CHATTER UPDATE -> MIXER GENERAL STREAM
There are a variety of chatter streams that different NPCs can subscribe to. One of these is "MIX GENERAL" which is where rumors get put. These are either submitted by players or added by GMs.
One of the biggest issues I had with this system is that every NPC responds with the exact same chatter message. For example:
If the chatter is "I hear that Seven Ecks and Juicy Vee are dating."
If you ask 3 different bartenders, they all say exactly the same thing.
Well, no more! I've integrated MIX GENERAL (just this for now while I see how it goes) with ChatGPT, and we feed it the rumor + context about the NPC (such as their facts and how they talk) and they will come up with their own interpretation of the rumor and tell it. That means that asking different NPCs will render slightly different results. However, each NPC tracks what they've said for a specific rumor and will give the same result to each person who asks.
So for example, if 3 different people ask Rychek for chatter, they will all get the same result. But if they then go to another NPC, they'll get a slightly different take on it.
For NPCs that have facts about how they talk, ChatGPT will even interject some of that into the response.
This should go a long way toward making chatter a bit more conversational and less repetitive.
If ChatGPT isn't available, it'll just default to the chatter message with no modifications, which makes the system more resilient to issues.
As always, this is a totally BETA feature and if you get weird responses, please @bug them so I can tweak the prompt to make it better.