While I am generally in favor of making quest text messages less generic-sounding, I don't think these changes quite hit the mark tonally.

Twoflower's dialogue: Sounds too casual for someone originally from the Agatean Empire. "Ah heck", "or whatever", "stuff", "be jazzed", etc don't sound like things he would say. It comes across more like he's trying to do the "how do you do, fellow kids" meme. He can be optimistic and naive without resorting to this.

The Master of Thieves's dialogue: Pretty much aligns with his diction in the Rogue quest, so I don't have an issue with it. It's "complimentary cement shoes", not "complementary", though.

Continuity errors:

• Ankh-Morpork doesn't have aldermen, and why isn't Lord Vetinari in the picture? (The assignquest premise is IMO an opportunity to tweak the story. I am in favor of making it lower-stakes: the theft of the Card is not important enough for higher-up city politics to take notice of; it only threatens the burgeoning tourist industry. However, Vetinari should at least get a mention, even if it's that he has declined to help - though his usual modus operandi would be to not help openly but quietly manipulate things to help resolve the problem.)
• Ploughing up and down the river would be an unusual sight as the river Ankh is repeatedly referenced as being so polluted it can be walked on.
• Air miles aren't a thing in Discworld (one could make a Pratchettian joke referring to the flying machine in The Last Hero, but I don't think there is enough space in this one message to do it without it taking over the point of the message).
• Similarly, transferring a credit card account implies that is widespread and normal, which isn't really the case in Discworld. Possibly this could be saved if Twoflower at some point expresses admiration of this newfangled thing, like "Such wonders they have here in the city, to record your ledgers on such a small thing..."
• On the other hand, the reference to the Mastercard ad campaign is exactly the sort of real world allusion Pratchett liked to make.

Technical issues:

• Some lines are going to be overly long when the % format strings in them are expanded.
• "Town is peaceful and quiet - all wrong!" is not grammatical. Another continuity note, I don't believe it would be possible for Ankh-Morpork to be this desolate unless a large portion of its population has fled, which I don't think the rest of the text is implying.

Thank you! I would like to have another go over this with your feedback in mind. I'll update this PR when I've done so (unless you'd rather I closed it and submitted a new one.) A few replies to particular points, all of which broadly agree with you:

• You're right about 'complimentary'; I had it in my head that, e.g., a pub would supply "complementary peanuts" to complement your beer, but that appears to be my own personal false etymology. Thanks.
• "Ploughing up and down the river" was supposed to be an Ankh joke, as most rivers do not require ploughing, but I'll find something better. I've also remembered just now that the US spelling is 'plow'.
• "Town is peaceful and quiet" looks grammatical to me, but using 'town' without an article may be another Britishism (it refers to whatever town or city you're currently in/talking about), unless the problem is something else. Attaching "-- all wrong" like that isn't exactly grammatical, but I thought I'd get away with it. I'll change it. (I take it that even though Discworld is British-created, NetHack and therefore the Tourist quest are written in US English, so I'll stick to that, but I may occasionally miss things.)
• I'll try adding a short bit about the new technology the Royal Mint is trialling, which would lampshade not only the "transferred the account" line, but the existence of credit cards themselves, as well as a nod to the Making Money storyline.

EDIT: Oh, and I think there are Aldermen mentioned in one of the Watch books, but I can't cite chapter and verse. In any case, I agree about lowering the stakes.

ANOTHER EDIT: It's in Sourcery (at least). When the wizards have just lizarded the Patrician and are realising that they're crossing a line it will be hard to uncross: "Out there was the council of aldermen, the city watch, the Guild of Thieves, the Guild of Merchants, the priesthoods... and none of them knew what was about to hit them."

Thanks again for your quick and detailed feedback!

I'll update this PR when I've done so (unless you'd rather I closed it and submitted a new one.)

That's exactly the sort of thing "Convert to draft" is for. Then, when you feel like you're finished tinkering, bring it out of draft.

Are you sure it was "per nhmall's" feedback? All I mentioned was "convert to draft."

Oops, that should be "per copperwater's feedback", of course. I'm going to leave this as a draft at least overnight, so that I can check it over with fresh eyes tomorrow.

• some further tweaks to dialogue
• sprinkled some Discworld flavor on Home level: named the watchmen, added some peaceful NPCs, statues of 'hippos' (wumpuses) on the bridge

some bits on the new commits:

• There are still some lines that look like they would be overly long when % expressions are expanded.
• Is the literal "Master of Thieves" in assignquest (versus %n) intentional? I can see why it may have been done that way.
• The feminine pronouns for The Lady should be replaced with %dh / %di / %dj formatters (what if the hero goes on the quest and converts alignment to Blind Io or Offler before returning the Card to Twoflower? I double checked in wizard mode and this is possible.)
• "I appealed to the Patrician and he said the matter fell under the doctrine of detectores custodes" - perfect, no notes
• If we're changing more than just text, I'd take the opportunity to make the Master of Thieves leave a normal corpse rather than crumbling into dust, because I don't really see him as supernatural in any way. But that's a personal opinion.
• Trespassers not Tresspassers (but the formal name of the organization is the "Ankh-Morpork Trespassers' Guild"? seems a little odd)
• Another personal opinion of mine is the word "henchling" should be excised from NetHack, not that you added it, but I notice it's still present in unchanged text. It just sounds so dumb.
• Providing a barbarian and rogue as they appear in this PR means they will each be carrying d3 of offensive, defensive, and miscellaneous items, which might create an incentive for players to kill them for that gear. They will not have the full Astral Plane loadout, but 3-9 useful items is not nothing. If you want them to be purely flavor and generate with no random gear, they need to have keep_default_invent=false specified.
• Arguably, peaceful monsters inserted for flavor would be better spread out throughout the (top 3 levels of the) quest rather than all in the home level.

Great, thank you. I've put this PR back into draft while I work those through.

Arguably, peaceful monsters inserted for flavor would be better spread out throughout the (top 3 levels of the) quest rather than all in the home level.

@copperwater, I agree that would be better but is it possible? I'd need to specify that, say, a rock troll named Detritus appeared on exactly one of the upper filler levels, but they all use the same lua file, so how would I stop it generating each monster on every level? (I'm more of a writer than a coder these days...)

Is the literal "Master of Thieves" in assignquest (versus %n) intentional? I can see why it may have been done that way.

Yes it is, because Twoflower says "a new Master of Thieves", not "a new the Master of Thieves", unless I've missed a better way to do that.

There are still some lines that look like they would be overly long when % expressions are expanded.

I thought I had counted all of these and left no lines past 78 characters inclusive (allowing about 10 for %p), but I'll check again. (edit: nope, I missed some.)

I agree that would be better but is it possible? I'd need to specify that, say, a rock troll named Detritus appeared on exactly one of the upper filler levels, but they all use the same lua file, so how would I stop it generating each monster on every level? (I'm more of a writer than a coder these days...)

That is a valid concern, but I believe there is only ever one upper filler level due to how the quest dungeon is defined (5-6 levels, start level is number 1, locate level is number 3). If you're concerned that the quest might one day be extended, I think it'd be fine to use just the start and locate levels.

Actually, come to think of it, the filler level isn't even recognizable as a city; it's generic cavern filler. I intend to change that in xNetHack when I get around to redesigning the Tourist quest. But here and now, I agree it would make Ankh-Morpork characters feel oddly out of place in the filler level.

Edited to add: they could also generate inside an if percent(xyz) then des.monster(...) endif block, so they're not guaranteed every game. Flavor can sometimes get stale if you experience it every time.

Yes it is, because Twoflower says "a new Master of Thieves", not "a new the Master of Thieves", unless I've missed a better way to do that.

I don't believe I've ever used it, but there is a format suffix for stripping a leading "the": the "t" in %nt. This is used in the Rogue quest dialogue to refer to the Master of Thieves: "Did you perhaps mistake me for some other %lt?" which obviously doesn't render as "some other the Master of Thieves".

I thought I had counted all of these and left no lines past 78 characters inclusive (allowing about 10 for %p), but I'll check again. (edit: nope, I missed some.)

Technically the player's name can run up to 32, but I usually treat 16 as a reasonable max.

When rewriting quest dialogue my usual process is to type out all the text as it will be rendered with no % specifiers (using XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX for the player's name), wrap it accordingly, and then when I'm happy with it, make a final pass to replace the hardcoded strings with % specifiers. But I understand that might not be as easy in a pull request where the text might change any time in response to feedback.

There are still some lines that look like they would be overly long when % expressions are expanded.

I've checked over all the lines, I THINK they are all correctly wrapped now.

The feminine pronouns for The Lady should be replaced with %dh / %di / %dj formatters (what if the hero goes on the quest and converts alignment to Blind Io or Offler before returning the Card to Twoflower? I double checked in wizard mode and this is possible.)

Done. It's not clear I can capitalise these (I don't see any other % formatters with more than one modifier), so I also rearranged some sentences to get the "she's" away from the beginning.

If we're changing more than just text, I'd take the opportunity to make the Master of Thieves leave a normal corpse rather than crumbling into dust, because I don't really see him as supernatural in any way. But that's a personal opinion.

I didn't want to go crazy on changing more than text, but I took a look at this, and I noticed that the Master of Thieves already doesn't have G_NOCORPSE in mon.h (as most quest nemeses do, but not all) - so maybe the reference to his crumbling to dust was an error? I'm not sure if there's something in hard code somewhere that stops nemeses leaving corpses. I've changed the text to draw less attention to it, anyway.

Trespassers not Tresspassers (but the formal name of the organization is the "Ankh-Morpork Trespassers' Guild"? seems a little odd)

Spelling corrected, and phrasing changed to "the Ankh-Morpork Guild of Trespassers", if that's what you mean. The joke in DW canon (as you likely know) is that it used to be the Explorers' Guild but Vetinari made them change the name.

Another personal opinion of mine is the word "henchling" should be excised from NetHack, not that you added it, but I notice it's still present in unchanged text. It just sounds so dumb.

Changed to "flunkies", which has a nice TCOM-era Thieves' Guild-ey feel to it, I think.

Providing a barbarian and rogue as they appear in this PR means they will each be carrying d3 of offensive, defensive, and miscellaneous items, which might create an incentive for players to kill them for that gear. They will not have the full Astral Plane loadout, but 3-9 useful items is not nothing. If you want them to be purely flavor and generate with no random gear, they need to have keep_default_invent=false specified.

Done.

Arguably, peaceful monsters inserted for flavor would be better spread out throughout the (top 3 levels of the) quest rather than all in the home level.

I don't know how to do this without duplicating the characters, as commented above, but I did put some peaceful dwarves and rock trolls into the upper filler level, where I think they fit despite/because of it being a cavern level. They have default inventories, which may mean the dwarves destroy the walls, but I think that's fine in a cavern level.

For the Locate level I added 10 possible NPC-monsters each with a 10% chance of appearing; if I'm getting the maths right, this gives a ~65% chance of one or more of them appearing, with an overall ~39% chance of exactly one, ~19% of exactly two, then tailing off.