Given that the process of creating or controlling existing adventurers has been discussed, i 'd like to ask how do you intend to handle players who want to create custom "heroes" from scratch? You mentioned writing characters into world gen after the fact, but i was wondering how this would be affected by creating characters with more impact on the world then mcpeasant. On a related note, could a player's backstory be affected by his actions in play? Could some traits, like social skills, be similarly affected? This does depend on a lack of life-changing/important events before play if you wish to make sweeping changes, which might be rare for many adventurers, but perhaps how a freshly created peasant with little personality interacts with his acquaintances in his village could let the game make some fair judgements. A adventurer who nicks pies could be reasonably accused of never growing up, for example. As for the skills, this again requires unimportant, bored characters, and even then could raise eyebrows if the difference between how they acted in "world gen" and play is dramatic enough. This ties into a broader question of handling differences between the player's game-play style and the internal consistency of their character. You've previously mentioned that the current inability of the game to simulate the duties, relationship and general "role" of historical figures, or notice/handle people "breaking character" is the reason we can't assume control of them, but how important is acting like a historical figure as opposed to playing like a historical figure? Obvious examples include combat, but even simple things like a player controlling a unobservant character looking at everything, or a new player controlling a experienced tomb raider triggering every single trap, would be relevant. Would players in this position be able to use abstraction, or be able to use (limited) hints?
The world is becoming more and more lively, and this should make it much less predictable, but nevertheless i was wondering what plans do you have to handle players who know the ins and out of a favorite world, particularly those with a roleplaying bent who do not want to reenact past discoveries and struggle to resist "spoiling" new characters? How much of the worlds fundamentals (theme, magic, critters, geography) could change after world gen has stopped and play has started?