Things I Wish I Could Do In Avadon

[madrigan]

Here's my list:

 

 

Save the Shadow Creature instead of killing it

 

Take over Oghrym Tor after whacking Arl, re-fortify, save the town

 

Take all four other Hands on adventures aside from the last one

 

Choose from more character classes: barbarian, archer, monk, scholar, tinker

 

Smash doors, force gates, and rip open locked boxes

 

Defect to Tawon Empire, work as double agent

 

Use a boat

 

 

That's all I can think of right now. What about you?

[VCH]

Originally Posted By: madrigan

Here's my list:


Save the Shadow Creature instead of killing it

I was actually convinced that the Shadow beast was Lord Carastral. That would have been much more interesting.

[Dintiradan]

I'm sure that later Avadon games will introduce new character classes, much like the Geneforge games.

[jlsgaladriel]

Save the Shadow Creature instead of killing it

 

Yes! In old sw games one could attack friendly creatures -- I very badly wanted to kill M'k instead, although clearly for game reasons he would need to escape at that point if one attacked him.

 

Choose from more character classes: barbarian, archer, monk, scholar, tinker

 

Well, I want more flexibility, period, with old-style prerequisites, but not trees. I don't think Jeff's going back that way, though. What I *could* see him doing is adding an elite class that one could play as PC after having beaten the game once. It would add replayability, if nothing else.

 

Smash doors, force gates, and rip open locked boxes

 

Given the new tree-style skillset, I think I'd rather see just a straight up dex requirement for lockpicking, or strength for bashing, rather than the current system.

 

Use a boat

 

Oh, my, am I salivating at the thought of Exile/Avernum with the new engine!

[ewan]

I was happy to see that the effort I went to to *not* kill off the village meant, in the endgame text, that they were noted as having occupied the fortress and survived.

[Student of Trinity]

Yeah, more ways to deal with simple obstacles would be cool, because they're a ubiquitous part of the game, but there are very few options for dealing with them. Being able to swim, or improvise a raft, or scramble over fallen rubble, or batter down a door, would add a lot of interesting challenges. This is asking Jeff to do something like design a good 'Macgyver skill' mechanic, or else write a lot of tricky scripts. Or ideally both, really. It would turn his games partly into the old-style point-and-click 'adventure' games, where you have to track down components and assemble bizarre contraptions. But if he's looking for a way to add a new angle to his games, this could be a good way to go. And he could work up to it gradually, by starting with just a few script-based 'cross the river' type challenges in some game.

[Randomizer]

Jeff's been moving away from the puzzle solving of Exile and the early Avernum games. While I wouldn't mind a gather up worthless items like boards, rope, and tools to build a raft, some players don't like thinking. He needs some of those multiple paths to a goal: hack, skill check, or puzzle solving.

[madrigan]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

This is asking Jeff to do something like design a good 'Macgyver skill' mechanic, or else write a lot of tricky scripts. Or ideally both, really.

This is where the tinker class would come in. There could be a branch of the skill tree with Build Raft, Build Battering Ram, Build Trebuchet, and so on.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Would it have a 'Build Character Who Isn't Useless In Combat' skill? I think splitting characters into more combat-oriented and utility-oriented types is an interesting idea, but the primacy of combat in most modern RPG gameplay makes it pretty untenable. I like the idea of distributing utility-type skills around the classes; perhaps in future there could be some other skill (leadership, construction, etc.) that only blademasters and shamans get, to balance out the unlock skills on shadowwalkers and sorceresses.

[madrigan]

Originally Posted By: FnordCola

Would it have a 'Build Character Who Isn't Useless In Combat' skill? I think splitting characters into more combat-oriented and utility-oriented types is an interesting idea, but the primacy of combat in most modern RPG gameplay makes it pretty untenable. I like the idea of distributing utility-type skills around the classes; perhaps in future there could be some other skill (leadership, construction, etc.) that only blademasters and shamans get, to balance out the unlock skills on shadowwalkers and sorceresses.

True, that would be simpler and is more likely to happen. I love the idea of having both combat and support characters, but it would probably necessitate larger adventuring parties, and I don't know how hard it is to code. It seems like the pathfinding could get a little weird.

Nonetheless, tell me you don't want to have your tinker throw a wall up so your shaman and wizard can attack from shelter as your scholar advises your blademaster and shadow walker on the location of vital organs in the obscure monster you're fighting.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

The tinker idea does sound pretty cool. The scholar function you mention would probably work better as an ability on a combat-oriented class (and in fact does sound like a couple of the existing passive skills), but I do like the idea of making barriers to enemy movement. Seems like a skill that would work well with the new focus on increasing/restraining movement that Jeff has brought to Avadon.

 

As to the broader point, I'm of the opinion that as long as combat remains the focus of game design, all characters should be good at combat. It would be different if RPGs frequently included, say, elaborate minigames for lock picking, beast taming and diplomacy, but as it stands games handle these operations in perfunctory ways (even when some of these operations have important consequences, e.g. dialogue in Spiderweb games, Planescape: Torment, Dragon Age, etc.) while keeping the focus on fighting.

[jlsgaladriel]

Quote:

Would it have a 'Build Character Who Isn't Useless In Combat' skill?

Well, one could give such a class tinkerish combat abilities: tinker-only weapons which, when they work, work twice as well, but which only work half the time, or which risk to explode and be lost (black-powder ranged weapons?)

Working out the game balance of such a class would be crazy-making, though, although as Jeff has pointed out, balance isn't quite as important in a non-multiplayer game. I'd think especially as an elite class (unavailable on first runthrough,) something like this would be more acceptable, and add interest.

[nikki.]

Originally Posted By: jlsgaladriel

Save the Shadow Creature instead of killing it

Yes! In old sw games one could attack friendly creatures -- I very badly wanted to kill M'k instead, although clearly for game reasons he would need to escape at that point if one attacked him.

I literally just "beat" this fight. Whilst I'm not sure who/what the Beast is yet, I really wanted to save it.

[A less presumptuous name.]

I haven't gone back to the region since beating the Shadow Beast, except for the first companion quest. I don't think that the Shadow Beast was anyone important, but I had convinced it to return with me to Avadon when the jerk came and killed it. Well, he forced me to kill it. I could let the jerk take my exp, now could I?

[Jerakeen]

I felt similar pangs when I finished off the twin undead. Damn Jeff, he really knows how to tug the heart strings.

 

I comfort myself with the knowledge that I'm ending their misery. And that I'm going to kill the bastard who did it to them.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

The original point, though, was that classes like Tinker and Scholar would focus on non-combat skills. This is a zero-sum game: unless one simply wants to make such a class better than the existing ones by giving them skills that have non-combat benefits on top of the standard combat benefits, one has to take away from their combat capability to do so. Which brings us back to the fact that most modern RPGs are fundamentally combat-driven.

 

As for Moritz'kri...yeah, he's an easy one to hate. Even Nathalie thinks his methods are excessive. Nathalie.

[Alorael at Large]

I'd actually say that it's a bad design decision to try to balance combat and non-combat abilities with each other. They almost invariably work completely differently. Most of the time, combat is required and other things are optional. Often, you get more interesting contents with your non-combat skills at the expense of making the game harder, which only some players enjoy.

 

A better option? Give all classes non-combat abilities and make them all interesting. The cost? That requires huge amounts of content that most people won't see. It's not worthwhile.

 

—Alorael, who is content to leave non-combat options as choices left to the player's discretion, not his or her character build.

[Slawbug]

Originally Posted By: Inappropriate Measures

I'd actually say that it's a bad design decision to try to balance combat and non-combat abilities with each other.

Strong agree. It's incredibly frustrating to have to contort your build in order to access particular game content.

[Student of Trinity]

Heh. I guess that particular piece of realism is one of the ones that people play games in order to escape.

[Serene Tempest]

I would have liked it to be possible (if very difficult) to uncover more of the conspiracy before the big reveal. Not enough to stop it, but perhaps enough to put together the pieces just before it happens (and just after you are no longer in any position to warn anyone).

 

Click to reveal..

Maybe I've just played too many of Jeff's games, but I guessed that the Wayfarer was Shadow Takrus pretty quickly

 

It would also be cool if having certain characters with you made certain conversations and encounters play out differently (for example, Jennell's tracking/pathfinding skills coming into play more than just during her special mission, Shima's stealth and scouting abilities allowing you to sabotage things and giving you more of a heads up about what's next, Nathanilie being able to see through illusions and dispel magical effects, and Sevlin... well... annoying your enemies?)

[Jerakeen]

Jenell does use her tracking skill in the wretch warrens, to tell you how you might avoid the patrols.

[madrigan]

Originally Posted By: Inappropriate Measures

I'd actually say that it's a bad design decision to try to balance combat and non-combat abilities with each other. They almost invariably work completely differently. Most of the time, combat is required and other things are optional. Often, you get more interesting contents with your non-combat skills at the expense of making the game harder, which only some players enjoy.

A better option? Give all classes non-combat abilities and make them all interesting. The cost? That requires huge amounts of content that most people won't see. It's not worthwhile.

—Alorael, who is content to leave non-combat options as choices left to the player's discretion, not his or her character build.

Not worthwhile for who? Not worthwhile for the developer, in terms of time investment vs. sales? Ok, if Jeff decides that adding this sort of thing would use up too much time/money/effort relative to how many players would like it, that is a reasonable business decision. But that doesn't mean it would not be worthwhile from a player's perspective, in terms of game experience. Being able to solve in-game problems, even in combat, using multiple, well-developed non-combat abilities sounds pretty awesome to me. Geneforge had the Diplomacy and Mechanics skill, that didn't seem to make the game less fun. I don't think it would do great harm if certain character classes specialized in non-combat skills. It just means more decisions for the player and more ways to create a strong party. Avadon is actually pretty extreme among Spiderweb games in that it has only two non-combat abilities, which are really the same ability.

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES

Strong agree. It's incredibly frustrating to have to contort your build in order to access particular game content.

I already have to do this. An RPG will always require that I make character build decisions within certain parameters. In a class-based game like Avadon, the first and most important character build decision I make is which class to play. Skills and abilities are game content. The skill trees in Avadon, and the hidden skills in Avernum 4-6, and the game generally in Geneforge 4-5, require me to alter my build in order to see certain abilities and effects, and sometimes to have a reasonable chance of accessing a particular area or winning a particular fight.

[A less presumptuous name.]

Methinks that Slarty was talking about content not directly related to the characters, i.e. zones and dialogues accessible only though certain character choices/builds.

[madrigan]

Originally Posted By: Master1

Methinks that Slarty was talking about content not directly related to the characters, i.e. zones and dialogues accessible only though certain character choices/builds.

Oh. Yeah, maybe. It seems to me that if you actually did have to play a Ranger or whatever in order to see the Ranger-specific parts of the game, that would enhance the replay value of the game. However, I don't think there's anything inherent in the idea of combat-support characters that requires that. My statements earlier in the thread were simply that I would like to have more character class options, and that I would enjoy having access to classes whose true value was not immediately obvious. If you look at "Blademaster" and then "Scholar," the Scholar class looks pretty lame until you think about the value of having a character in your party who has detailed in-world knowledge of demons, or magic barriers, or demolitions, or building man-traps.

I think the fact that both Superman and Batman are long-standing, beloved comic book characters who have been plausibly presented as being members of the same team speaks to this issue. Also the fact that Lex Luthor can be plausibly presented as Superman's greatest foe.

[Slawbug]

Ranger-specific content I have no bones with. The problem is content that you only see if you LOWER your combat abilities in order to see it. 3 skill points is not a huge deal, but there more of that there is, the more burdensome it becomes.

 

In the perfect RPG I will never write, non-combat abilities have no interaction whatsoever with combat abilities, including skill points and so on.

[madrigan]

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES

Ranger-specific content I have no bones with. The problem is content that you only see if you LOWER your combat abilities in order to see it. 3 skill points is not a huge deal, but there more of that there is, the more burdensome it becomes.

In the perfect RPG I will never write, non-combat abilities have no interaction whatsoever with combat abilities, including skill points and so on.

I think I don't understand what you are saying. Do you object to the idea of a character class that has little ability to damage monsters? Or so you object to sticking non-combat abilities onto, say, the Blademaster which take points away from the combat abilities which are the proper emphasis for a Blademaster? I think the Blademaster is fine as it is, although I wouldn't mind a few woodcraft or "first aid" type abilities to reflect their training as elite, independently operating fighters. What I want is to give my Blademaster a companion who has to approach problems in a very different way. After all, the predominant area of ability for at least three of the Avadon classes is doing damage to monsters. The fundamental difference between the Blademaster and the Sorceress is that the Blademaster runs towards and does damage to the enemy, while the Sorceress stands farther away from the enemy while doing damage.

[Alorael at Large]

Right. From a player's perspective, it would be great if games gave you vastly different content if you made different choices. Build choices, dialogue choices, class choices, choices on where to go when, or whatever. That would require designers to essentially write many games for one game, though. It's not going to happen. It's especially not going to happen in a one-man company!

 

Geneforge had Leadership and Mechanics, and apparently bad players managed to make terrible characters who couldn't make it through combat because they invested too heavily. See, the games don't really allow you to replace combat with talking and tinkering. They just don't. And the more you talk and tinker, the harder the game gets; you're not putting your points into fighting.

 

Your Scholar and Blademaster choice works fine, but only if various knowledges and aptitudes and abilities actually let you get through challenges as well as combat. The same challenges by different routes would be fine. Different challenges but roughly equal in number, so that the game presents balanced challenges would also be fine. That's not how it works, though.

 

If you can pick locks, you get access to stuff behind locked doors. If you are not good at picking locks, you don't get that stuff. It's binary. Most combat, though, isn't binary. The plot requires you to do certain things, and because combat isn't binary, it's much easier to put the plot behind combats. You don't need a combat-optimized build to get through the game, but it helps a lot. Meanwhile, if you optimize for combat, large parts of the game are simply not there for you.

 

A good design either lets you get through all challenges, or at least most challenges, or roughly equal number of non-essential challenges, via whatever methods you've chosen for your character. One approach is to give all characters combat ability and some choice of non-combat tricks. Maybe you can sweet-talk your way through trouble or pick locks or operate magical machinery, but not more than one.

 

It's tempting to try to offer "you can kill enemies" or "you can be persuasive and sneaky and operate devices," but most of the time the binary challenges on the latter get in the way. Getting through tough combat with strong builds requires good tactics (or should) and effort and is fun. Having made a character with enough points to sneak past the guard, unlock the door, and convince the prisoners to escape with you might make an equally good story, but if it's three encounters and no real player input, it's not actually equal.

 

—Alorael, who even finds this to be a problem with the much-touted Planescape: Torment, a game in which combat usually is a last resort that gives you less interesting story. Compare Baldur's Gate, in which the same engine lends itself to interesting combat challenges. It's not worth missing out on PS:T's story, but the game largely plays out as a multiple-choice novel. You don't get tactical challenges that many RPG players want.

[Student of Trinity]

What would be nice would be some kind of challenge that could easily give more than two distinct outcomes, without generating a monstrously spreading tree of situations for the game designer to handle. Unlike combat where you either kill the enemy, or it kills you.

 

I'm thinking of games that Jeff could do, at least in my mind. One thing that occurs to me is a game that lets you convert enemies into friends. Jeff's games already include lots of options to have people join your party (under your control or not), and to have dialog trees that differ depending on set flags. So in principle he has all the elements for this. It would just be a matter of expanding them significantly, so that most encounters could have three default outcomes (kill, die, or convert).

 

Tree proliferation could be kept down at least somewhat by making conversion a fairly standard thing. If converted characters mostly did the same few basic things, running a handful of simple scripts, then conversion wouldn't take much more design effort to implement than plain old kill-and-drop-lewt.

 

How do you convert enemies? Well, I suppose it could be old fashioned diplomacy. You argue your case and they're convinced.

 

But that seems less than exciting, for an RPG. So with Jeff's oeuvre so far for inspiration, I find myself thinking of something like a zombie game, where you get to be the zombie lord. Maybe it would be too much like rehashing the Shapers, but there could be a world where magical charming and controlling was rife.

 

I see a lot of potential here, actually. And I think Jeff could pull it off, if he wanted to.

[madrigan]

[This is a reply to Alorael/"Inappropriate Measures," post #226622.]

 

You are probably right in the case of single-character games like Geneforge, but I'm not sure you're right about a game like Avadon where you are trying to assemble a balanced group. It's true that playing a game like Avadon would be pretty tough as a Scholar if you had to do everything on your own, but for 90% of the game you don't. A party of two Scholars and a Tinker would probably suck, but a party of a Blademaster, a Scholar, and a Shaman, or a Shadow Walker, a Tinker, and a Sorceress, would be pretty cool and would reflect the way these teams are usually built in non-game fiction.

 

But really, I think any character class is viable in combat and non-combat provided you extrapolate properly from the basic concept. So maybe Avadon II will feature a Surgeon class with a bunch of healing abilities plus Scalpel Cloud and Rain of Anesthetic.

 

[Ceiling Durkheim]

I don't see this addressing the problem that I and various others have raised: combat is the locus of gameplay in most RPGs. Coming up with a strategy for beating a powerful enemy is involving, challenging and entertaining. A skill check to see whether the character in question has enough points to open a door, coerce information out of an interlocutor, or build a boat is none of these things. If a game had the option to 'win' an encounter by either direct combat or stealth, and these had mechanics that involved similar levels of complexity, skill, and fun, classes and builds focused on skills other than direct combat would make sense. Such a game would be a substantial departure from all Spiderweb titles, and most RPGs. Could it be a cool game? Hell yeah. But it wouldn't be a slight shift in the existing Avadon system, it would be a completely different system, maybe a different genre.

[Dantius]

In all fairness, Avadon's "spiritual predecessor" (to borrow a Bioshock turn of phrase), Dragon Age, actually did a fairly good job of condensing multiple games into one game. Before you actually reached the main game, you played an hour or two of content unique to your class and race, and then later in the game, certain quests and characters' dialog options were only available if you were a certain race or class. If Jeff could shorten down the origin equivalent to maybe a half-hour to an hour, and add in maybe a quest or two and rewrite some dialog for Av2, then for maybe five or six hour of game content, or about 10-20% of current total gameplay time, he could create four seemingly totally different games.

 

Of course, this also runs the risk of people just doing what they did for Dragon Age, which is rolling up six different characters, playing all the origin stories, and then only continuing the game with the character they felt was the most powerful or had the best loot.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

It also bears noting that the skill system in DA:O is pretty much the kind Slarty describes as ideal. There are both combat skills ('talents') and non-combat ('skills'), and the player buys them with different points. There's a little overlap, mostly with rogues, who have a few explicitly utility/non-combat talents, and get a couple extra skill points, but it basically cordons the two off from one another. It's like skills and feats in the d20 system, only less confused.

[Slawbug]

Dragon Age is not the "spiritual predecessor" to Avadon. A strong influence on it, but "spiritual predecessor" implies a more direct link of, you know, predecession. For example, Wasteland is the spiritual predecessor to Fallout. Super Mario RPG is the spiritual predecessor to Paper Mario. Not quite sequels, but basically what happened instead of a sequel.

[Dantius]

I was unaware that a term as nebulous and undefined as "spiritual anything" had such a clear-cut definition. I simply used the term to describe a game that borrowed heavily from one single game in terms of atmosphere and style, much like Avadon did with Dragon Age. I did so because I first saw it used (with "successor" instead of predecessor) to describe Bioshock's relation to System Shock 2, and liked the turn of phrase (you'd probably have to have a hole in your head to claim that Bioshock was "what happened instead" of of a sequel to SS2).

[madrigan]

Originally Posted By: FnordCola

I don't see this addressing the problem that I and various others have raised: combat is the locus of gameplay in most RPGs. Coming up with a strategy for beating a powerful enemy is involving, challenging and entertaining. A skill check to see whether the character in question has enough points to open a door, coerce information out of an interlocutor, or build a boat is none of these things. If a game had the option to 'win' an encounter by either direct combat or stealth, and these had mechanics that involved similar levels of complexity, skill, and fun, classes and builds focused on skills other than direct combat would make sense. Such a game would be a substantial departure from all Spiderweb titles, and most RPGs. Could it be a cool game? Hell yeah. But it wouldn't be a slight shift in the existing Avadon system, it would be a completely different system, maybe a different genre.

That would definitely be a cool game. I can't speak for anyone else on this thread, and I think there are multiple threads running simultaneously within this argument, but the idea I initially presented was for new character classes which had combat abilities not directly related to damaging the enemy. I gave the example of a Tinker who could create physical barriers, and a Scholar whose knowledge would enhance the attacks of other classes. Presumably the Tinker would also be useful with locks and other machinery, and the Scholar would have relevant knowledge of history and geography, but none of this would be game-breaking. I very much like the idea of a character who could, plausibly, win the game without fighting anyone, but personally I'm not asking for that. I don't think that having "combat support" classes along with the "direct combat" classes would make the game much more complex or difficult.

[Alorael at Large]

That's a separate problem. Buffing is a well-established roles. Priests are mostly buffers and healers even as recently as Avernum 6. Nothing novel about it. But whether you control your character or your party, games still don't let you get away with not having combatants.

 

—Alorael, who wouldn't call Avadon a spiritual successor to Dragon Age simply because they're too different. DA:O certainly inspired parts of Avadon, but in gameplay, in tone, and in feel they're just too different.

[Randomizer]

Geneforge had several boss fights where you could chose a non combat option or let allies do the fighting and hope they did all the killing for you.

 

Avadon forced you to kill to win all the boss fights.

[spidersilk]

Getting back to the original topic of "Things I wish I could do in Avadon":

 

Having just finished the Beraza Pits quest, the main thing I really, really, really wanted to do, at several points, was have an extra dialogue option along the lines of the following:

 

"Oh, for ****'s sake! What are you people, 8 years old? Grow the **** up already! I'm a Hand of Avadon, not a ****ing daycare worker!"

 

Except with all the expletives spelled out in their full glory. Seriously, I have never wanted to smack a bunch of NPCs upside the head quite so badly as I did for the entire time I was around the Holklandan monitor and the Kellem soldiers. I swear, my three-and-a-half year old son is better behaved than that lot were. Well, all right - approximately as well-behaved, maybe. But he's three and a half. What's their excuse?

[madrigan]

You have to admit, though, their behavior isn't unrealistic.

[Dintiradan]

Originally Posted By: spidersilk

"Oh, for ****'s sake! What are you people, 8 years old? Grow the **** up already! I'm a Hand of Avadon, not a ****ing daycare worker!"

Avadon needs a Renegade option?

I refuse to buy the game when it comes out on Windows unless someone can assure me that I can punch at least one reporter in the stomach.

[madrigan]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

I refuse to buy the game when it comes out on Windows unless someone can assure me that I can punch at least one reporter in the stomach.

You have to hit Shift-Seanpenn

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

Originally Posted By: spidersilk

"Oh, for ****'s sake! What are you people, 8 years old? Grow the **** up already! I'm a Hand of Avadon, not a ****ing daycare worker!"

Avadon needs a Renegade option?

I refuse to buy the game when it comes out on Windows unless someone can assure me that I can punch at least one reporter in the stomach.

Ah yes, "reporters". Avadon has dismissed this claim.

[Slawbug]

They're not like Beetlejuice, you know.

[Dintiradan]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

Originally Posted By: spidersilk

"Oh, for ****'s sake! What are you people, 8 years old? Grow the **** up already! I'm a Hand of Avadon, not a ****ing daycare worker!"

Avadon needs a Renegade option?

I refuse to buy the game when it comes out on Windows unless someone can assure me that I can punch at least one reporter in the stomach.

Ah yes, "reporters". Avadon has dismissed this claim.

I'm Dintiradan and this is my favourite post on the Spiderweb Software boards.

[Tracer Bullet]

I am Fflewddur Fflam, reciprocating publicity and humor, and this is my favorite post on the message boards.

[kal]

I would have liked to flirt more with the farmer's daughter in the Kva.

[madrigan]

Isn't there a point in one of the recent Avernum games where you can flirt with an NPC? I think one of the dialogue options is "Is there anything else at all I can do for you?" or something.

[nikki.]

Originally Posted By: madrigan

Isn't there a point in one of the recent Avernum games where you can flirt with an NPC? I think one of the dialogue options is "Is there anything else at all I can do for you?" or something.

That's flirting? If so, I think I'm doing it wrong.

[Jerakeen]

It's all in the eyebrows.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Impudent Strumpet!

Originally Posted By: madrigan

Isn't there a point in one of the recent Avernum games where you can flirt with an NPC? I think one of the dialogue options is "Is there anything else at all I can do for you?" or something.

That's flirting? If so, I think I'm doing it wrong.

Don't be ridiculous. My signature pickup lines get me all the women:

Hey ladies, is there anything I can help you with? Maybe a rat problem in your basement I can remove with some carefully applied murder? Or a potion in a neighboring town you can't get because of bandits? Or do you perhaps need a donation of some gold coins? No? Why are you walking away? Hey! Come back! I'M THE PC!