Hi,
I really miss more complex dialogue options while dealing with your employer, I think it would be great if having a particularly good/bad/scary reputation or backgrounds/traits composition allowed us to spice things up a bit, FTL-style. Example of what it’d look like below:
Employer is asking you to retrieve a stolen item, offering 200 advance and 800 on completion.
On negotiating the contract (in addition to regular options):
1. [having scary reputation] You’re not telling us everything. Better loosen your tongue. [gain additional information about enemies]
2. [having a brother of appropriate background] Are you taking us for fools? We know it’s worth more than that! [guaranteed payment rise]
3. [having high reputation] You know who we are. Men like us don’t work for scraps. [ditto]
On breaking the contract [having returned to employer]:
1. The bastards are nowhere to be found, but we walked our share looking for them. [keep the advance, lose less reputation than by simply canceling the contract]
2. We can’t find them anywhere, but won’t rob you ourselves. Here’s your crowns. [return the advance, lose no reputation]
3. [if you suffered casualties and escaped] You said they were some thieves, not seasoned killers! Pay up! [get double advance, lose reputation]
On finishing the quest:
1. Pleasure doing business with you. [hand over the item, get the payment]
2. [if you’ve suffered serious wounds or casualties] We’ve bled like pigs to get it back to you, I think that earns us a bonus. [try to negotiate bigger payment, lose no reputation]
3. It’s a mighty fine trinket, worth keeping. I think 800 crowns is hardly a fair price for it. [try to extort bigger payment, lose reputation]
4. The thieves must have fenced it already, they didn’t have it. [receive no payment, keep the item]
5. It wasn’t that hard to get it back. I think 600 crowns will do nicely. [bigger reputation gain with the employer]
As this kind of change would greatly benefit the immersion/atmosphere and merely expands the existing mechanics instead of requiring new ones I hope some time can be spared for it.
Cheers!
P.S. As a side note, I find the 1-contract-only-no-matter-what really weird, especially when I’m asked to deliver a package to a city where I’m already heading with a caravan…
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