OK, here's the premise:
Your rich relative has recently died, leaving behind a wacky will. He
has left the entirety of the estate to the relative who wins a scavenger
hunt. The game should begin as the will is read and the lists of
objects and their values are handed out.
The player should be able to attempt various different paths:
-Egotistical (The player tries to win the hunt for themselves.)
-Cooperative (The player finds another relative (or group of
relatives) and makes a deal with them to try to win together.)
-Altruistic (The player attains objects and gives them to some other
relative so they can win instead.)
-Subversive (The player tries to thwart others attempts to obtain
objects.)
How far the player can get along any of the above paths and how easy it
is to switch from path to path is up to the author. (They may be only
one path available, but they should at least be able to try the
others.) Ideally, the NPCs would be able to choose any of the above
paths as well, but you only get a month to do this, so maybe not. Also
note that genre and setting are not set here--feel free to place your
game whenever and wherever you like.
Extra Credit: For a bonus point or two, include something from the now
sadly-defunct Silly Game. There are potential objects, locations, and
characters you can use here, also obtainable from:
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/mini-comp/sillygame.zip
(Which contains three html files with the three lists). Be sure to
give credit where credit is due.
Hopefully, this should give us some good examples of multiple-path
adventures, as well as some decent preliminary NPCs which can be
interacted with in a variety of ways. And still have some
get-the-object puzzles; the mainstay of IF ;-)
