[galsiah]

Like I said on the codex, I think Spacekungfuman's points are good - apart from the overuse of "random", "randomly" etc. A few final decisions might need to be made on a random basis, but as much of a generation process as possible ought to be based on solid game world factors. That's the only way a collection of generated responses/actions/objects/quests... are going to create a world with any coherence. A player can't reason in an incoherent world.

But perhaps Spacekungfuman only means "not-pre-determined" when he says "random[ly]". If so, he probably needs to think a bit more about how these "random" processes would work, and elaborate.

[caster]

Yeah, i was put off by those "random" words in there too.

Procedural generation of dialogue that folows specific rules and is influenced by character stats and personalities of NPCs , for example... could be a good thing if somebody could really make it.

As oscar said, thats something that at first look would fit better in some sort of sand box game but i think usual more focused RPG could benefit from it if it was implemented with measure for specific NPCs and some of those usual filler NPcs.

I wonder would it be possible to create some system that would create quests like that...?

[Spacekungfuman]

When I said random, all I really meant was the choice made at the end (and some other specified portion) of the stat based decision tree.  Basically, at every step where what I called a "random" decision needs to be made, the system will generate an answer using an equation that factors in NPC stats, location, and the number of times that particular answer has been made, to avoid repetition.  So if there are 500 possible goal items some will be eliminated based on what the guard's stats are, so he can't get the pink tutu but it likely to get the dagger, drinks, or money.  Maybe this guard lives in a very pious town though, so the drinks are eliminated too, and the quest start for money will skew towards an option like needing it for a sick kid, vs to pay off gambling debt.  The only reason that I used the word random to describe this process is that you can't have it entirely determined by stats, otherwise you'll get the same outcome every time in any given situation, which kills replay.

[galsiah]

The only reason that I used the word random to describe this process is that you can't have it entirely determined by stats, otherwise you'll get the same outcome every time in any given situation, which kills replay.

That's true only where identical situations are likely. If enough factors are allowed to be dynamic, it's quite possible to have an entirely deterministic solution that'll never repeat in practice. Certainly you can't have everything determined by static stats/factors if you want variety - but that's fine, since you'll be aiming to construct a world that's as responsive/dynamic as possible anyway.

For NPCs, all that's really necessary is to give them some autonomy, quite a few stats, and medium/long-term responses to their interactions. Bumping into an NPC with exactly the same attributes, skills, health, knowledge, mood, position, finances, desires... is never going to happen, so it couldn't matter less that a deterministic algorithm would select the same response in all such situations.

In any case, I'd say that the repetition problem you outline is exposing a more fundamental flaw: the problem isn't that the algorithm spits out repetitious results in identical situations; rather the problem is that you're allowing identical situations to occur at all. Two real situations are never going to be anywhere close to identical. If two of the situations in your game are considered identical by such an algorithm, it's either a particularly dull world or a needlessly blind algorithm.

[Vahhabyte]

A truly great article. Sorry for necroposting, but this one is worth praise.