Thanks for the toughtful coments. That's a really good point about narrative and decisions.
At the moment I'm pretty tied down with just building the game systems (this turned out to be a lot more ambititous project than I realised), so the narrative will stay pretty linear for now. But in future I would like to have NPC interation as an important part of the game, and a few key decisions, including how to deal with the farmer (and spoiler alert: a bit of time-travel thrown in the mix !)
Was actually thinking to implement a Ultima-style "keyword" system eventually. Although unlike in Ultima, you do not type in words directly, instead, you would gather keywords as you progress, and then select them from a list when talking to NPCs. I loved Fallout, especially Fallout 2, in the level of choice it gave you when dealing with NPCs and quests... I remember one time, I needed an item from an NPC for a quest, but he wanted me to do his own annoying fetch quest. So I just said scre it, and pickpocketed the item from him instead, and went on my merry way. :D