It’s just a primer – nothing too in-depth, but it aims to demonstrate a useful tool – an interpretive paradigm for how story & gameplay correlate.

A lot of my research into story & experience design involved the work of Joseph Campbell (the guy who identified the Hero’s Journey & coined the term “Monomyth”) so it might prove helpful. Infact, the problem of procedural quests you mention here is really poignant & it’s something I’ll try to incorporate into the workshop. :) cheers!

For example, a goblin camp is close to a human village. As such, the goblins end up raiding the human village one day and kidnap a villager’s child. When the player discovers this village, that character need has been established and if the player talks to him, he’ll express that need and potentially offer a reward based on his wealth or belongings or whatever.

The end result is similar to what you might find in a scripted game, but the motivations ring a little more true, and the nuanced variances will definitely make each one of these play differently than the last.

You can make factions be specialists – one makes the best shields, the other makes the best weapons or the fastest engines. And they need raw materials, and build and sell their specialty based on what they have. The factions can also build their own scavengers, defenses, etc. They either “like” or “dislike” each other and the player, and their prices depend on it.

You can now have quests like “kill faction X’s scavenger”, “provide me with quality X raw material”, “provide me shield/weapon/engine with quality at least X – to build scavenger/defense/etc.” that really affect the universe and the available components.

Getting the factions to a random level at the start of the game can also make each play more unique.

You can also throw in some more stuff like crew members from the factions that the player can get by being nice to them (give them a face) so that not everything can be obtained by force.

I think i mentioned something similar in a previous post, but as a non quest based incentive to get players searching the dark and hopefully seedy nether-regions of the Jamesonverse, you could simply put random rewards (I dont know, maybe an new class of building materials left from a precursor race or random ship heart attribute bonuses) ..umm. oh yes, put those out in the depths of space. The futher the distance from 0, 0 – the greater the potential reward, but the greater the threat of becoming laser seperated space junk.

Quests sounds awesome too.

-B

@ryan: Escort missions would be fine as randomly offered, optional quests, allowing the player to pick what jobs they want to freelance.