By continually recruiting/saving NPCs, would you eventually be able to gain fame/influence/something, which will eventually lead to you being made mayor/lord/something, along with (dis)advantages?
I’m in favour of the upgrades being permanent.
Looking forward to eventually making my town into a flying technomarvel metropolis. 
Oh nice then! I guess i couldn’t see it very well so the overlay color tricked me. 
I would suggest a less fluorescent color for the overlay. Or an outline maybe instead of the overlay?
This is awesome! I think a few other games have touched on the concept, but never took it all the way (D3’s followers got pretty dumbed down and TL2 lets you pick up NPCs along the way, but most of those are along the main story). I’m excited to hear what kind of choices you will have when town building.
…also, in multiplayer would the town always be the host’s town, or would everyone only see their own town?
That would be my question as well. How does this fit into the scheme of multiplayer? I’m assuming you would see the town(s) as they as for whom ever is hosting the game?
It’s an ambitious and excellent feature, and something I feel adds more depth to the game. Keep up the excellent work!
This is the best s*** I’ve read in a good while. Makes me want to give up more money just to enter the alpha…
I love this kind of stuff! It kind of fills a void that Diablo 3 and Torchlight 2 have for me, which is quests with repetitive and boring rewards. It was fun getting nice interesting bonuses, extra skills, or special items in Diablo 2.
I wonder how this will be implemented in multiplayer as well. I would imagine
I like the sound of this. Can’t wait for the alpha release.
Looking like a sausage-fest in all these screenies. Are the female player model/NPCs gonna make it in time for Alpha?
Very nice addition to the game! Thanks for sharing Jalex! 
Will this feature be open to use in the Editor?
Given the era and state of the world in GD, it seems to me that you could compare its development to something like a cowboy town for what you would expect to find. Places like a bar, barber, hardware store, hotel, brothel, undertakers, woodstore, gunsmith, church etc. Crude, shabby and somewhat makeshift in appearance.
I don’t have ideas for all of these, but here’s one for the undertaker:
The undertaker (lets call him Kane Dropdead). Dead bodies need clearing around town, e.g. the guard on the bridge is killed by bad guys, without the undertaker, he just rots away in a ditch. Maybe this can lead to stagnant areas that cause disease - perhaps like a poison cloud you need to avoid.
But when you find old Kane Dropdead, he’s babbling on about how business is booming in this world, but he ain’t got no place to build his coffins or no place to bury the dead.
When you get him back to town, his services then lead to the clean up of rotting corpses. Somewhere on the edge of town, up pops a wee graveyard and it gradually fills up with wooden crosses and half dug graves.
now that is a great idea, would love to see it happen
RPG’s excel at a few things. Obviously the top thing is the growth and advancement of the individual (that’s you and me the player) . We can advance with gear and materials and we can affect our environment positively with the goal of again character development. What a wonderful OPEN environment and world that will let us do that. Kinda of and advancement of the genre.
Literally can’t wait to try it out.
Has anyone rez Zantai yet!? It’s time for another update! 
not sure, maybe they forgot too, and his body and soul is lost forever
but we need him back, and yes its time for another update, someone please rez him so that he may bring Grim Misadventures #15 for our reading pleasure,
and some news on the alpha release / progress would be nice, hint, hint:D
Its almost 04.02 in germany and still no update 
WE WANT NAOW!
My time zone is GMT+8, for me is 6am of 04/02/2013 now…
Is there an update today?
There is supposed to be an update today. Zantai usually does one every two weeks on Sunday.
Honestly, this next update really needs to contain at least some info on alpha date. We’re 2 months into 2013 - its time for alpha. 
I’m not worried about the alpha I know it’ll happen. I just don’t want a rushed game that becomes another D3.