Originally Posted by Akryn
_ is just a common way of basically telling the game "I don't care about this" -- in this case, it's in the slot for the message, and we only care about the name.
I only actually posted two versions (well three now). The other posters weren't me. 
If you'd like to add customisable phrases that's certainly doable. Note that in this version the {} are not optional, but the comma and second phrase are. If you omit that part, it will use the default: |
You, sir, are brilliant, and if I didn't already have someone's kid, I'd offer to have your babies right about now. Thank you so much.
The only other script that has been posted (aside from my customizations of the scripts that have been posted) was basically just a slightly more compact version of your second script, which I butchered in essentially the same way as I did yours. Either way, this still really is the best one for my purposes. At this point I think perhaps the ONLY thing that might be problematic is quests where the NPC gets attacked but doesn't say anything, and well, hey, you can't be everything to everybody, right?
I think I'm going to do some research and add a few more quest NPCs to the list, and maybe post this and ask someone to take it for a test drive, since I don't have any characters able to do so right now.