I'm speaking to Ungrien about Maven Black-Briar, getting him to tell me the truth about her....guess who is stood right behind him looking over his shoulder.....he's not going to be in with a job for much longer!

Hehehe cool. I personally hate Maven so tried to kill once but he is essential.

Ha, there's a few times I've tried to kill someone only to see they're essential. For example whenever someone enters my house in Whiterun...I kill them for trespassing. There's a redguard and 2 guards roasting on my fire because of it! But one guy wouldn't die! It upset me.

I remenber this one innkeeper was talking about how lazy his wife was when she was right next to him.

Maven pulled one of those herself in my game. I met her AT the castle hall, and talked to her there for the first time and got the whole speech about how powerful she is and all the people she has in her pocket. Menawhile the Jarl, the Steward and the bodyguard were all standing 10 feet away staring at her. I was like "Oooookaaaay...."

Just once I'd like to see a game designer take, line of sight, hearing distances, and the like into account. I know with the size and sheer number of NPCs in Skyrim it's impossible. Just a dream I had.

Yep, it's like some of the quests I did for the Thieves Guild, where I had to meet some influential NPC in one of the big cities to discuss some really shady business they wanted done and since they didn't want to smear their good names they called on the TG to handle the dirty work.

One of them discussed it with me in front of everybody else in the pub, and the other was sitting in a crowd of Thanes and other hangers-on in the throne room of the Blue Palace. I kept wanting to say, um, okay, but maybe you should at least keep your voice down a little?

I suppose I could've waited until they went somewhere more private, but I figure if they want to air their dirty laundry in public, who am I to argue? Lol. But really it could've been set up so that they refused to discuss it except in some specific, more suitable, location and then told you to meet them there. I mean there are other quests where you are supposed to meet someone after dark in the courtyard or at the entrance of [X location] and if you try to engage them some place else it doesn't work. I can understand that you can't account for the constant movements of every single NPC in every situation but when it's a specific quest you'd think it would be possible to keep it from progressing except under certain conditions that make more sense.

Yeah, it'd take ages and be very difficult to programme. Would love to have an NPC stop mid sentence because someone has come in hearing distance, then when they're gone, start again. Totally non-scripted as well.

It's like walking up to talk shady business with a character about some thief or db work, and I always thinks they talk louder and then there always stands a random guard looking at us. Why can't the whisper or refer to talk a private place

Murder! Theft! Sweetrole thieving! No such talk of this here, now move along little guardsman

Latest incident for me was arriving in Riften for the first time, Brinjolf (or whatever his name is) approaches me at the grocer's, and starts his pitch. Within five feet of us are: Maven Black-Briar, the grocer, two guards, Mjoll and her buddy, a beggar and the guy who assumes you're in town for the great fishing. I chose the "What? Break the law!?" response, as would only be prudent, and he wandered off confused. Sheesh, man, steal a clue, will ya?

Of course, these are the same people who can watch you kill a dragon, absorb its soul, and be like, "I'm sorry, you're who? Dragonwhat? Huh? Anyway, I want you to steal a pickle from this guy...."