Do you attempt to talk to all villagers etc. in RPGs?

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I speak to everyone, even the ones I know only feed the same lines back to me without starting a conversation sequence. I tend to do this in every playthrough, since I'm not sure of my own memory, so I just "have to check" to be sure I don't miss anything. Even though my memory is usually correct. I'm starting to view this as a bad habit - running around and talking to everyone every time I'm in a village is quite boring, and probably not intended by the developers in most games. I wish they more often would make a visible distinction between "conversation NPCs" and the other ones, e.g. by changing the pointer when you mouse over them.

Edit: Of course the pointer changes when you mouse over interactable NPCs, but the important ones and "extras" tend to get the same symbol

Well you might not know what you can get if you talk to people, fresh information of backstory, strategy, sidequest, or some sort of reward, talking to people twice can give multiple answers.

I need to speak to all characters, explore every available part of the "map" and make sure I didn't miss anything - especially any easter eggs!

It is like how we are trained to want to check out the wrong directions first so that we find all hidden goodies, and sometimes it is dificult to figure out which way to check everything out.

I do it to the extent that it kills the game cold dead.
Theres too much focus on getting 100% completion and all that bollocks these days.

On topic:

Fallout is the only RPG series I play and, yes, I am compelled to talk to EVERY NPC and follow every conversation tree... I can get boring and repetitious but I cannot help myself....

As a side note on pickpocketing.... The most fun is LETTING the children of The Den pickpocket dynamite off you in Fallout 2... That will learn those little urchins!! !

People who play games like this (I do it too) should play the Mother series - known in English as Earthbound.
NPC's are generally interesting/funny and there is just the right balance of side quests.

I always attempt to talk to everyone and go into every corner and crevice of the map.

I usually talk to everyone once, memorize what they say, and then, the second time I play through a game, I pretty much skip all dialogue. It's boring to me after I have already read it once, even in ES and Fallout. But I do read it all once.

Absolutely. I can't bear to move on in a game until I have spoken too every single villager.

Yes, because you never know what they might say unless you talk to them. One example of a total 'error' is presented in this image:
Zelda 2 is far more of an Action RPG versus RPG, but the concept remains.



Yeah... remember that anyone?

Yes. In old games you have to (Right now I'm playing Legend of Mana), sometimes they give you free stuff, and if you don't what the hecks your supposed to be doing, they give you a general (sometimes ambiguous) idea.

In games I've already played or in Pokemon ('I already know what your telling me') I will only talk to people for fun or if I have to... Kinda like in real life...

The more I like a game the more obsessive I am about seeing everything the developers went to the trouble of programming into the game. Usually towards the end I end up skipping the usual rounds around the towns to read dialogue, which ends up being detrimental when you come across those games that put some seemingly pointless piece of text into a series of events you have to complete to get the ultimate skill or weapon.

I won't do guides on my first run through, though. That just feels like I am slapping the game designers in the face by saying I don't have time to immerse myself in the world they created and have just played their game for the personal jollies of seeing the ending credits faster than my neighbor who bought it, too.

Luckily, my ratio of missed content to incomplete but progressed "secret" content is pretty good. I may not be clever enough to know how to get all the hidden stuff, but I usually end up being aware of it before my first game run ends. ( And my patience runs out, which usually takes forever and a half. I hate leaving things unfinished before walking through the door to the final boss. )

In Ys Seven and Phantasy Star 1 you HAVE to do this, especially if you are playing PS1: Generations, which is in Japanese and you can get easily stuck in the game!

I do in the Elder Scrolls Series. Nowadays it's to see who offers interesting dialogue and quests, or if I think they might be fun to beat up or do other criminal things to.

I usually talk to everyone twice, and check back after any event to see if they say anything different. If it's apparent they don't, then I stop until the next village or skip if everyone seems the same.

But I generally don't do this on larger RPG's that either have randomly generated NPC's, or they only change based on certain things (Like in Elder Scrolls, when you gain more conversation topics or gain a certain item/accomplish something.).

In fact, I do this in non-RPG's, too. One example is Toejam and Earl: Panic on Funkotron.