What I mean by interact are the game mechanics, Things like keeping track of where the players and items are, what quests are currently active. I am not really much of a role player, but I am imagining it acting as the Dungeon Master.

I am thinking of this project as a way to learn OOPerl so I don't see the large numbers of files as big a problem as they would be if it were something that was going to end up with a public release. I think it is probably easier to start with something concrete like Roleplay::Orc instead of Roleplay::NPC. Once you get more familiar with perl you will likely want to rewrite it anyway.

Perhaps look at some of the nodes here: Object Oriented Programming