In this section, we examine more precisely what CLs mean for Characters and introduce new CLs when appropriate. More precisely, we discuss the impact of a Character's Choice of Life on its diverse Characteristics.
Creating a Character that appeals to the Player is an important step towards having a good time while playing a Metacosm-based game. It is really important that a Player feels comfortable with his Character since it will be his or her avatar in the realm of the game. Being able to play a Character for which you chose its qualities and weaknesses, its attitude towards what happens to it, is really rewarding and is an important element that can bring Players to role-play. Metacosm offers therefore a large choice of customization options.
When a new Character is created, orientations are chosen that provide a frame for the Character's acts. It is what we call the Choice of Life. The Character's acts are evaluated considering its Choice of Life. The Metacosm game engine bases its calculation on the Choice of Life to determine a Character's Karma.
A Character's Choice of Life contains several aspects of a Character's personality. When a Player creates a new Character, she is asked to provide information on the Character she wants to play.
Metacosm will provide templates that will be available for modifications by Players to speed up the creation process.
Proposed templates (among others...):
warrior
merchant
scientist
magician
Orientations define the Character's interests. They try to define the global behavior of the Character and influence the way it will probably evolve.
There are several different Orientations that a Player can choose for its Character. They all act at different level and can be combined to add depth to a Character.
Attribute Orientation allows the Character to give a subjective importance to Attributes. This system will try to model the way a Character uses its Attributes to influence the way it will handle situations (for computer-controlled Characters) and determine how a Character's Attributes are going to evolve.
It should be possible to change Attribute Orientation during the game. However, such changes should be rare and subject to a relaxation time i.e. the change will take a certain amount of time depending on how important the change is. For example, a warrior who decided to give the greatest importance to Power at first since his combat philosophy was oriented towards pure brutality will surely have difficulty to embrace a more subtle approach to martial arts by choosing to give a greater importance to Coordination.
The system will work by attributing a given importance to each Attribute. We can imagine that the system could take two different approaches. First, a point-based system in which each Attribute will receive a given number of points, the total of available points being constant so that giving points to an Attribute will mean having less points available for the others. The other alternative is more simple and doesn't allow for several Attributes to have the same importance as it is the case in the point-based approach. This other system consists in giving a strict order to Attributes that are then ranked from the most important to the less important.
It is worth noting that the Attribute Orientation system should influence the Character generation process in the sense that an Attribute with greater importance will be more likely to have a higher level at creation than an Attribute with a smaller importance. However, this is not a necessity and the Attribute Orientation is not required to be an image of a Character's Attribute levels, i.e. a Character with a great subjective importance on Power doesn't necessarily have its Power Attribute greater than the others.
Behavorial Orientations try to capture the way that a Character is likely to behave like. We will try to identify here only orientations that can be computer-assessed and are susceptible to be implemented as part of a computer-controlled Character's Artificial Intelligence.
Ideas for Behavorial Orientations:
violent / peaceful will use violence or try to argue?
curious /
generous / greedy
talkative / reserved
...
Metacosm's Edges and Flaws system allows Characters to be even more characterized by adding little, polishing touches to the overall description of a Character.
An Edge is a particular kind of Characterization Level that gives an advantage to a Character. This kind of advantage can be of several different types such as bonuses to Characteristics, to Skills or Actions...
A Flaw is a particular kind of Characterization Level that gives a disadvantage to a Character.This kind of disadvantage can be of several different types such as maluses to Characteristics, to Skills or Actions...
Can affect attributes, Skills, actions... => explain
The role that an Entity assumes affects the way that it reacts to its environment. As an example, working hard physically would probably improve a creature's stamina. Moreover, a creature's Role leads it to practice certain Skills and therefore improve them but can also leads it to forget about others. A particular Role is the Entity's Orientation.
Done by CPs... => explain