"the Gunnar thing might be because you don't know his name and the book only records characters with names"
In that case the book shows "Cocky Guard" ;-) Same applies to "Shopkeeper".
"Viccoria will prolly be someone you can date but that's a lot later"
I have no intention to make my PC date her. I did only mention her because she is displayed in the Relations list. Well, I might date her if she can help me fight the Nameless - this is a RPG after all so my PC can date her if I make him do it (and if it becomes possible of course). I didn't try but it looked like I could have make him start something with Othra although he's gay.
No offense to anyone interested in the game but I'm perfectly fine if the content stays mainly-gay!!!
"Julian though just doesn't have much stuff at the moment, but he will have a route eventually"
What does "route" mean in this context? Quest line? Or being datable? Julian is the Inn owner in Northcrest, right? If it's "datable", take your time - there are more interesting characters that appear earlier in the game. :-)
So there are characters that can be dated and some can not. I thought you ment that I can tell the difference from the Relations list - NPC is in the list: datable, not in the list: no date possible.
As you said in the reply above, hearts only appear when the "heart event" happened. So when my PC just meets Bernard and Blake at the beginning of a game they are both in the list. How do I know that only one of them is datable and that it is Bernard?
Please, there is no need to add all the merchants if they do nothing else but buy or sell stuff. At some point it might become useful to have the information what kind of merchants are located in a place - maybe in the map - but that is not needed yet.