Yeah, it's likely because you merged with the project template - you're right about that.
Sniper's post a few posts back mentions that you're probably getting a double startup on dialog, which would cause issues. Hopefully he can expand on that info, because I haven't looked at his template yet so I'm in the dark here.
Seems like the problem occured because i had something in defaultdialog, now it works again. onwards etc.
ed: that solution only works temporarily, if you restart the editor you need to have something in the defaultdialog field or conversations won't start. ah well.