Courier System

Courier System

Introduction

The roads of Britannia carry more than travelers.

Under occupation, merchants, sympathizers, and spies maintain networks of trusted contacts across towns and territories. These people sometimes need documents, orders, supplies, and other items carried from one member of the network to another.

Players can take on that responsibility by working as couriers.

Courier work is not a conventional quest system.

There is no quest log, objective arrow, or quest-completion interface. The assignment exists physically in the world: a vendor entrusts you with an item, tells you who needs it and where that person can be found, and leaves the journey to you.

The package gives you a reason to leave town.

What happens along the way is the adventure.

Finding Courier Work

Courier work begins with trusted vendors.

Players who discover sympathetic vendors, spies, and other members of the hidden vendor networks may ask whether they have work that needs doing.

Words such as:

• Job
• Task
• Delivery

may indicate that you are looking for courier work.

If the vendor has a suitable contact and is willing to trust you, they may create an assignment.

A vendor might say:

"Take this order to Doran, the blacksmith in Vesper. Keep it out of sight."

A courier item is then placed in your backpack.

The Courier Item

The item entrusted to a courier might be a:

• Sealed document
• Ledger
• Manifest
• Parcel
• Supply order
• Other item appropriate to the merchant network

The item identifies the information needed to complete the delivery, including:

• The intended recipient
• The recipient's profession
• The recipient's town
• The player entrusted with the delivery
• The approximate time remaining

The assignment belongs to the courier who accepted it.

The item must then be physically carried through Britannia to its destination.

Making the Delivery

There is no objective arrow telling you where to go.

The courier is given the name, profession, and town of the intended recipient and must find that person.

Once the correct vendor has been located, the courier completes the assignment by dropping the entrusted item directly onto that vendor.

If the delivery is valid, the recipient accepts it and the courier receives the reward that was set aside when the assignment began.

The mechanics of the delivery are deliberately simple.

Getting there may not be.

The Journey

Suppose a human player accepts an order in Britain intended for a blacksmith in Vesper.

Vesper is currently under Orc control.

The courier now has choices:

• Take the direct road
• Travel by a safer but longer route
• Avoid Orc patrols
• Ask another player for an escort
• Wait for conditions to improve
• Risk entering the occupied town alone

There is no prescribed solution.

A journey may involve hostile territory, Orc patrols, enemy players, resistance forces, other travelers, or changes in territorial control.

The courier system provides the destination.

Britannia provides the journey.

Territorial Control and Risk

Courier work is tied directly to the state of the Orcish Invasion.

A destination controlled by your side represents a different undertaking from a destination deep within enemy territory.

As towns are liberated and recaptured, the relative danger of courier routes changes.

A journey that was relatively safe yesterday may become dangerous today.

Likewise, a difficult route through hostile territory may become routine after successful liberation.

Threat is considered from the courier's point of view.

A human courier traveling into Orc-controlled territory faces danger that an Orc-aligned courier may not. The reverse can be true when traveling into territory controlled by humans.

There is therefore no single map of "safe" and "dangerous" courier destinations.

It depends upon who you are and who controls the territory.

Courier Reward Levels

Courier assignments are ranked from Level 1 through Level 5.

The reward level reflects the undertaking involved in completing the delivery.

Two important factors are:

• Travel distance
• Territorial danger

A short delivery through friendly territory may produce a relatively modest reward.

A long journey into hostile territory may produce a considerably better one.

The exact method used to determine a courier assignment's reward level is intentionally left for players to explore.

Courier Rewards

Courier rewards are drawn from goods associated with the merchants and professions of Britannia.

Depending upon the assignment, rewards may include:

• Weapons and armor
• Reagents and scrolls
• Potions and bottles
• Tools and crafting materials
• Gems and gold
• General supplies

The quality and quantity of the reward can vary with the difficulty of the assignment.

The exact reward is not disclosed when the assignment begins.

A courier may understand that a particular delivery represents a substantial undertaking, but will not know precisely what reward is waiting at the destination.

Shopping and Courier Work

The hidden vendor networks support two related but distinct activities.

Shopping begins with the player:

"I need something."

The player asks trusted contacts for information and follows those leads in search of a merchant willing to provide the needed goods or services.

Courier work begins with the vendor:

"Do you have something that needs doing?"

The vendor entrusts the player with an assignment and identifies another member of the network who must receive it.

The two activities naturally reinforce one another.

A player might first discover a sympathetic blacksmith while searching for equipment. Later, that same blacksmith may offer courier work.

The resulting delivery may introduce the player to another vendor, another town, and another part of the network.

See Vendors Under Occupation for additional information about vendor personalities, sympathizers, spies, and hidden merchant networks.

One Assignment at a Time

A courier may have only one active courier assignment at a time.

Accepting responsibility for a delivery therefore represents a commitment to that particular job until it is completed or otherwise ends.

Courier assignments also have a limited amount of time in which they can be completed.

The courier item itself indicates approximately how much time remains.

Emergent Roles

Courier work is intended to create opportunities rather than character classes.

A valuable delivery into hostile territory may encourage players to take on roles such as:

• Courier
• Scout
• Escort
• Caravan leader
• Highwayman

None of these requires a special skill or formal profession.

They exist because players have something worth transporting and because other players may have reasons to help or interfere with them.

A courier worried about the road to Vesper might hire another player as an escort.

Several couriers might travel together.

A scout might travel ahead looking for Orc patrols or hostile players.

Someone else may decide that knowing where couriers travel creates opportunities of an entirely different sort.

The system does not dictate these relationships.

It creates reasons for them to exist.

Changing Economic Interests

Danger is not always undesirable.

Players interested primarily in safe commerce may want occupied towns liberated. Doing so improves access to merchants and makes travel through those territories easier.

Couriers may sometimes see things differently.

Dangerous assignments can represent greater undertakings and potentially better rewards. Changing territorial control can therefore improve some opportunities while diminishing others.

This means players do not necessarily share the same economic interest in the state of Britannia.

One group may celebrate the liberation of a town.

Another may look at the newly safe road and realize that a particularly lucrative route just disappeared.

Neither response requires a scripted faction objective.

It emerges naturally from the state of the world.

Why Courier Work Exists

Traditional Ultima Online acquisition is heavily centered around combat:

Kill creatures and collect loot.

Courier work supports another way of interacting with the world:

Learn the network. Accept responsibility. Travel through Britannia. Manage the risk. Complete the delivery.

The package itself is not intended to be the adventure.

It is the reason the player leaves town.

Once on the road, the courier becomes part of the larger world: its occupation, its commerce, its conflicts, and the other players moving through it.

Britain, Vesper, Minoc, Yew, and the other towns cease to be isolated collections of vendors.

They become places connected by people, information, goods, roads, danger, and political allegiance.

And sometimes somebody needs to carry something from one to another.