That's not sense, because that's not how it worked. If you're in Skingrad, NPC's in Cheydinhal won't actually be walking around going about their business, because you're not in Cheydinhal. However, when you do enter Cheydinhal, the game will check where that NPC is supposed to be at the time and teleport them there.

I'm assuming that's how it will work in Skyrim as well. So therefore NPC's can't be killed by something if you're not somewhat near them.

Yeah, but with longer draw distances and smaller villages, nothing saying you couldn't be close but not right there and the village would be attacked, but you didn't hear a thing because you were busy collecting alchemical ingredients from moths or something.

Seriously, I play an evil character mostly, but how twisted that if a good character wants to be in alchemy, they are, more likely than not, going to have to nuke innocent critters for their trade?

Not True.

It wasn't true in Oblivion, and it's not true in Skyrim. This is what Radiant AI is all about!

Sohort answer - yes.
It was mentioned in several interviews and presentations that dragons are not scripted, the devs just let them in to the world at one point and they do what they do from that point on. How noticeable their presents is going to be ins another question altogether, and what they are going to occupy themselves with... No one says they are there to maim the villagers They actually may have some other, dragonish things to do

So much ignorance in this thread about AI processing...

There are several levels of AI processing, which determines how often a NPC's AI runs. If NPC's are in your cell, they will be in the highest level, which means that their AI runs every single frame. At the lowest level of processing the AI is only run once every 15 minutes. So don't get your panties in a bunch about performance.

If a NPC has the No Low Level Processing flag enabled, it will only run the AI when it's in high processing, i.e. in the loaded cell. If you look at all the named NPC's (Persistent references) living in cities etc in the Construction Set, you will see that the vast majority (like 99%) does not have this flag checked. So inhabitants of cities do run low level processing, so their AI updates at least once every 15 minutes even when you're not around. However, as far as I'm aware this only counts for AI 'packages'. Most combat isn't initiated by AI packages, but simply by detection and a disposition check. I haven't tested if an AI package that initiates combat will work, but I don't think so.

That's for Oblivion at least. It's not impossible that Bethesda has implemented low level processing combat simulating. I suspect it is possible to script it in a mod, at least for persistent references.

I'll give you a simple answer: Because Bethesda did not record dialogue from all 70 voice actors for each quest. Unless alternate NPC given quests are text only this is functionally impossible. Also many quests are contextual so it wouldn't make sense for random NPCs to give it to you.

No, I promise you that this is 95% likely the way Radiant Story works. Yes, the quest goes through an algorithm to find a dungeon but that is essentially the only 'randomized' part of Radiant Story

Tell that to the travel, find and wander AI packages in TES and Fallout genius.

-KC

Take the Oblivion Paintbrush Challenge, lol. Go outside of a city you have to load, which is pretty much all of them, as far as the main part goes. Build a paint brush stairway and get over the wall. Report your findings. If you're on the pc, just get the dragon or wing mod and fly in. You'll find that.. Never mind.

Couldn't dragons work similar to oblivion gates? Meaning they only stick to certain regions, this would allow the occasional bit of terrain to be destroyed like that gate that destroys the hut in OB.

That doesnt mean they are actualised.
They are not rendered into the game when you are not in their cell.
NPC's in Chorrol do not walk around Chorrol when you are in Bruma, for the simple reason that the entire city of Chorrol at that point in time is not actualised. They only exist as code, not as sprites.

We know that dragons will "attack" other towns while you are not there, but my understanding it that it is a triggered change in the environment/NPC's. Meaning that you hear a place was attacked by dragons, so you go find it destroyed, but you'd never actually be able to witness it being destroyed by a dragon, it just is loaded that way after the "attack" is triggered.

If a dragon drops dead in the woods and nobody is around to absorb its soul, does it make a "DOVAHKIIIIN!!"?

Yes.

http://kotaku.com/5835394/
This article confirm that there exists "protected" NPC that can be killed by you but not by other NPC. So I believe that quest givers are "protected" as such.
However even if they aren't Radiant Story will replace the dead NPC with relatives that can give you the quest

Not always, and the system doesn't REPLACE NPCs; it just shifts the quest to have a different originating NPC or rewarding NPC

That's good, I've been hoping for a feature like that. So if you want to kill someone you still can, but you don't get problems with quest NPCs being killed by random monsters and such that is completely out of your control.