This morning I discovered that npc's can die - which really stinks when you've got an incomplete quest for them.

Some poisonous salamanders followed me into town and killed Abigail. I wish there was the ability to close doors as well as open them.

You can also kill the NPCs for yourself, if you hit SHIFT while left-cliking them. But it is never worth it. They give few XP and, even if you can loot the chests of a slain shopkeeper, they don't contain but a small fraction of their shop content, and you lose the shop forever.

The worst thing that an NPC can do is leave his house/shop. They are programmed to walk randomly, so if they manage to step on the open door of his own building, they can exit the building, and most likely don't be able to return anymore, getting very far from where they were supposed to be. The game will remember their location even if you exit the map, so after they get lost you have to find them across a very large area.

I first played Eschalon in an early stage, buying it from the developers site, maybe this issue has been already adressed. Just in case, closing the door when you exit a building is a good habit.

Yeah, I didn't know about bashing barrels, etc., or attacking npc's until yesterday.

I've noticed that sometimes wooden doors close automatically, but other times they just seem to stay open, and clicking on them when they're open won't close them. I haven't had too many problems with wayward npc's (yet), except for Abigail, and one time the Aridell guard got killed by Noximanders.

I think it's perfect. NPCs shouldn't be immortal. Neither should the important ones be immortal with the rest killable, as that just tells players they don't have to worry about losing important ones, and actually encourages the murder of NPCs. I think if you want to kill someone you should be able to; that's realistic. Yeah, you lose whatever quests or help they may have given, but you CHOSE to kill them, so you must want that.

There are no monsters near NPCs in this game (IIRC), so the only way monsters can kill them is if you lure them to the NPCs. Once again, actions of the player. I think it's the ideal way NPC mortality should be handled.

Apparently something has changed, because now you can close a door by clicking on it again. Which I regularly do, to prevent NPCs from leaving their homes.

I wouldn't say it's more popular, I'd say it's consolized. In a CRPG, and in an olde school thought process, which not many really have anymore, EVERY NPC should be killable and should be able to die. And in many oldes games, you actually are able to do so, I know a lot of olde games where you can even slaughter children(oh yeaaahh!!!). Killing children is always fun :). Of course if you live in Europe, you probably never saw the killable children ;).

Some of it is appealing to the mass market, and some of it is a loss of imagination and skill at putting together a game. So much as been lost over the years, and I doubt it'll ever come back. People seem content at these new ways, even these new games that attempt to have an olde school feel fall way so short.

By the way, I killed many NPC's in Eschalon Part 1 :D. But some of them returned alive in Part 2 :(. Talk about lame!! Dead should mean dead ;).

I'd love if a game became unwinnable, after you going on a killing spree, but it should tell you that 20 h later.