GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Setting: Caverntown

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Anthony

This is what CRPGs call an 'escort quest' and most gamers hate them with a burning passion. I doubt it would be any more popular in a tabletop game.

Part of the frustration in a CRPG is that it takes more sophisticated AI to be a not-enraging escortee than to be a random monster, but they get barely any better AI (if not actually worse, due to the developers inexperience writing AI for this kind of character).

As an example: Escort Quests in World of Warcraft were horrible for the longest time because the NPC used the generic "patrolling monster" AI, and marched robotically [1] along a fixed path at a fixed rate, regardless of whether you were anywhere nearby or were stuck behind fighting monsters, if monsters were blatantly visible up ahead and attacking, if a gigantic demon T-Rex were trashing the zone at the time, nada.

Salt liberally with usually having a very limited set of dialogue that they spout inanely and repeatedly, and with little relationship to events in the environment, and eventually you want to stab them in their little low polygon pixelated faces.

Totally brainless, to a level that it's extremely difficult to replicate by a GM if the NPC is meant to be some kind of "person", even one with a low sense of self preservation and poor obedience.

[1] Word used deliberately. Not even as smart as a roomba.