{Laugh} That is definately a goal to work towards. We''re definately moving off topic here though.

I like the idea of the legendary monster/npc.

But can we make a town a truly interesting experience for the player? Perhaps, if we can do this, the player will become more attached to the "townies" or "normals". Being able to build friendships would help on this regard. And perhaps, making the towns interesting for the player would help with the "friendships". Friendship should definately mean more than having a mindless automaton following you around

-pwd

{laugh} It was a good idea, but probably had as much to do with friendship as my homeless hero rant

Now how do we make a mathematical model of all of this?

The foundation could be personality (which would hopefully be unique for each NPC, maybe that little motivation system I''ve been trying to cook up). We could use different personality types, and if we can model the players personality at all, then we can get a "compatibility factor". This would be the NPCs immediate opinion of the player on first contact. Simple enough.

The first time the player is in the Line of Sight of the NPC each day, we could add 1 to the familiarity rating. Each dialog option chosen by the player when talking with the NPC would add 1 to the familiarity as well. Each day we would subtract 1 from the familiarity rating...

If the familiarity rating is above a certain point, there could be a random chance that the NPC could ask the player for some sort of favor (the depth/difficulty of the favor would be dependent on the familiarity). If the player refuses, the NPCs opinion of the player would go down a good bit, if the player accepts but fails, the opinion would go down a little bit less, and if the player succeeds, the opinion would go up factored by the difficulty of the favor.

Various dialog options could also affect the NPCs opinion (is it said threateningly, nicely, etc) perhaps factored by the familiarity (you might be more likely to accept the eccentricities of someone you''ve known a long time).

The player could have dialog options to request various favors, and the NPC would accept or decline, based on 1) the difficulty/danger rating of the favor (I need a place to hide vs. I need a place to sleep) 2) the opinion and 3) the familiarity. If the favor is declined, the NPCs opinion of the player would go down. If the favor is accepted, the NPCs opinion of the player would remain the same, or go down if another favor were requested recently. Perhaps there could also be a flag as to whether the player accepted or declined the last favor that the NPC requested, and this would factor in as well.

We could use the familiarity rating to maybe pull some cheap tricks, like does the NPC remember the players name when dialog is started. A familiarity of greater than 2?

-pwd