So, the XP for combat discussion in another thread made me realise... a lot of people think rewards in the form of XP make the difference between "awesome strategic combat" and "a waste of time"
It really opened my eyes to how badly most developers have been treating dialogue in their RPG's. Remember those HUGE conversations in Planescape: Torment? Which had no point but to tell you the lore, keeping you entertained. And didn't reward you at all for reading it. Clearly it's only been this way since no-one opened their eyes to how much of your precious time this would waste.
It's time to make Project: Eternity the RPG of the future by revolutionising dialogue. I know Mass Effect did it great with codex XP, but we have to go further than BioWare. Revolutionize the RPG.
Every time a conversation option offers just lore, easter egg dialogue, random stuff inhabitants say, attempts to seduce your female NPC's, make stupid comments about your options in the past to reflect the word knows you exist etc. you get experience. This to compensate you for the fact that doing this clearly wastes your time and you could do something else instead. Like getting XP someway.
This way conversation finally leaves the waste of time area and enter the awesome strategic dialogue era.
After all, you aren't doing this for fun. All those extra NPC's taking up your time you could spend getting quests or talking to people who *need* killing. And since there's some kind of stupid rule that we can't just keep those NPC's due to some 'deserted city syndrome' or some equally lame explenation, this obviously is the only way to go.
Viva la Dialogue Revolution!!!