How does the following grab you!

Name of the game is Scavenger Hunt.

Game to have 200 to 500 rooms.

Object is to find the ten objects from a list given to you at the start of the game, and return the objects to the store room in the shortest elapsed time.

You may have one or more helpers to engage in the search or you may search on your own. Helpers are found by going into the "Meeting Room".

Each time one of your objects is found you move it to the store room, deposit it, and then find a new helper from the "Meeting Hall" (if you wish), to help you find the next object on the list. (You could use the same helper as previously if they are in the "meeting hall".)

Each of the helpers will have a special body of knowledge that will help you find the object you are after, pick up the object and/or carry it back to the storeroom and each will have a personality that is friendly or unfriendly, helpful or not helpful, quiet or talkative, assertive or passive, agreeable or disagreeable, amourous or prudish, knowledable or dense, etc. etc.

You must talk to them in order to determine what type of person they are and if they have the kind of knowledge that will help you find an item on your list. Even the passive approach may work because if you go to the "Meeting Room" and just sit down, a random line of assertive personalities will come over and start asking you if you want their be their partner.

Objects to be found may be shown in picture of the room, or they may be concealed behind or inside something. One object at a time is picked up and taken back to the store room. About half of the objects will require someone's help to either find it, release it, or carry it back to the store room.

Each of the helpers will have a list of their own and may require you to help them before or after they help you.

At the start of the game the names and personalities will be randomly matched so that it will require relearning the personality of the helper associated with the name. Each of the helpers will be given a randomly selected list to find and be given the randomly selected bank of knowledge necessary for searching for a specific item. (Possible you might want to keep the names and personalities the same thru various games so a person could decrease their time by knowing who to work with.)

At the end of the game, you will be asked to rate the personality of the various helpers (with both emotionally loaded terms and factually descriptive terms). This final rating gives a bonus that will reduce your time. (The purpose of this will be to determine your emotional reaction to each character type.)

The computer will also give you an identity number that can be used in the future to find out if you are a good match with another identity number. This could be used for a good friend, good date, good mate type of rating.

The biggest problem with this game is to develop the program to allow you to ask and answer questions and determine what kind of a person the questionee is, whether they have the knowledge, intelligence, strength, and are cooperative enough to work with, and how you assign character and predictability to each type of character and how you preform the conversation (type in statement, click on button for type for type of question or other method of questioning).

Then there is the problem of drawing the various room and items in the rooms. And finally the problem of keeping track of all the information and of analyzing the personality type.

The big question: do you think this would be an interesting game to play, one that would cause a person to spend an hour or two going thru it more than once?

[Editor's note: Roger, this sounds fascinating! I will talk to you more about it when I see you next week!]