I'm breaking this idea into two parts to simplify the explanation: I'd like to turn the Star Wars idea of force energy on its head. In SW, you become what you feel. Instead, what if you become what you make the people in your environment feel? Basic Concept: You and special NPC rivals have a quantum AI growing inside of you that feeds off of radiated emotional energy. Actions you take against normal NPCs generate a response, which in turn is ambiently absorbed. Attacking someone produces hate, for instance; healing them produces gratitude. The effect wears off over time with any given NPC. Different NPCs, based on personality, have different capacities to radiate different types of emotions. A hardened military veteran, for instance, doesn't radiate much fear, but might be capable of a great deal of hatred. Eventually, you'll have to move on to interacting with another NPC in order to get an effect. You use this emotional / psi energy to conflict or contest with the special NPC rivals. I don't have this detailed, but I'm imagining something a bit more complex than positive / negative attack and defense, but that's the general idea. (btw, please keep in mind that the actions you take against an NPC don't have to only be overt, such as attack, but can be indirect, such as "attack something they care about.")

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Some Questions: Given people's widespread comfort with "the Force" is this idea at all understandable? Do you think this mechanism would encourage players to interact with NPCs more, or treat them more as objects (like a pinata)? EDIT: By the way, this links to another idea about influencing the world at large, posted here. [Edited by - Wavinator on May 18, 2005 10:01:12 PM]

I'm using a similar idea for my 2d RPG (Dyne). My idea, however, uses the heart beat. So when you talk to an npc about a/n interesting/scary/distrubing/exciting, your heart beat will rise, and will fall when you stay still. During battle, your heart beat will rise when attacked, and when it reaches a maxium, it enters the "trance" mode.

Like you, I figured out that this would be difficult and tricky to implant, because you don't want people abusing NPCs. This could only be fixed by making the NPCs very very compilcated, basically, human. This is impossible, so to speak, so the only other way I see is to make an invisible barrier. For example, in Dyne, your heart beat will rise only after the first time you talk to an npc. A very interesting but difficult concept.