@Draco
You know, other than being a total troll, you could be doing something
useful with your time, like not being on the internet trolling people. I've said it many times now: Stupid Idea, Silly Idea, Pointless Idea, Novelty Suggestion. Nothing to be taken seriously.
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But to address you post, you obviously seem to get the basic point of my rather silly suggestion now.
It does nothing more other than maybe set alignment and preset goals that could be selected for an individual NPC in the world. Other than the novelty of seeing what a single 'person' in the world would 'randomly' do, there is absolutely no point to the ideal at all. A rather silly idea, as I've stated before.
I hope you understand that in the similarity that DF doesn't have a set story for each fortress and many people make up epic ones, they could potentially do that for a character they 'play' in the world.
The depth part would only be if the NPC they 'play' adds to the events of the world, help shaping it in some what that the normal generator would have done with a random character.
It really isn't much of an idea to consider, as it is just a random and rather silly suggestion in the first place. Other than the illusion of depth(and maybe more if it would work towards that), and the novelty of 'playing' a NPC and maybe giving them a special story, it would also give those who are a fan of the world development a window into how characters react on their own in the world.
Just explain how it would be different from playing on downloaded worlds and we'll see if there're any major blocks in the way.
Honestly, nothing would be different other than community involvement. It would basically only provide the sense of that along with diversity that each seed would generate.
Basically the only way it would do that if the NPC the person 'plays' does something significant that the world/history generator under that see would not do, like tip the scales of a war, or kill an ancestor of someone important that the seed would normally generate at that time (causing them not to exist, in which everything could be different.)
Hell, the centralized server idea would only be feasible if the local idea got enough popularity that players want to become an NPC in a community world that many people 'play' at once (while not really doing anything other than 'sponsoring' a NPC)