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The Daily Grind: Would you play an NPC?

Back in The Day (before all this new-fangled 3D whozits and everything was text-based), when you wanted to roleplay, you weren't constrained by existing character classes or types; you could be anything you wanted. You could be a 10,000 year old vampire bartender, or an infant with a goldfish for a head, or anything in between. Nowadays, there is a clear distinction between player characters (PCs) and non-player characters (NPCs). The former are guided by humans, and the latter are bots.

But what if you had the opportunity to play the role of a traditional NPC? What if you could be that quest-giver, that fish vendor, that city guard? Instead of getting the same spiel over and over as you do now, a player could go have a leisurely chat with an actual person, making your favorite game world feel inhabited and real -- would you be that NPC? Would you do it for experience points that you could transfer to any of your alts? What if there were a leveling system in place for your fish vendor? Would you do it for nothing at all?