC.
- The corresponding Ingredient goes on sale (or the price/timeframe is adjusted up or down as necessary)
- The PC has a "Certified Letter of Discovery" entered into his Recipe Book, describing the basic area where the sample was taken. This letter can be scribed out (without the area information) and shown to other PCs or NPCs for various RP or Quest reasons.
If a PC returns a sample and lacks the corresponding Teamside DB things, the NPC will FOIG.
Depletion of Raw Materials
The Total amount available of a given Raw Material (TRM) is a fixed global value entered in the crafting DB. The amount of Undiscovered Material (UM) is tracked dynamically and changes over time. This UM value increases based on Time (t), decreases as Explorers gather a sample of the Material, and can never be greater than the TRM. The value of t should be roughly [censored].
Depletion and Animals
Some examples of how depletion of Raw Materials might look. Note: These are illustrations of the structure only, and do not necessarily have any bearing on animals found ingame.
Deer
TRM: 2000
t:48h (real life)
Min. Expl. lvl: 1
This will cause the UM# to always stay very high, which means the PCs will automatically find Deer every single time they explore areas where Deer are to be found, as long as they've taken the Explorer class and have their Explore mode on.
Deep Cave Umber Hulk
TRM: 30
t:168h
Min. Expl. lvl: 7
This will cause the UM# to be relatively low due to the long value for t, sometimes approaching 1 if the Deep Caves are farmed a few times in the same week. DB conditionals in the areas where Deep Umbers are possible to discover will make these hard to find even if the Explorer is in the right place, and only discoverable at all with significant investment into Exploration as a class.
