Characters

Overview

A character is an object which represents a single participant or actor in the game world. and is the interface through which other objects in the game world typically interact with the Player. It stores the game knowledge of the character's skills, traits, stories, quests, oaths, relationships, etc.

The above is a Venn diagram which offers a simplified visual map of the makeup of a Character. The Character is a specialization of AnimatedObject, which is itself a specialization of ComposedObject. ComposedObjects are a Facade for three other constituents, which in the character's case are the Body, the Mind, and the Soul, which are represented as the colored circles in the diagram. Each component has a dual-valued attribute called a Statistic (listed below the constituent name), which is the fusion of a Developmental Object and a linear integer value («Karma/Inspiration», «Perspicacity/Concentration», and «Vitality/Energy»). ComposedObject combines the values from the Statistics into Traits, which are the white labels inside the colored circles in the diagram above. Each component has a Trait of its own (Creativity, Strength, and Intelligence), two Traits that it shares with one other component (Glamour, Empathy, Perceptiveness, Dexterity, Resilience, and Grace), and a Trait that it shares with both of the other components (Magistry, Stamina, and Willpower).

The AnimatedObject class adds a relationship with a Spirit, which is responsible for facilitating player control of objects in the world. The Spirit itself has three Statistics («Divinity/Influence», «Kenning/Cognizance», and «Incarnativity/Presence»), which are called the Immortal Statistics because their development eventually allows a player to transcend the mortal sphere and operate on a higher plane of existence. Each Immortal Statistic is associated with one of the Character's constituents, and develops proportionally to that constituent's development.

Further Details

These topics describe further parts of the character or things which related to characters in detail:

• Animated Objects - The supertype of Character; defines the mechanism by which a spirit can possess and control a game object.
• Composed objects - The super-supertype of Character; defines a mechanism for modelling complex derived balanced behaviour in an object class
• Body, Mind, and Soul - the three parts of a character
• Perception - Modelling character senses
• Character Statistics - Developmental internal character attributes
• Character Traits - Genetically-determined external character attributes
• Race - Chosing a species for a character
• Character Generation - The player character creation process
• Covenants, Oaths, Cultures, and Political Units - Character affiliations
• Abilities, Skills, and Verbs - Character actions
• Eventuating Properties - Properties which impart continuing action
• Spirit - The interface between a Player and a Character
• Death - What happens when a character dies
• Character Experience - Character development and achievement
• Immortals - Spirits with developed Immortal Statistics.
• True Name - Characters which have passed a certain level of development have a special name given to them

Non-player Characters

• Npcs - Design document for non-player character requirements
• Artificial Intelligence - Brainstorming about the AI subsystems

Other Related Topics

The following subtopics deal with various parts of the character:

• Properties - A means of abstracting attributes which represent adjectival information or decoupled functionality.
• Players and the player client - remote players and their representation in the game engine

Autopoietic Machines

Autopoietic machines are homeostatic machines. Their peculiarity, however, does not lie in this but in the fundamental variable which they maintain constant. An autopoietic machine is a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components that produces the components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in the space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network. It follows that an autopoietic machine continuously generates and specifies its own organization through its operation as a system of production of its own components, and does this in an endless turnover of components under conditions of continuous perturbations and compensation of perturbations.

— Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, Autopoiesis: The Organization of the Living