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This was originally a response to the thread of "Urgency: please have it" (link: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60235-urgency-please-have-it/), but it went into a whole 'nother direction, so I choose to make a topic of my own to potentially discuss it. So keep that in mind as it starts out with the 'urgency' topic and then moves on. Mmk? :D Honestly, I like urgency. I somewhat loathed Skyrim (for example) for not being urgent: you're the chosen one, you have to save a world from impending doom. So if I choose instead to join 10.000 guilds and do even more 'find my lost jewelry' quests, why hasn't doom impended yet? What did the evil dragon of evil do all day? Sit on his arse? Some doombringer... So urgency would be a 'must' for me, if the story lends to it, which I very much support (as opposed to 'here, go play in this sandbox world!')... On a related note: consequences when you're not urgent could potentially be very interesting, and if they choose to not railroad/script the consequences (i.e. make the consequences specific to the missed quest, for example, instead of making it an unchanging part of the main plot), or instant-game-over it, could lend to a lot of replayability. E.g.: Well crap! The village you were supposed to go to, to save from the Evil Bastard, has vanished from the map (apparently he did his Evil Bastardly job well without waiting for you to show up to thwart him) because you loitered around too long somewhere else... Incidentally, you weren't around to find out the next step in his master plan. Now how do we further the plot? What's his next step? How do we find out the next step of his master plan? How cool would that be? It could potentially involve a whole new gameplay mechanic of chasing down leads and investigating, setting up an intel network across several cities, etc etc. This could make the possibility of parallel missions interesting as well: instead of the Mass Effect 2 style of 'here are 9 missions you can do in any order you like! With no consequences if you choose 1 instead of the other, YAY!', you can have 2 or 3 missions that can happen at the same time, but you can only choose to chase down 1 lead, choose to do 1 mission (which you may or may not find out after the mission is over; as in: hmmm, let's do the investigatory mission first before going to the village where Evil Bastard has been spotted --> Well crap, apparently the Evil Bastard destroyed the village, but at least I found a piece of vital information that might come in handy later, or that unlocks some other important mission; and vice versa, of course: let's go save the village --> you have saved the village, but at the expense of some vital piece of info). Again, it leads to replayability. That could take a lot of work, granted, but hey, that's what additional stretch goals, or possibly mods, can be for, right? ;p (no offense to game makers if that comment is just plain wrong, though... O_o) So... Ideas? -Tim