LOGIC IN GAMES - WHERE DO YOU DRAW THE LINE?

The primary focus of this topic is going to be on NPC dialogue, though I'll touch on other aspects as well.

The question at hand is, how much logic is too much logic when it comes to deciding what your NPCs are going to say? To put it another way, I've decided that it's time to get serious about working on Tundra and one of my goals is not to have anything in the game that I can't logically explain in the context of the world I've created.

Which means I can't really take the traditional approach to NPC dialogue, because people you randomly meet in the street are pretty unlikely to blurt out that the magical macguffin of +1 awesomeness is located in that cave to the northeast that you should never ever go to.

What they are more likely to do is ask you why you're bothering them and then ignore your requests for information on the black-caped man.

However, this presents somewhat of a quandary since NPCs who tell you to get out of their faces and mind your own business don't make for a very fun or immersive experience. So I'm stuck trying to find a middle ground here.

My first idea was to allow the player to choose what they say to NPCs; this would require each NPC, however minor, to have some kind of "relationship" counter with the party which would determine how they react to you based on how you've been treating them. Which is awesome on paper but results in a shitload of mostly inconsequential variables for very little reward, as players generally don't give a shit what NPCs say in games.

My next idea was kind of an offshoot of this: the party (such as it is) will start out pretty much unknown (save for people who already know them; some NPCs will react differently to party members if they're, say, from the same town. I've never understood why NPCs have stock phrases when you're talking to them with someone who you recruited in the same town as them and presumably are either acquaintances or friends). Through the actions you take, the quests you do and whatnot, the party will gradually grow (in)famous, and the NPCs you help/hinder will tell tales of your exploits to other people, which will affect how they view you and subsequently the way they speak to you. This is an improvement upon the first idea, but still contains the same basic flaws.

I'm not even sure if it's possible to consolidate the conflicting facts that boring NPCs are useless and nobody really cares what NPCs say if they don't directly further the plot. I want to make "realistic" people in my world, but at the same time it's not really worth putting the effort in if nobody's really going to talk to them.

I've come up with some pretty crazy ideas that just wouldn't work in execution, actually--probably one of my most ambitious was to plan out a "storyline" for EVERY NPC IN THE GAME. So whenever you go to a town or whatever, everyone there is progressing through their own narratives and you'll see as much or as little of their individual adventures as you care to witness. This could be something as mundane as taking care of the kids to an NPC who's on a completely different quest to you and gathers their own groups of adventurers to go and accomplish it. You could see them in various places doing their thing and even choose to help them if you meet them at key points in their journey.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on how to keep NPCs and their dialogue fresh enough to not be mundane without requiring an amount of work and effort that isn't worth the gain you'll get from it in terms of the game itself?

This could apply to other aspects of the game as well. It's not "logical" to carry the kind of item list that most traditional RPGs have, but it's restrictive and potentially damaging to limit the player's inventory to something more realistic to what the group could actually carry. Do you value suspension of disbelief higher and have a portable shared inventory with no limit? (well, beyond the usual 99) or do you think that realistic simulations of what could actually be carried could have a place in a jRPG style game?

Same sort of thing with treasures. Unless there's a given reason for it (and there have been RM games that explained the treasure chests and stuff really well--see Master of the Wind for an excellent example that's blended seamlessly with the plot along with the saving mechanic) there's no justification for just having random chests full of money and items dotted around the world. They'd have been picked clean long ago by people who explored those places before you. And if you're the first to explore said place, who put the chests there?

At the same time, I find myself worrying that if I -don't- put random chests everywhere, people will think there isn't enough reward for exploring maps.

Glad you like the idea, Neverm0re.

I agree with you RE: random loot, Killer Wolf. I never said I wouldn't have other stuff dotted around, just that I think the concept of treasure chests in the middle of nowhere is fundamentally silly but it's such a staple of the genre that nobody ever really pushes the envelope there.

I want to make Tundra as realistic as possible in terms of character interaction/encumbrance/what you can find while travelling, without making the game less fun as a casualty. I recognise that sometimes the fun has to come first but I'm determined to break away from the standards that people tend to use simply because that's how it's always been done.