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I suggest you read this (AGS) wiki article:

http://www.americangirlscouts.org/agswiki/Giving_Personality_to_Characters

It's not going to answer your question directly necessarily, but I think it's a great place to start for your question.

As for my direct answer, I think the answer lies in the premise. How interesting the character is, or how fun the gameplay is, lies solely on what you start off with. To keep the gameplay interesting, first, you must have an interesting character, because all of the gameplay revolves around who and what the main character is.
In order to strike a balance, I suggest giving a little backstory, and have the rest of the game slowly delve into who this character is. A majority of what defines a characters personality is (in adventure games) how they interact with the environment. Simply because, that is what you'll be doing for about 90% of the game.
In order to define what an interesting character is, all you have to do is be a little twisted with your interpretation. Such as Bernard from Day of the Tentacle. He's a nerd, yes, but he's an interesting nerd, why? because of what he brings to the game. In this case, humour. Your main character should be your main source of comedy/action/horror and all those other feelings (unless you have more than 1 main character, then you'll be able to share it around) in how they perceive and react to the world around them.

I hope that helps.

Thanks guys.

It all working now.

I've an NPC in a room, and none of the interactions I've set are working.
I've got this in the global script:

function cReceptionist_Interact()
{
  cSalvComp.Think ("I don't he'd help me if I beat him.");
}

function cReceptionist_Look()
{
  Wait (80);
  cSalvComp.Think ("That's the receptionist.");
}

function cReceptionist_Talk()
{
  cSalvComp.Walk (326, 319);
  dSR1.Start ();
}

And none of them are working. I don't know why. I set them through the action menu (the one with the light bolt).
I even copied and pasted a copy of these functions into the room in which cReceptionist resides.

I looked through the manual, I searched the forums and I've looked through the wiki and found nothing. I assume I've made some sort of fatal error that nobody else makes.
Does anyone know how to fix this?

OK, I have a few more concerns.

In terms of your response, as you said:

trapping them in the proverbial red tape net before harm can be done

I simply suggest giving the Constitutional Council more red tape, because I keep reading it and imagining them just snapping their fingers and making things happen (which can be as bad as it is good).

Also, in terms of the NSF (heh, Deus Ex) I would highly suggest segmenting their multiple disciplines, for several reasons:

1) If I was a terrorist, all I need do is cause a few fires, kill a whole bunch of people while simultaneously engaging in war against you. I guarantee that by having ONE force that does a majority of the work, you will be overwhelmed.
Although I like the idea of everyone in the NSF being trained to take on all of these roles, I highly suggest still having lower groups that are, even if only mostly, dedicated to one thing (such as emergency services, local police force etc.), and, because everyone is so multi-disciplined, move people around in times of hardship (such in the case of a huge fire threatening to devour your nation, you would transfer a whole bunch of people, because everyone in the NSF would be trained to do so, to the fire fighting to help out). Of course, this would be needed to be kept in check.

2) Your army being almost totally robotic is like playing starcraft and using only zerglings. You have a great advantage, but you also have a great weakness. Such as the zerglings being cheap and quick to manufacture, they suffer from very low hitpoints against vehicles and stronger troops. Just like your robots being strong and lacking any morale weaknesses, they are all affected by EMP.
Whilst I can understand EMP shielding for the CPU core, you will not be able to fully EMP shield the entire bot chassis from EMP damage (due to the diverse effects of EMP - the magnetic field, electric field, the photo electric effect occurring due to the previous two effects causing a release of photons), as such, a simple atomic bomb could (apart from destroying your troops) could knockout more than it could kill (subject to location, dispersion of troops etc.).
When I mention knockout, I'm not referring to the CPU core, I refer to the rest of the cables and power transmission. Lines could be shorted, switches could be tripped.
Also, a powerful (and close enough) alternating magnetic field could magnetize your robotic troops and cause them to crush their very insides (as it caves in as the now magnetised pieces of metal come together) or fly apart (as the magnetised metal repels). I could see this occurring as a plane flies over, drops a mechanical device which creates a large alternating current. Or even launched from artillery.

As such, you would need a strong military human force to supplement these disadvantages, even if they were mostly mechanics servicing the bots whilst being shot at. Furthermore, you would also need much human attention on the AI and their communication lines. Which  would have to wi-fi (as their long cables attaching them to home base could be severed), and as such, unlike a human force (which doesn't NEED to constantly be talking to each other via radio transmission) the robots would HAVE to. So the enemy could fire an insane amount of radio waves at the bots which would disrupt information.
- and I haven't even got into hacking the transmissions.

I think I should stop now, but you should consider this in terms of your National Security Forces.

I can only see two major problems:

1) Define what you mean by experts, I'm afraid you may be making the grave mistake of mixing up intelligence with wisdom (i.e., just because someone may have an infinite knowledge of politics, doesn't mean they know anything about running a country).

2) Also, I can see someone getting into the constitutional council and causing all kinds of havoc (it has too much power in one place). I would suggest dividing it into the 3 groups. One carries out technocracy laws, one checks that the laws are within constitutional reasoning and another group (consisting of the two together) can opt to vote to overthrow (or, as you said, strike down) unconstitutional rules, however, should the vote succeed. They must also get a 60% agreement vote from the demarchy, and if that fails, they can try to get a 70% vote from the technocracy itself.
This more red tape is simply to eliminate someone getting into the council and making a sudden Hitler-esque (that is, extremely fast) rise to power and to remove the ability for a conspiracy group to secretly take over the constitutional council and force their views. (Almost entirely due to the third point).


Other than that, I still partly get the feeling it is somewhat utopic (you don't really have any contingency plans should something go wrong and you assume it will work out, which won't occur unless you have something akin to Deus Ex's Helios (AI construct)).

 ;DAhahahahahaaaaaa!

Thank you both muchlyness. You've both been a big help, I will remember this.

I did look at the verbcoin template, just then.

I now understand where you put the @hotspot@, however, I'm still rather confused as to how it all comes together in the global script.

Must I make a seperate script to the global script and make hotspot text hover ... somehow, from there (as per the VerbCoin template)?

Why is it that the VerbCoin template needs no reference to hotspot hover text in the room script?
Is there one (or a few) very simple lines of text that I missed in the other scripts?

[1)]

I'm attempting to make hotspots whose names appear in the style of COMI; that is, there is one location (usually bottom center of the screen) which the names for hotspots/items etc. appear when the mouse rolls over them.

I've been looking in the manual and searching the forums but I lack the technical experience with AGS to fully comprehend how to script what I want. I do, but I don't know what to do, allow me to explain;

I understand (or, at the very least, am aware) that I will need to use these commands, or the concept of these commands:

1) String Label.Text;

Gets/sets the text displayed in the specified label. This allows you to change the text during the game, for example to create a Lucasarts-style status line.

Example:

lblStatus.Text = Game.GetLocationName(mouse.x, mouse.y);
will display the name of the location the cursor is over on label 'lblStatus'

2) Interface text

You can easily display static text on interfaces. For example, the Sierra-style interface displays the score in the status bar.
To add text to a GUI, you add a label. Click the "Add label" button, then drag out a rectangle like you did when adding a button. You can change the text displayed in the label by editing the "Text" property. Notice that the text automatically wraps around to fit inside the rectangle you drew.
As well as typing normal text into the label, you can add some special markers which allow the text to change during the game. The following tokens will be replaced with the relevant values in the game:

@GAMENAME@ The game's name, specified on the Game Settings pane
@OVERHOTSPOT@ Name of the hotspot which the cursor is over
@SCORE@ The player's current score (number only)
@SCORETEXT@ The text "Score: X of Y" with the relevant numbers filled in.

@TOTALSCORE@ The maximum possible score, specified on the Game Settings pane
Example: You have @SCORE@ out of @TOTALSCORE@ possible points.

The Properties window also allows you to align the text to the left, right, or centre, as well as change its font and colour.

I may understand the concept of these ideas, but I don't their implementation. I don't know where to put them (Global or room script) or how to make it work (namely, which function will make it go when I want it to). In particular, for number 2, I have no idea where to put @OVERHOTSPOT@, or refer back to the interface text.

I thought that maybe the Description (http://www.americangirlscouts.org/agswiki/Description_Module) module may help. Unfortunantly, once looking at the documentation for it, I came to the same problem of where (Global or room) and how (function use).

Although I personally believe I've exhausted all other ways of trying to fix this myself, if there is a tutorial that explains how to do this for me, or there a few manual topics that will clear it up completley, please direct me to them. I don't want you to waste your time repeating something I could've very easily found in the manual.

Otherwise, please help.