Second part: NPCs
As I previously said, NPCs are one of the main features of this game idea.
I'm sure I'm not the first one to think of a thing like this, I mean, it's a quite obvious solution, but I've never seen something done in this direction so far.
If you have ever played games like Wurm, minecraft, but also multiplayer mods for GTA (i.e. SA-MP), you probably noticed one fact: places are usually empty.
Even if you manage to find a good group of people to play with, running around the street of Los Santos, or struggling to nail a plank on your house in any Wurm's village is a quite lonely experience.
And I'm talking about maps that are not even comparable to the one Outerra gives us.
Imagine what that would be...
On the other side, in order to fill the gaps, players gather in small areas, making all the rest of the world (in the case of a game in outerra) useless.
So, I already said that players will find their first companion after the "tutorial".
This won't be the only NPC players will (can) "control".
As long as the power, experience, wealth of a player grows, he can lead or hire more NPCs and have them work for or with him.
Let's say I start a merchant carreer.
at the beginning I'll have to manage all by myself only with the help of "Bob" (from now on the first Npc will be known as Bob... it's shorter)... gathering resources or products, moving around to sell them, buying other stuff to bring back home and sell there, etc. (economics will be the topic of another part, so let's stick with this for now).
When business start to grow and cash start to flow in our pockets we can decide to hire another NPC to help us.
Then we can decide to let Bob and the other one manage the shop at home while we travel trying to find better deals. Then we can hire more to cover multiple trade routes, then we can hire guards to defend our loads and so on. When we become enough powerful and important we can also hire NPC that will manage brand new activities in town or elsewhere. Manage another shop in another town, open a tavern in the middle of the route, or just start a brand new business, making us real medieval businessmen.
That is how, for example, a person could reach important position in the village, feud or kingdom society (Politics will be explained too soon...)
But how does this work in details?
Where do those NPC come from? How can I hire them? What should I do to be sure they're working hard?
Well, NPCs will "spawn" initially at the spawning cities where there will be a building that can offer beds and food for the unemployed. The bigger the building, the higher the number of NPCs available.
If you want to hire someone you go there and choose between the available ones... if there are none, well, too bad... work harder and improve the economy of the region.
That is because the spawning of new NPCs depends on the wealth of the villages and chances to find jobs, have a roof over the head and a warm dinner in the belly.
If the situation is good, then more NPCs will come and the economy can grow and grow, but the balance is important.
It's important because you have to care about those who work for you, the village must have enough place for everybody, there must be food for everybody, and everybody must receive their payments and must have the means to spend those money in order to make their lives better.
So Bob will have his own place (could be a room, a house, a castle, if you want, and these variables unlock even more possibilities...) and so all the others you hire. They have to eat, sleep, live. If you manage to keep them satisfied (and we will see how this could work) they will stay with you, work for you, and create a bond with you that could be more powerful than money, one day.
When new settlements start to become larger, they can build their own "unemployed" structures in order to "call" NPCs directly there without having to go to the main city.
Of course, in those centers it is possible to find both "newcomers" that will have auto-generated skills and attributes, and NPCs that was already there, already worked for someone and have lost their job (or they quitted it). those will have their attributes that are the sum of their starting points plus the experience they've reached doing their job.
the higher the experience, the higher the costs of a NPC.
I can hire an unexperienced one by offering him food and a bed where to sleep (of course after a while he will start to grow unsatisfied with that situation, but you have the time to improve that slowly) or I can get more valuable help by offering better houses, higher salary, etc.
So, try to imagine a settlement started from a single player, who maybe has invited one or two friends to join him and thei manage to get things working fine with their activities... usually we will have a village of three big houses, few shacks, a ton of NPCs merchants standing night and day in the main plaza...
Here we would have a village with three players who can control 10 NPC each. that village will have something like 15-20 buildings just for the living, then working places, entertainment places, and so on until one of the friends become the noble of that land, kills the other two friends because he is powerthirsty and rule with fear and pain over the unlucy land... ok, i just let this get out of bonds a little, but you got the point... a living place, with players and NPCs moving togheter in the economics, politics and social issue of the village and the region.
Of course more players is better for a village, and that is the main objective, but if you multiplies the number of players that could join a game like this by 10 (and it's not even a huge number... it could be way larger) you can see that having a player base of 1000 will get 10000 characters in the world, and 9000 of them are ALWAYS there, giving to the world at least a small impression of being "lived".
So, NPCs are important for this game, but let's analyze them one by one and see how are they "builded".
Every NPC has a full set of scores that defines him.
These cover the personal, professional and social side of NPC's life and influence how the NPC is satisfied with his life and therefore influence his loyalty, his effectiveness, his decision to stay where he is instead of leaving.
Let's take professional side in detail...
What are the variables that determines his score for the professional satisfaction?
Let's do a short list of the main ones: first, salary, of course... then the chance to improve his business, then the availability of resources (that introduce one of the economic features which is "supply chain") and prices at the market, businesses competition, taxes on his products or on material he need to produce, etc.)
I'll make an example (which is quite "extreme" on purpose) to explain the complexity and interconnection between economics and NPC's mood.
The ruler decide to lower the iron gathering from the mine because he wants more gold from the other mines.
Iron then become more expensive at the market because there is less around (offer and demands will rule the economy around here...).
Smiths will buy iron at higher prices, so they will sell hatchets at even higher prices both because the price of the raw material, and because with less iron there are less hatchets available and the product itself become more expensive. Woodcutter then raises the price of the logs they cut, sawmill will pay more and ask more for planks and refined wood materials...
At the end, our NPC, the furniture maker, decide to close his business in that city because wood has become more valuable than gold and move to another town.
End of the story? The ruler will have a lot of gold but won't have a wooden chest where to store it because our NPC moved away.
Let's now see personal and social sides.
there are influenced by many aspects like friends (yes, NPC can have friends too!), maybe even family (NPC marriages and childs) religion and politics (how much does he likes or fear the local noble, how much comfort he finds in priest sermons, etc.) entertainment (local taverns or public places where to spend his free time and spend his dear golds...).
you can imagine every NPC as a scheme shaped like this:
the NPC is a big dot in the middle. He is surrounded by a circles of other dots (smaller, but still quite "big" (by big I mean important) which are directly connected with him. These dots are the variables of the three sides mention above... their dimensions depends on the basics attributes and features of the NPC (there could be a NPC more interested in work, one more in family or having fun, etc.).
Then, every single dot around the NPC is surrounded by other smaller dots that influence that one and so on, like a small solar system of dots that goes around eachother influencing, more or less, the one they spin around.
Here a simplified scheme:
![](http://i58.tinypic.com/2q234up.jpg)
You understand that keeping a NPC happy is not something easy like "give 'em food and roof", but is' more complicated and challenging.
The reward, of course, is worth the game because a lot of NPC working for me means that I can care of the thing I want to (and leave the boring, but necessary ones to them... no more hours spended in mining stones or picking herbs...) and i can get a huge load of golds from my activities... I only need to be careful and take care of my employees, by treating them good and paying them the right amount for their precious job... or just treat them as slaves and scare the ...... out of them and threat their lives if they do not do what I order them to do... in the end... this is a mediefval setting...
There is way more to say about NPCs, how they can marry, how you can have a NPC family (and children that you can, once your main character dies for whatever reason, control... think of something like "the guild", but with no bugs), how they can even create and manage settlements on their own if the contingency allows them to.
But I think it's enough for today.
See you.