Hello, call me Bpen. I'm a newbie here but I've been writing IF for a while now. Mind if I ask some questions that may already have been brought up?

1) Is it possible to strip down Quest to only give the player a selection of actions at the bottom of the screen? Like those old Choose Your own Afventure Games? While this may seem like crippling the text adventure, there's much less hassle involved for the story I intend to present.

2) On that note, how do I 'teleport' the player automatically from room to room?

3) Has someone already written an RPG-like 'battle engine' (ab)using Quest's variables and random numbers? If so, may I please have a sample to use?

4) I've been trying to code a 'trading dynamic' in Quest for a while now. Get me (x) number of (items) or escort quests may be possible. I've been having trouble creating the illusion of an economy.

This is how it goes.
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* a) the player has a cargo device such as a backpack or a cart which can be upgraded later.

* b) different items of the map sell different things. Two variables, last_visited_area and current_area track the player's movements. This keeps the player from repeatedly entering and exiting a trading area to grab infinite wealth as the economy changes. Rather, unless the current_area is different from the last_visited, the economy script doesn't engage. There are 'landmark' Rooms that the player has to reach before the variables switch; so someone trading fruits up and down the mountain damn well better climb up and down the mountain.

* c)when the player enters the Merchant's Room, the game rolls several random numbers.
rand 1-4: if 1, no change in stock.
if 2 or 3, small change in stock: see local economy modifiers
if 4, reset to base value

The local economy means that some items tend to decrease (such as fish and salt in the mountains) while others increase.
Then the game rolls again if 'buy' items increase anyway to simulate another trader getting there first.
Then more random rolls as to how much each item actually do increase.

* d) now the hard part. Buying and selling. All items have a base value and price multiplier. Food, for instance, has a base value of 2. If a merchant has close to 1000 units of food stocked, 2 x (units sold) is all the player's going to get. Scarcity is modeled with a +1 for every 200 units. Thus, at 800-1000, food is 2. At 600 to 799, food sells for 3. At 400-599, 4, and so on. More expensive items may have +2 or +3 modifiers.

Problem: The player buys 1000 units of food from a Merchant. Now his store has zero food, and the sell price in there is 6. Infinite wealth ahoy!

My solution so far is to leave certain items 'buy-only' and others 'sell-only', but there has to be an elegantly simple solution that I'm stupidly missing.

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I'll answer #1 and #2:

1. Not in Q4, but you could do this in Q5, maybe with a bit of work. In Q5 you can remove the text input box so you could have a hyperlinks-only game.

2. Just move the player - add a script command from the Game Control category, "Move the player to another room".