[shadowfyr]

I had a thought about this issue. If you want to encourage RP, but not force it, you could have a faction system like some games have and quests that build it. The trick being to make the quests have multiple solution paths. You might have one path that is as simple as buying an average fish from the market stall, to bring to some cook. A second path might involve talking to the local expert on the subject, buying a pole and bait, then going and fishing for it. A third one might involve listening around a bit, realizing that the really best ones can only be caught with traps instead, finding that no one in town "makes" traps, and being forces to *gasp* find players that can make several key items needed to form the trap, before setting it, catching the fish, and finally returning. Each of these approaches would have a different amount of exp and faction points, some of them possibly just coincidental to actually making the effort to do more than just buy one. Oh, and of course, you might want to throw in some stuff that requires more than the *simple* "tell fisher where are the big ones?" to get the right result. Actually sitting down for a moment, as hinted by him, or even someone else, might net you more information. Someone else you might have to use other emotes with to get them to give up the goods.

Point being, if they won't RP with other players, then make them RP with the NPCs. And if your really sneaky, you could have specific keyed things in places, like a shop where the crafting of needed items is done, where "acting" through certain key emotes or phrases, will unexpectedly net you more faction/exp, while on that quest. Oh, and if you want to discourage "random" emotes, attempting to trigger the response, you could even set it so a large number of unrelated, or inappropriate, ones will get them thrown out of the shop for a day (either literal or ingame).

Leave the player in the position where a few stumble across these sorts of things, and the others suddenly realize that they can get more from their efforts by making an effort than by just doing the most obvious sequence of steps.