Characters & Conversation

A person can carry a character model — who they are — and a conversation system — how that shows up when someone talks to them. The two are one mechanism read at two moments: the character model holds state (personality, temperament, mood, what they feel, what they know, what they want), and every conversation construct selects its response from that state. Nothing here generates dialogue; the author writes every line, and the model only decides which authored line fits the moment.

Both layers are optional and additive. A person with none of these is still a person, and a story that declares nothing compiles exactly as it did before. Add only the layer a scene actually needs: a shopkeeper may want nothing but a topic table, while a suspect under pressure may want temperament, conscience, and a thread that will not let a subject drop.

The vocabulary is closed. Personality words, moods, dispositions, forces, and the rest come from a frozen list, and a word outside it is a compile error rather than a silent no-op — so a typo is caught at build time, not discovered in play. Where a story genuinely needs a new word, it declares one (define personality, define mood, define temperament).

Character model — Personality & temperament, Principles, Mood, Feelings & knowledge, Goals, Influence & face-acts, Conscience.

Conversation — Manner, Greetings, Topic recency, Exchanges, Initiative, Conversation threads, Continuation prompts.

See also The World > People for the create-line constructs that name a person (proper, aka, pronouns), and Behavior > Topic tables for define topics, the plain ASK/TELL table these layers build on.

create Jonas Reed
  a person, proper, very impulsive, slightly honest
  temperament duty over fear
  never betrays a confidence
  mood anxious
  feels devoted to Marta Kell
  knows the-ledger-burning, witnessed, certain