Huzzah! :foodndrink: Thank you, finally some sense... :shakehead:

well, actually... in oblivion, this altmer that usually travels between cities, i found him dead on the middle of the road when i travelled along it... goblins had attacked and killed him without me being ANYWHERE near the area.

im sure they'll have that same kind of stuff happening in skyrim, though probably done better.

You misunderstand the scope of the Radiant Story system. It can only assign the quest to NPCs that are tagged as alternate quest givers. Not only are not all quest tagged to multiple NPCs but if all tagged NPCs are killed then the quest is dead. Radiant Story is not a random or AI based system, it is a quest creation tool which allowed each part of a quest's framework to be given conditionalized variables.

As for the question of the OP: No, I do not believe so. I may be mistaken but the answer should be no for 2 reasons

1) Random encounters do not spawn without the presence of the player character

2) Scripted NPCs do not have active AI without the characters presence

one or both of these may be incorrect but I would be surprised if they are

It is a proof of Bethesda design that so many are misled into thinking the world goes on without the player character.

Yes, but, how to explain this..
When you were not in the direct area, the game did not render the NPC's.
It was all just..code.

Now I know that games are all just code but I mean that.. stuff didnt happen.
For instance, an Oblivion NPC that travels from Chorrol to IC every tuesday.
If you were not in the direct area and his 'sprite' wasnt active, the game didnt walk that character down the road physically.
That is why travelling NPC's never died unless you were around, they did not encounter hostiles because in a very real sense they did not use the game world to travel.

The poster above on this page found a dead Altmer. That means he was in the area, the game 'knew' the NPC should travel there now and put him on the road.
If he had fast travelled, the NPC would have lived.

I hope Im not too confusing.

Same goes for dragons in Skyrim I bet.
When youre not around, neither are they.

This.

If you arnt around and/or in the same cell as NPCs, objects or creatures they are not rendered by the game. The game uses cells for this very purpose.


Example-
You walk into Chorrol at 9pm game time. The game looks at the schedule of every NPC in that town and loads them in the appropriate place. They then go about their normal day. The moment you walk out of Chorrol they are despawned until you go back in.

Please guys, read the posts before you and you will make fewer bluders. From povuholo:

"In the Oblivion Construction Set, NPCs have a checkbox called 'No Low Level Processing'. When this is checked, which it is for most of the NPCs, the game does not process any of the NPC's AI unless the player is in the same cell as the NPC.

There are a few NPCs who don't have this box checked, which allows them to travel around the world and such even when you're not there (like M'aiq), but this certainly isn't the case for every NPC as that would lead to performance issues. "

Going to have to go Clueso on a dragon.

"Help! My home has been destroyed! Can you slay the beast!?"
*Gathers clues*
"It appears the creature was large..."
"It was a dragon!"
"...And had an ability to get higher than the town?"
"Why won't you listen to me, it was a dragon!"
"The town is burnt to the ground? Could it have been a werewolf?"
"Oh for f**k sake! I'll do it myself!"

...And then we'll find a corpse high in the mountains when exploring one day.

Don't these cities and villages have guards to protect them?

I do remember in the G4 Gameplay that there was, in the distance on a pillar over Bleak Fall Barrows, a dragon having a little relax on top of it, I think.

Too damn busy arresting me for indulging my proclivity for stealing tan cups. Got to have their priorities right, these boys. :shrug:

Where did you read that Radiant Story just can't keep creating new tags so that an NPC is always around who can handle the quest? The whole point of the system in regards to being able to appoint different NPCs is to stop you from losing out on a quest because someone died. I have never seen an article or read an interview that indicates there is a concrete number of people who can handle one quest and that is it.

The same thing applies for location. Do you figure, if you encounter an NPC giving a Radiant Story quest after you have been to the closest 20 dungeons, that they just won't have that quest available anymore? Not likely - they'll just send you that much farther. There's only 150 odd dungeons, so the possibility to run out of those (unless they go with the idea that it's been so long since you've been to Bleak Barrows for example, that it is completely plausible that new critters/enemies have shored up inside). There are infinite possibilities for NPCs. Or the easy way to do it...

Mom and Dad who gave you a quest both dead? That's fine. Child can do it. Done. Dragon or bandit or player character ain't making that quest incomplete unless the person chooses not to complete it.

Although on the topic of dragons attacking towns while you are close but not quite there... kinda makes you think there might be a reason to bring your spouse on adventure with you, hm?

Dragons will attack villages, and in one of the PAX walkthroughs, he comes upon a small house in the wilderness where the owners have been burned alive by dragons. I doubt they will do anything too exciting when you aren't near them, but they will be flying all over the map, regardless of where you are at the time

And to further with they will be flying all over the map, no matter where you are, isn't there a Dragon Bridge? Most likely, you'll be in a town close by, look up to Dragon Bridge and see tons of them just hovering around.

I know there was a house where the owners had been burned, but it was never specified by dragons specifically, was it? There are lots of things in this game that can cause fire, I'm sure.

It was attributed to dragons, there was a note inside the house to the effect of "The rumours are apparently true, we've been seeing dragons in the area more and more recently"

My understanding of Oblivion was that the system only processed the actions of NPCs in the cell you were in and all of the adjacent exterior cells. So, if you walked from cell to cell you would often come across signs of recent NPC activity in the new area but if you fast travelled to a new zone you would 'surprise' the NPCs and could often find them clumped together at the zone starting point.

I'd imagine Skyrim has a similar system, so even when a dragon is spawned I doubt it will be active until you approach it's location.

Even given that, I doubt a real "dragon" caused the damage. Just the NPCs are dead and burned. As I sincerely doubt dragons will be able to enter buildings. Assuming the building itself was also not burnt as it would be more than a little odd that the house burned, the people burned, but that note survived. Asbestosmemopad for the win!

I think in one of the PAX people said that he found a book, possibly a diary, that after the scrapped note about dragons was found, the diary said that dragons were getting even closer to them, starting to look into their house and such? xD

As interesting as it might be - you're having a drink at the local pub and a [censored] dragon busts in - I just don't see it happening - they seem larger than the doorways to most buildings.

Both bodies were outside of the house, You could certainly be right in that a real dragon didn't actually do this, and it was much more of a scripted/ written in thing that the PC is supposed to find, but it seems to hint at what dragons are capable of. So maybe actual dragon attacks don't happen unless the PC is near enough, but given the draw distance of the game (the fact that you can almost see across the map from any point high enough) and the fact that dragons can fly across the map at will, It seems like they'll be physically flying all over the map regardless of where you are. It seems like standing on a mountain and looking off into the distance, you should see a dragon or two flying through the skies several miles away

Yeah, I don't see that as unlikely. This is why it might be best to make your spouse your companion too... lest you find cremation was chosen for her. Would svck not knowing which dragon did it, either.

Erm, what you quoted doesnt conflict with what I said in my post.

It would actually be EPIC, albeit unlikely as crap, for you to come home to your little cottage in the woods to find the roof ripped off, the trees all charred and splintered, and your spouses burned body in the garden, hand outstretched towards the heavens. Even more epic if she was still breathing when you returned, and holding her in your arms she told you that dragons had done this (duh) and that you must avenge her death. :takes a few steps and falls to knees, screaming NOOOOOOOO and cursing the gods as thunder cracks and rain begins to fall, obscuring the tears running down my face:

edit: gladiator references FTW

Gotta love when people don't read before telling other people to please read, eh?