Title: Legendary Quests
Summary:
Give margraves the ability to call a quest for a legendary artifact. The quest would be open to all warriors on a given island and would take the form of a type of treasure hunt. The quest would end with the possibility of discovering an artifact that would benefit the city of the margrave who called the quest.
Details:
Note: In order to save work, my hope would be that the legendary quest could reuse much of the underlying structure of the tournament, but with changes to the text.
A margrave would gain the option to call a quest for a legendary item, with the search lasting for a set number of days (say 7 days, for the sake of debate). Doing so would cost the margrave an amount of gold that would then be set aside as a reward for the noble who finds the item. Once a quest has been called, every appropriate noble on the island would receive a message with the option to join the quest. If they did so, they'd leave their unit behind, as with the tournament.
Once on the quest, the location of the nobles involved would be listed as 'unknown' reflecting that they are wandering the lands in their search. Each turn would generate a series of options such as 'Question the locals' to find information about the location of the item; or 'You are confronted by a mysterious swordsman/or a mysterious rider' giving the option to fight them (replicating the training of a tournament, but possibly with a reduced chance of improving the skills); and so forth. Each of these options would have a random chance of scoring the noble a point which would be silently accumulated. For example, "After questioning the locals, a merchant reveals that he has heard tales of such an artifact in a nearby valley" - silently score one point.
These points would accumulate to a 'trigger point' (say 10 points, hypothetically). When the 7 days of the quest expire, every noble on the quest who has reached the trigger point will enter a melee (as with the battle of the tournament) as they are all deemed to have reached the same location on the quest and are now fighting for the artifact. Any nobles who have failed to reach the trigger point would just be returned home. In the melee, last noble standing claims the artifact and the gold reward.
The Margrave who called the quest then gains the legendary artifact for his/her city, and the artifact gives a percentage reduction to the upkeep cost for buildings (say 25%, 50%, or what ever). The artifact deteriorates with time and disappears after a set number of days (maybe 60 days, maybe 90 days). The artifact belongs to the city rather than any character and cannot be sold, moved, otherwise traded, or repaired, so that it does not undermine the adventurer game.
Benefits:
Added fun. It gives players with margrave characters an extra tool (in addition to the tournament) to maintain player engagement, particularly during the inevitable periods of peace in a realm. Also gives rank-and-file knights and dames another activity to maintain their interest and participation in the game.
Introduces questing, which was a major part of both the literature and the reality of the Middle Ages, but is not currently represented in the game.
Roleplay opportunities, and possibly enhancing reasons for an opposing realm to try to take a city that has an artifact.
Possible Exploits:
Enemy margraves could use a quest to draw opposing nobles away from a war, but you can say the same thing about a tournament.
Margraves might use the percentage reduction in upkeep cost to use the gold saved to speed up building or enlargements. But they'd then be hit by the increase in upkeep costs once the artifact disappears.
