Trading Sequence game

[Darj]

You may or may not be familiar with trading sequences, but basically it is a quest that consists on giving an NPC whatever item to get another in return, which is asked by another NPC, who then gives you another item, and so on until the chain ends with an unique item.

To get a better idea, look up the Biggoron's Sword Quest from Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

 

How this game works is that you have post make of an NPC that wants the item given by the previous poster, including at least:

- NPC description. Not necessarily a name, but say, for example, "NPC hidden in a cave in the mountain", or "Villager in the main city", etc.

- Mention why it needs the item, how it wants to use it, etc.

- An item given as reward.

 

As you can probably guess by now, the next poster then has to make an NPC that wants that given item, and repeat.

 

It is not mandatory, but I encourage you to flesh out the NPC, like describing it physically, its occupation, or mention its approximate location (e.g. forest, desert) to get an idea of how much our hero in this quest has to travel, and, who knows, eventually build out a map out of it. Dropping a short description of the item is cool, too.

 

Also, try to make the items fit the setting somehow. That is, if for example we end in a Zelda-ish setting, then don't come with out-of-place items like laser pistols and whatnot. Or if you want to, then you will have to be creative and clever and come up with a reasoning or justification to make it fit in. I say this because laser beams wouldn't be that out of place in a Zelda game because of the Beamos and other mechanical monsters and technologies.

Other than that, feel free to get as outrageous as possible. Heck, if the Biggoron's Sword quest includes some eyedrops in the chain, you can come up with pretty much anything.

 

 

I will start the chain with something relatively normal:

 

NPC: Ranger in the forest closest to the protagonist's hometown.

Requires: Red Bamboo Seed; to grow it in a deforested patch of the forest. It wants a red variant specifically because it can rapidly grow in harsh soils, and while red bamboo is abundant in a different region, the seeds are hard to come by.

Reward: Shiny acorn.

[Yui]

NPC: Blacksmith in a forest village

Requires: Shiny acorn, because "those damn squirrels" keep breaking into his shop and this should keep them distracted. They've been interfering with his work and it's really getting on his last nerve.

Reward: "Experimental" dagger (glorified junk)

[~British Soul~]

NPC: A student at a local combat academy

Requires: "experimental" dagger so that their father can use it to create a dagger for combat training as they are not able to afford the daggers sold by the selfish local merchants.

Reward: a steel rod

[👀 REP 👀]

NPC: An electrician who is also part of an orchestra

Requires: A steel rod, so he can learn how to be a good conductor (it also makes for a good baton)

Reward: A wooden flute

[Draconus297]

NPC: A young bard on a desert road to the west

Requires: A wooden flute, as his previous instrument was eaten by a monster

Reward: Illusion Elixir, a potion that lets the drinker take on any appearance they desire

[Yui]

NPC: A mummy that hangs out near a pyramid dungeon.

Requires: Illusion Elixir. He wants to be a tailor, but since he's a mummy today's society doesn't really accept him.

Reward: A sandstone slab with hieroglyphics on it.

[Draconus297]

NPC: A pretentious art critic in the hub area. You run into him multiple times throughout the game.

Requires: An unexpected art piece. He mistakes the hieroglyphs for a sculpture, and gladly takes it off your hands.

Reward: A rather ugly painting. There's a face on it that could scare anyone.

[Krashkube]

NPC: A ghost hiding in a vase.

Requires: A rather ugly painting. He gladly possesses the painting so he can scare away anyone.

Reward: A broken vase.

[Draconus297]

NPC: A worried young dryad.

Requires: A vase to plant her fern "body" in, so she can be a houseplant and not worry about getting eaten.

Reward: A rusted old locket. When you open it, music plays.

[Darj]

NPC: Small marionette doll sitting on a corner of a room of a haunted house inside the forest.

Requires: A melody that she can dance to. At first you cannot exactly talk or otherwise interact with the doll, the protagonist simply notices it and remarks that it looks like it could come alive at any time. If you enter the room with the item in your pocket however, you will hear a girl's mischievous laugh, the melody from the locket will automatically start to play, and the doll will be standing on her spot gracefully dancing to the music. If you approach and speak to her, she will take the locket from you so she can keep dancing to the music all the time she wants.

Reward: Fairy tears. Crystallized tears from a fairy; the doll found them in the house at some point, perhaps during the time it wasn't haunted...

[Draconus297]

NPC: A village maiden hopelessly in love. She won't tell you who she's got eyes for, only that she's been staring so long that anyone would find her pathetic.

Requires: Fairy tears. Turns out that they're the primary ingredient in an uncomfortably powerful love potion!

Reward: A very heavy wooden mallet. As she gleefully says, "Won't be needing this anymore!"

[Northern Sage]

NPC: A weird man in the process of setting up a carnival

Requires: A heavy wooden mallet for his Whack-a-Mole game

Reward: A kid-sized stuffed platypus (as in, the size of a child)

[Krashkube]

NPC: A child

Requires: A kid-sized stuffed platypus to play with

Reward: 10 cents

[Chaosix]

NPC: A Beggar

Requires: 10 cents to buy food

Reward: A key

[Krashkube]

NPC: A thief

Requires: A key to break into the castle

Reward: A bottle of poison

[Draconus297]

NPC: A farmer with a serious bug problem. Like, literally covered in the creepy-crawly pests when you see him, and if you're seriously bored enough you can level grind on his farm for 2-5 xp per bug.

Requires: A bottle of poison, to kill off the bugs at the central nexus of their nest.

Reward: The corpse of the Queen of Bugs, a sixty-pound monster insect.

[Northern Sage]

NPC: Return of the art critic!

Requires: A giant bug corpse for a new art installation

Reward: A thick book on restoring paintings

[Krashkube]

NPC: A travelling archaeologist

Requires: A book on restoring paintings to help him restore a painting 

Reward: A fossil

[Draconus297]

NPC: A Necromancer, who has rather recently taken up residence in the house you delivered the locket to.

Requires: Something impressive and distinctly dead to turn into a servant. Your fossilized monster does the trick.

Reward: A treasure map of the catacombs underneath the hub area.

[Krashkube]

NPC: Return of the thief

Requires: A map of the catacombs so he knows how to loot it

Reward: A red orb which he stole from a temple

[SkaterTheDJWolf]

NPC: A cloaked traveler with two suspicious bulges from his head.

Requires: Red orb; it's a fundamental part of a new invention he's working on. Something about duels...

Gives: A pack of strange cards. They have a spiral on the back and strange inscriptions featuring bizzare depictions of unknown creatures.

[Krashkube]

NPC: Some smug bastard with a dragon that is also a jet

Requires: The pack of cards so he can beat some other smug bastard with weird af hair

Gives: ALL THE MONEY

[SkaterTheDJWolf]

NPC: A dark blue lascivious humanoid dragon girl with looooong ears

Needs: A lot of money so she can invent something to satisfy her desires

Gives: A book that you probably shouldn’t open, for your own sanity

[The Frost King]

NPC:

Needs: Books of any kind so that she can learn all types of knowledge

Gives: A broken grandfather clock

[Darj]

NPC: Researcher at the basement of the clock tower of the capital city, in a peculiar room with a line of clocks in front of a wall, all with different, desynchronized times that yet somehow appear to have a pattern. Also in the middle there is suspicious empty spot...

Requires: The broken grandfather clock. After taking a look at it, the NPC concludes that it would perfectly fit on said empty spot between the line of clocks. After a short minigame of guessing the correct time to insert and start the clock in the slot, a mechanism activates, opening a secret endgame dungeon at the basement of the Clock Tower.

Reward: Access to the Clock Tower basement dungeon, also the NPC grants you a blueprint that she found while exploring the clock tower, hoping that during your journey you find someone who can make sense out of it.