Character

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What it controls

A character node establishes someone the player can meet. The portrait makes the person recognizable; deeper settings keep their behavior and speech consistent; act goals give them a reason to act. In Letter from Mist Harbor, the main non-player character is Lin Zhou, the night clerk at the Tidebound Post Office.

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Basic profile

Keep the name and identity consistent. Add a new portrait only when the character’s state or time really changes.

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Deeper settings

These guide the story but are not displayed as editor instructions: Write behaviors a player can notice rather than labels such as “brave” or “mysterious.”

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Act goals

For Tide Before Midnight, an example goal is: Confirm whether Shen Yao noticed the salt mark, then decide whether to hand over the old-pier key. The goal guides the character’s conversations but is not a task list shown to the player.

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From fields to the game page

The player sees the name, profile, portrait, dialogue, actions, and—if bound—a visible state in the character details. A character must also be bound to an act; simply creating the node does not make the person appear. Next: Location.