teaching situational adaptation

Syncaine describes a common quest chain pattern: (a) kill 10 boars, (b) find some boar relic, (c) kill the boar boss.

Consider instead if the first quest you got was to eliminate the threat of some monstrous ogre. You head off to do so, but discover that he's no dummy and has surrounded himself with dozens of guards and so on. Not only that, he's a full 5 levels higher and is an elite. The pig-headed adventurer would grimace, and plow right in. The smart adventurer would return to the quest giver and explain the situation .. at which point the quest giver would then offer some intermediary style quest - perhaps raid an outpost to draw off some reinforcements, maybe a quest to gather some special herb or stink bomb or other aid for the coming showdown. The quest to deal with the ogre boss would remain in your quest log the whole time.

The point being there could be a game mechanism in place to reward thoughtful situational adaptation by players, a design approach which transcends the “kill 10 x” and “kill x for y” grinding pattern of quests.

Note too that so far I haven't said the quest is to "kill the ogre boss" - instead I said "eliminate the threat". You could complete the objective by killing the ogre boss, but you could also uncover some additional quests which leads to you holding some object which causes the ogre boss to react differently, be friendly even. There could be an alternative quest line which results in you eliminating the threat by convincing the ogre to swap sides, to enter into a trade arrangement, or even eliminate the threat by convincing some other NPC group to lead the attack and kill the ogre boss or force him to flee.

partial cooldowns?

Here's a stupid thought to start the day - what if the cool-downs of various abilities were replaced with a chance of success mechanic. Thus, Bestial Wrath would be available with a 100% chance after 2 minutes, and a degraded chance before that time - it would have a 50% chance of working after 1 minute, and a 75% chance after 1:30. Failure would result in the cool down timer restarting, as well as the full resource cost.

How might this affect your game play?

I know I'd stop spamming my Feign Death button while stun locked, and weaving Arcane Shot into my shot rotation would be trickier. The lazy macro I use that attempts to cast Kill Command after every Steady Shot would need to be tossed out. That said, I'd definitely know there will be a few hail Mary moments where a partial chance of success is better than getting wiped - how cool would it be to get the kill shot on a boss as he's heading towards me, knowing I've only got a 10% chance of the shot even working?

social is desired, don't give it away

In most MMORPGs there are plenty of chat options available but I wonder if that isn't such a good idea.

Sure, people want the social, and adding chat channels makes that easier, but I'm haunted by the memory of PUGs where one or two members weren't quite "there" .. turns out they spent half the instance on auto-pilot while their attention was on guild chat or whispers. Additionally, I've forgotten the number of times a fellow guildie turns down an offer of help while they solo some area, yet they continue socialising in guild chat.

Whenever I visit an old-world city I see small crowds hanging about outside the bank/mailbox/AH, but they are usually silent. In truth, they may be deep in conversation in guild chat, party chat, trade, city, or general. Sometimes a couple are engaged in a conversation in the /say channel, and that's pretty cool as it makes the place come alive. That said, it's all the more incongruent when one talks in /say, and the other is in /p or /g and only one side of the conversation can be heard. It's borderline irritating, in the same way overhearing only one side of a phone conversation is irritating.

Naturally, if all those gathered around the mail box were chatting in /say instead then things would get very noisy. I wouldn't see that as a problem though, more of an opportunity for increasing immersion in the game: either hang out at the mailbox, suffering the din of the maddening crowd, or sneak off to some private hut for a quiet chat.

I'm also wondering if there are other opportunities possible if the game took away ubiquitous chat channels: they could be put back in via special abilities, spells, and items. Spirit messengers, Guild Commune, Trinkets of Telepathy. Characters don't have ubiquitous “teleport anywhere” capabilities, but some classes can learn limited versions of that: mages can make portals to enable travel to various destinations, while warlocks can open a portal to summon comrades in the opposite direction.

Would you embark on a long quest with your guild mates to secure an Orb of CzNN, a critical piece of gear which when equipped into your guild hall would enable whoever is in your guild hall to broadcast a message to all guild members? Would you gather the mats and commission an engineer to craft a Catwwezl Talking Bone, a marvelous device that enables one to one communication over long distances?

moderating miscreants

If your goal is to encourage behaviour over a sustained period, then intermittent positive reinforcement works better than periodic positive reinforcement ... but which works better for negative reinforcement? That is, if there is some specific behaviour you wish to punish.

I'm told that random negative reinforcement works best (if you're attempting to instill terror).

The problem with random negative reinforcement in social systems is that the absence of punishment on others is used to rationalise away guilt: "he didn't get punished for doing X, therefore I shouldn't have. I shouldn't have been punished, therefore action X was not a wrong thing to do".

What if, instead of meting out punishment 1:1 in response to crime, but instead the total punishment due is accumulated into a growing debt and eventually meted out, in whole, by random selection, to some unlucky miscreant? For example: abusive name calling in the forums is punishable with a banning of 1 hour, but there's only a 10% chance you'll get punished .. after some time there have been 7 infractions of this type, none punished (so far), and then some poor sod goes off the handle. Instead of copping just a 1 hour banning, he cops the 1 hour ban plus the accumulated punishment debt of 7 hours.

This might sometimes be known as the "daddy is getting angry" model.

For this system to work (ie. not appear entirely capricious) it would be necessary to provide ongoing feedback to the community as to the current level of punishment debt. Other forms of community status/feedback might include a list of currently unpunished miscreants, or (more positively) a leaderboard of well behaved frequent posters.

Variations to this basic model are possible: the punishment debt could aggregate from all crimes instead of separate totals for each type being kept, the chance of the punishment being applied might increase as the debt increases, the chance of punishment might increase if you've previously escaped punishment, there could be some modulation of the upper limit according to the severity of the crime, there could be a gradual decay of the debt over time, and so on.

What might the effects be? If the community has been particularly naughty lately, it would be wise not to do even the littlest thing wrong, lest daddy's wrath descend on you. An acceptable (i.e. non-perfect) level of misbehaviour might be arrived at through community consensus. Some characters might take on the role of lightning rod/martyr, intentionally invoking the wrath of punishment so as to release the built up potential.

teaching patience

Here and there I read the commentary of others on various quests, and I see various complaints about quests. Things like a quest to "go see this guy in Zangarmarsh" but doesn't say just where in the zone he is; or a quest involving killing a number of a type of mob but there are not enough spawns.

The first type of quest usually results in the player looking up the coords on wowhead or similar .. and the player then whining about travelling all the way over there just to talk to the guy, who then sends you all the way back again. The smarter approach is to just leave it in your quest log and go about your business, knowing with a sure certainty that there are lots of other quests throughout the zone and you'll eventually stumble across the guy.

The “kill 10 rats” style of quests .. many players I know approach these with a one track determination, and often I'm similarly tempted. I need to stop and look at what other quests are in the same place - sometimes I focus on completing the kill count, and then look at another quest I already have and realise I now need to fight (and kill) my way through the exact same type of mob to complete some “pickup a thing” quest.

I can understand the determined approach though: you're a hero, you've got a quest, of course you're going to get stuck in. Completing quests as a by product of going about your daily business just doesn't feel particularly heroic.

What game mechanisms might be brought to play to encourage less single-mindedness?

For example: what if there was some quest involving killing 40 vicious crocodiles .. but there are only 1 or 2 that spawn in an area which you need to travel many, many times in pursuit of other quests. The spawns would need to be randomly distributed across a wide area to make spawn camping futile. The quest hub shouldn't make this quest available until maybe a fedex quest has already been completed across that area - you certainly wouldn't want this quest giver being the first guy you meet as you approach the area.

Another: a twist on the daily quest mechanism in that you keep the one quest the whole time but only one kill per day counts. No one would seriously want to do 40 kills of this type, although 7 kills might be tolerable.

What else?

more than death itself

Death is the usual penalty for failure to be victorious over your opponent. Sometimes you can escape by running away. It bothers me though that defeat has only one outcome.

Possibilities here, thinking out loud ...

Falling on the battlefield could result in a near-death state, one in which you are incapacitated but not dead quite yet. If help is at hand, then you can be "rezzed" through swift application of simple first aid, a skill available to all classes. This might encourage more grouping. To avoid players exploiting this as an in-combat rez, perhaps it requires 60 seconds of "cast time", and applies a further 60 second "woozy" debuff.

Your near-death state is on a timer though ... you will eventually succumb to your wounds. When you actually die persons with special magical skills could still rez you, or you could release and do a ghost run.

Different mobs will result in different outcomes - simpleminded non-predatory beasts would be satisfied with you being severely wounded and retreating, while predatory beasts will want to kill you (at least). More intelligent mobs would likely investigate any corpse stinking up their compound, so please have the good grace to get some distance in before falling else you’ll find them applying a coup de grâce.

exploring maps

Some quick thoughts on an exploration/expansion themed world game:

• No "you are here" cursor .. if you lose your way, you can't just take a quick look to see where the cursor representing you is located on the map. You need to look around for a landmark.
• The player map doesn't auto-fill .. the player has to stop and perform a "scribe map" function for a short while.
  
• If you "scribe map" from a location not adjacent to an existing map space, then the map scribed is a free floating fragment which you have to shift into position (like a jigsaw puzzle).
• Distant landmarks, if visible, would be added to the map when scribing. The area around those distant points wouldn't be.
  
• The quantity of space which gets added to the map is small, quite small. It should be a major effort to exhaustively map out an entire zone, not a quick jaunt around the zone.
• The map, as scribed by each player, will have errors, omissions, and distortions which makes each player's maps different.
  
• Players can control just how much area they want to scribe on each attempt. The greater the area, the greater the inaccuracies.
  
• Players will have opportunities to improve their map making skills.
• Players can acquire items which improve their map making skills. Some might be rare or difficult to find.
  
• Landmarks and such can be added to maps by the player, but won't be automatically added.
  
• Names of zones/areas won't magically appear.
• Maps describe the territory as at the time of scribing, thus if the territory changes later then maps become outdated (eg. a new village is founded, a road established, a mine opened, a forest felled, etc).
• Maps or fragments of maps can be shared, sold, traded.
• It should be possible to craft false maps (for whatever devious reason you can imagine).
  

places above, below, between

I dream of a zone which is a vast forest, where you could not only travel about on the ground, but also climb into the arbosphere and follow an intricate maze of skyway paths. The tree level wouldn't simply be another flat level overlaid on the ground level, but a 3 dimensional space, one where paths criss-cross above and below each other, where shortcuts are available by carefully jumping down in just the right spot, where apparent dead ends reveal ladders that open up whole new opportunities. Mix into that the occasional high protuberance from the ground level such as a hill or building to further complicate the potentials.

Floating above the tree level there could also be a cloud level, where gas leviathans lazily drift from place to place, and you'd need to now take into account the fourth dimension: time. Once all that is happening, build in an underground level too. Tunnels, caverns, precarious paths along cliffs. Some tunnels would wind upwards, exiting on cliffs overlooking the tree level.

The underdeep evokes memories of Wailing Caverns, with it's interesting possibilities of different paths, of having to leap across a gap to get to the next area ... which is most unlike Karazhan - while that place has used the vertical dimension you can't do a whole lot with it. There are no short cuts I know of available, and unless you have a parachute cloak or some magic skill a wrong step would usually be fatal.

Different sub-zones or gateways would be controlled by different factions, necessitating careful balancing of reputations. Certain paths should be mutually exclusive, determined by which rivalrous faction you have reputation with.

An explorer's paradise.

Storytelling 101

Go read It’s Story Time, Boys And Girls! for an excellent write up about building storytelling into MMO design.

why only one end to the game?

The game starts with different starting zones, based on your choice of race. Each is different and interesting, some are better than others, but eventually everyone converges into the same few zones, such as the Stranglethorn Hole. After that the game then progresses with some divergence and paths, but all eventually leading back to the same end-game series of instances, and eventually to Black Temple.

The design concept underlying all this is that all roads lead to Rome - a plethora of choices early on, narrowing as you go, and ultimately being funneled towards one end destination. This idea is all well and fine at first blush, but there are problems becoming very evident.

Problems like: the only way to add new content is by shifting the goals further down the road, resulting in an even longer leveling death-march; and then whatever was the previous end destination becomes obsoleted and henceforth completely skipped; end-game epic gear becoming obsoleted by the trash greens that drop in the expansion; and fewer and fewer choices of where to play just at the time when your character finally has lots of capabilities (spells, talents, skills, etc).

What if the game had multiple ending zones, each rivaling the other, each requiring the same massive investment of time and effort to gather necessary faction reputations, resistance gear, etc. Now, not only could you experience a totally different game by choosing a different starting zone, but you could experience a totally different game by choosing a different ending zone.

Importantly, pursuit of one particular ending zone should come at the opportunity cost of the other ending zones - the simplest means might be via different resistance sets, more complex means might involve rivalrous factions. The point being that you don't get everyone congregating in one end city/zone/instance, but instead are spread out over different places. It should still be possible to take your champion from one place and go explore the alternative end zones, but the success in that first place shouldn't result in easy success in the second place (due to gear etc). Some advantage, but not much .. the same way success in the PvP arenas doesn't result in being equally suited for success in PvE raiding (and vice versa).

This divergent-endings design could be further enhanced by introducing meaningful faction rivalries, such that it might be quicker to level an alt to take on different ending, rather than grind down the hatred your main accumulated with the faction in charge of the other end-game instance.

I can imagine entire guilds being formed around different end-games. Fellowship of the Mountain, Black Rock Raiders, Underdeep Underdogs, Southsea Buccaneers.

Each expansion of the game could introduce new end-zones and instances, but no raising of the level cap (by not raising the level cap, you don't further exacerbate the death-march grind required to reach the level cap). Introduce new talents and gear and potions and enchants which are tuned for that expansion, but all at the same level as what is already in the game.

This idea isn't without it's own problems of course: many players get precious about their one character, and after the hard struggle to topple Illidan they would want to take the same character into the content of the next expansion. Counter that by ensuring there is enough divergent paths through leveling content, with the barest crossovers and melting pots like Stranglethorn.

a wild west of magic

Are most fantasy MMOs set in ancient worlds, places where the extent of the lands have not only been explored at some time, not only been settled at some time, but are even littered with the ruins of ancient civilisations? Sure, there might be pockets of wilderness, but they are like national parks, preserved, carefully delineated on the maps, and nonetheless likely to contain the aforementioned ruins of ancient civilisations.

Are there any fantasy MMOs which are instead set in an "new world" environment, one where the frontier beckons, vast and unmapped? I wonder if a fantasy "new world" setting could be developed to include wild west themes. I don't mean steam punk elements like guns and trains and such, but instead sociological themes such as dirt poor pioneers scratching out the beginnings of empires, boom towns under constant threat from wild natives, a constantly moving and expanding frontier.

At least you wouldn't have to go write up a few millenias of lore with fanciful creation stories involving doomed immortals and such. Well, not until some intrepid adventurer stumbles across an ancient monument in the jungle or a hidden valley of ruins.

big worlds, big problems

What would it take to make a large world work? I'm talking of MMOGs with worlds bigger than Manhattan. One of problems with huge worlds is that unless you fill it with lots of content, there will be vast expanses of empty wilderness, and there would be long tedious travel times involved.

That's assuming that the whole expanse is part of the game from the beginning.

Imagine a world which has vast wilderness areas, with pockets of civilisation along one edge - perhaps primitive colonies on the coast of a new world. Everything you need is pretty much within close distance, but the frontier beckons. You could, for instance, set off into the new world and never see a civilized soul for days at a time.

Add to this the possibility of player impact on the world, something deeper and richer than simplistic "player housing", and this vast empty wilderness might slowly fill up.

balancing solo dungeons for different classes

On WowInsider, I saw this comment and similar like it:

Sounds like a great idea in theory, but just trying to balance a "solo" dungeon for any character class seems to be a bit daunting. How do you balance it so a squishy mage can crowd control and burn mobs while a tankadin can't CC and needs to tank try to DPS?

Good question. My answer would be to design dungeons such that they are not so damn linear. Provide a multitude of alternative paths from the entrance to each of the bosses - in Shattered Halls you can skip some tedious oozeling trash if you have a rogue with lockpicking, or an engineer with a seaforium charge; in Karazhan there's a seldom used route from the stables to the back entrance, another route that starts from Opera and goes upstairs, and there's also the kitchen off the side of the Moroes encounter .. I have no idea where that goes.

In Kara, these alternate routes are a failed design - everyone ignores them simply because it's just more trash to clear and there's no advantage. The design of the locked door in Shattered Halls works. Apart from that one encounter though I'm struggling to think of any others, which is a real shame as this is a missed opportunity.

Imagine some dungeon where behind door A is a series of trash requiring lots of AoE, while the trash behind door B is handily despatched via CC, while door C is locked and leads to encounters which can be avoided via stealth. Someplace further in there's a long winding path downwards requiring either lots of tanking or clever ranged attacks .. or some classes could skip all that by jumping off the edge and slow falling, levitating, or bubbling.

We've already seen that some existing dungeons are more suited for certain class combinations than others, some dungeons go real easy if you have a warlock, others require plenty of CC, and so forth. Just put all that into the one dungeon, with alternative routes.

Update: another timely post at wowinsider reminds me of some old world dungeons with alternative pathings: Dire Maul, Blackrock Depths

slow, stupid, but fun

So there I was in AV, and one of them, still mounted, gets past our blockade and is making a dash for FW. I pop a Concussive Shot which slows them just enough for Garumeow to catch up, his Intimidation lands giving me time to catch up too .. and he's still mounted and with enough health to get away.

What does a hunter do? Spams Wing Clip and chases them, keep spamming Wing Clip and they can't ride away fast enough to get out of range.

It's a slow and stupid way to kill anyone.

Sure is fun though.

two quick moments in the city

I've been meaning to upgrade one of my rings for quite some time, and spotted a pair of [Truestrike Ring]s on the AH. I only needed one, but they are pretty spiffy so I figured I'd grab both and gift one to the nooby hunter of the guild. I place my bids, time passes, and sure enough one of them shows up in my mailbox. I equip it and feel pretty darn nifty.

More time passes, and the other auction concludes and I now have one more in my mailbox. Time to be generous ... oh crap, now I discover that [Truestrike Ring]s are Unique, meaning I can only have one in my possession. The first one is already soulbound so I can't forward that one on, and it doesn't matter whether it's equipped, in my bags, or in my bank: it still counts as in my possession, and thus blocks me from grabbing the second one from my mailbox.

Crappity crap crap.

Conundrum, and I'm pretty sure I'd get the usual totally unhelpful response from a GM petition. So I let it sit in my mailbox while I go take out my frustration on some alliance in AV. Winning is good for creative thought as there is a happy end to this tale: I simply asked Barkeep Morag to hold onto the soulbound ring for a while, I cleared the second from my mailbox and sent it to my guildie, and then went back to the ever helpful host of the Orgimmar tavern to buy back my precious. That qualifies as creative use of game mechanics, right?

Drama over, time to chill for a while ... and then I get a whisper, a hunter asking me for some gold for his first mount. I'm feeling charitable tonite, so I whisper back "ok, here is your quest: go kill ten boars, return with proof, and I shall reward you handsomely". Well, he didn't get all huffy like most beggers do, just said "really? serious?" and the next thing I see him heading out the front gate lickety-split. Wow. A few minutes later I'm now the proud owner of 6x Chunk of Boar Meat, 7x Broken Boar Tusk, and a Practice Sword, and he's a proud owner of a spiffy new Timber Wolf.

hidden ways

Neat. I just discovered the back passage from the Wayfarer's Rest in Silvermoon city. It affords a shortcut from the Walk of the Elders through to the Bazaar. There's another one through Silvermoon City Inn, connecting the two main throughfares.

more quests for healers?

Reading What Makes the Healer Class Unpopular? it occurred to me that most questing/leveling activity in WoW involves going out and killing stuff (and of course you can't kill a mob by healing), and very little involves standing your ground against waves of attackers, supporting the defenders, and surviving.

All that comes to mind is a Netherwing daily, defending Sergeant Bly, counterattack against centaurs in the barrens, and an epic priest quest. Add Torek's Assault for a twist on the theme. Surely there are more?

Additionally, why couldn't healers also travel the land seeking out sick and the frail NPCs, and gain some XP for healing them? Also, surely it would be a more interesting world if various nasties were to come bounding over the hill and attack some unlucky NPC farmer or traveling merchant. Sometimes the NPC will fall and die, sometimes they will prevail but with great wounds or lingering pestilence .. both opportunities for a passing healer to ply their craft.

The basic paradigm of WoW seems to be find, kill, loot, repeat, with the occasional fedex quest designed to move you on to new areas. It could be a richer and more interesting game with a different underlying paradigm.

Now, if class specific quests were to be provided during the leveling process, then there's a good chance that some of them would quite simply be skipped which would be a shame. They could also be provided as daily quests though, which would provide repeated opportunities for players to hone their skills.

hijacking quest returns, and other hypertext opportunities

So, here I am with a sack full of bears' hearts or some other gory trophy for some lazy peon, and I'm heading back into town.

How cool would it be if on the route home I got a whisper from some shady character lurking in an ally way, and he says "hey, don't be returning them thar parts to that lazy peon for a pitiful reward -- give 'em to me and I'll make it worth your while."

The storytelling opportunities would be interesting.

Currently, quest lines are strictly linear, with only a few exceptions. While there are many cases where the completion of one quest opens up three or more dependent quests, all which must be completed before the next link the the chain unlocks, I can't think of any substantial quest line which forces a choice of a branch.

Another dynamic is possible too for those quests which are started by an item routinely dropped by a mob - you might be given multiple choices as to who you could return it to, with each quest giver starting a different branch.

For example, Daniel Whitcomb at WowInsider presented this scenario:

Say you intercept a messenger from the Venture Company speaking about a stealth clear cutting operation in Ashenvale. Do you send word to Astranaar and help them ambush the logging crew, saving the trees and becoming a hero of the Night Elves? Do you negotiate with the Venture Company to keep quiet about the operation for a cut of the profits? Or do you offer to help them slip past the Night Elves and into Ashenvale, setting up the possibility of further business dealings with them on down the road?

Now that would be interesting.

One caution though: you can't afford to design dynamic quest lines like this as a rare exception. Since the players would be trained by repeated exposure to linear quest lines, they wouldn't even stop to consider if they could hand it in to different quest givers, instead handing it in to the the first obvious one they stumble across. Stupid mistakes will occur if branching questlines are rarely encountered.

PvP vs world impact - retarded?

Go take a look at the Sunwell Progression leaderboard, and note which types of servers are at the top of the list, and which are well down the list. Yep, if your realm server is a PvP server, then your world progression will be retarded. No big surprise once you think about it for two seconds, I just didn't expect the difference to be that much.

It's got me thinking .. what if the dominant player forces in an area were granted the capability to dictate local policy? In game, this might take the form of giving standing orders for all guards to attack flagged players on sight at one extreme vs not coming to the aid of friendly players at all, acting only in self defense, at the other extreme. Combine that with sending out more, or fewer, patrols, and designating some zones as auto-flag or not, and various other tricks, and it would be very interesting to see whether player attitudes evolve. The safe haven zones would prosper, providing more services and resources, while the free-for-all pvp zones would be barren wastelands, where finding a blacksmith to do simple repairs would be hard.

player created quests?

I want to see player created “quests” in an MMOG, but then again maybe I don't. I have this ominous dread that quality would be a major problem, and even basic literacy would be a problem. Seriously, would you be engaged by a world filled with quests of "lolz, u pwn 10 ratz, i gif gold, kkthx" handed out by toons named "StabbityPwnsJu"?

Maybe a tool could be provided which facilitates construction of a quest from a library of parts, something like a mad libs for quests. The larger the library of parts, and the consequent combinatorial possibilities, the more interesting it would get. It could even support the design of special “quest item” drops like animal parts and such, although that would entail the player-designer specifying the drop rate and such, which breaks the game immersion veil for them. Unless .. when nominating the creature to be hunted for the quest they then get to select from a predetermined list of quest item drops, with no specific control over the drop rate of said items, other than the system advising which quest items drop always, frequently, uncommonly, or rarely.

Another problem is that quest descriptions would be bland ... but if the bulk of the quest description is auto-constructed for the player, then all that remains is adding some flavour text. This flavour text element would be optional though, and since the quest would be fully functioning without it I would expect it to go spare most times .. except where someone is feeling creative. It would depend on the user interface down ranking the importance of the flavour text, so players don't feel obliged or expected to enter something. If they (mistakenly) think they need to enter something, anything, into some field then you can be sure that field will get filled with lots of crud.

This would of course be completely incapable of creating the more interesting, clever, and detail rich content we all like, so there would still be a need for game developers.

I see the value of this as a way for some players to engage other players, to recruit them to their agenda or objective, and providing the safe and comfy wrappings of the progress-reinforcement game mechanics of quests. So, if as an alchemist I wanted to start experimenting with a wide range of herbs in hopes of making some new discoveries, it would be helpful if I could let people know I would pay a shiny shekel or two for certain rare but otherwise useless herbs. Meanwhile, if I also held a certain dislike for the gilled denizens of a local swamp, and have brokered a secret deal with their arch rivals, then I could put a bounty on their head and let others do my dirty work, and hence effect a change in the world. All the better if those rare herbs were found in that local swamp.