General idea: A LOTRO plugin that allows players to follow adventures throughout Middle earth that are written by other players.
Requirements (that I'm aware of)
- It would need to be able to monitor chat channels
- It would hopefully be able to monitor (or check) a players location
- It would need to be able to open a text window based on finding specific text in the chat channels (and hopefully also based on their location)
- It would need to be able to allow users to load the story they want to follow
- It would hopefully be able to display text when a story is loaded to get the story started (though this is not absolutely necessary)
- It would hopefully allow players to bring up the last text window in case they forget their next objective
- It would hopefully be able to allow story writers to write stories by creating a series of "events"
Events: An event would consist of 2 to 3 parts
- A specific text in a chat channel (indicating the completion of an objective)
- Hopefully a specific location (not always required)
- A text window that opens telling the player their next objective
All objectives in writer's stories would have to create text in a chat channel (unless a script can truly monitor a person's location, in which case simply getting to a location could be an objective)
Examples of objectives:
- Killing a specific mob
- Winning a spar (I think this creates text)
- Getting a specific drop
- Selling a specific item
- Destroying a specific item
- Performing a specific emote to a specific NPC (or hopefully in a specific location)
- "Saying" something in a specific location (hopefully)
The stories would all follow a similar format and be linear (or branching). I suspect it wouldn't be possible to require multiple things as part of one objective (e.g. kill 10 orcs, or get 3 different drops). Nor do I suspect you could have a single story that requires the same objective at two different times (e.g. kill an orc, then later killing an orc), because each time would .
Text telling players the next objective => player completes the objective producing text in the chat channel => The plugin opens a window telling players the next objective...
Stories would also be limited compared to the ones in the game (e.g. no XP, no rewards, no interaction with items like burning a bridge, no items given to you players NPCs), but I still think stories could be fun.
I realize plugin writers are likely busy writing or maintaining other great plugins, so while I'm hopeful, I have no expectations. I was hoping it would be something simple I could do, but when I looked at LOTRO Alerts (which already had s lot of these features), it looked much more complicated than I could understand.