Well I promised we'd start developing through here, so this is the first topic I want to bring up (I don't just want to move threads from the private forums but write a bit of an introduction and what the current state of affairs is, so it'll take a little while)
Character traits are one of the most important aspects in the game for a lot of players. They immensely increase the game's immersion and enable the role-playing style of play that a lot of people love so dearly (especially those people who write AARs :laugh4: ).
As I mentioned in our aims&goals topic a while ago, one of our aims is to cater for this group by enhancing the role-playing aspect of the game to a yet-unseen level. This also has another reason because in the kind of gameplay that II is aiming for you'll spend quite a bit of time without actually fighting a lot which means that we will have to give you something else to toy around with so you don't get bored :yes:
Alright, so what do we have to show in that area? I personally didn't create a completely new trait system yet but that's definitely what we're in for because, honestly, vanilla's system is pretty boring. It doesn't have a theme, character development is pretty obscure and the whole Dread/Chivalry thing is a bit weird, too. However, it's always difficult to completely break with the existing system and create a new one; hence so far only a very basic "frame" has been developed:
I'm sure some of the more historically inclined among you will know what I mean when I talk about the "Four Humours" - for the others, I'd propose having a look at Wikipedia which gives a decent overview I believe (Four Humours).
In case you're wondering why we want to use humourism as our underlying system instead of using more modern psychological terminology is simple: We want to allow you to feel like a person living in the middle ages. Galen's theory was extremely popular for well more than a millenium, it was a wholesome approach spanning from psychology over medicine all the way to philosophy and therefore it was pretty much taken as granted that it was true. In addition to the obvious increase in immersion this entails, there's also the practical reason of being much easier to implement and understand than modern theories - and since this is a game, that's important; we don't want to (nor can) generate a proper impression of the human psyche with the severely limited traits system so we chose something that fits.
So, our most basic way of determining a character's personality are the four humours: Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholic and Phlegmatic. Sanguine and Melancholic as well as Choleric and Phlegmatic cancel each other out respectively, giving us a good entry point for a "is like dad"<->"is unlike dad" system that represents the possibility for a character to either follow in his father's footsteps, be more or less indifferent towards the old chap, or openly go against what he stands for.
Humours will probably end up being permanent and chosen on the coming of age of each character. They kind of define a certain disposition for his personality to develop but not completely regulate it.
We then have a second layer (I want to call both primary for this discussion) of very important traits: The deadly sins and heavenly virtues (again, refer to wikipedia for more info). Both sets of traits count seven elements, and again there's always a virtue pitched against a sin.
The sins&virtues are still very important character features, they include things like generosity, slothfulness, pride - in short most things that would define the way the outside world would judge a person (or at least so in the middle ages). I'm also currently inclined to make them our foremost and possibly only source of chivalry and dread, sins would give you dread whereas virtues would give you chivalry; actions like killing innocents would for example result in a shift towards wrath, greed and possibly lust and still indirectly increase dread because of this.
In addition to these two primary parts of the trait system, we will of course need a plethora of secondary traits. Secondary traits will usually be associated with one or more primary traits (except for some where that wouldn't make sense, like command experience) and basically feel like the traits you're used to from vanilla; they pretty much represent the details of a personality and allow every person to have a fair degree of uniqueness. Examples of this would be "kind ruler" traits which depend on generosity, haughty which depends on pride, cruel which depends on wrath, etc.
Well after this somewhat lengthy introduction, let me also make it clear that I didn't implement anything yet except for the Humours (and triggers for them) and the Sins&Virtues (no triggers yet) so the work has pretty much just started.
If you feel like you want to help, here's what you can do:
- Comment on the idea of course
- Propose secondary traits
- Implement already proposed traits and triggers (for this, send me a PM and we'll see what you can do - please only opt for this if you already have a bit of experience with traits or are very quick on the uptake)
- Write descriptions
Nothing else comes to mind right now, so let's see what you have to say. I'll update this topic whenever I change something so even if you don't really want to participate, it may be worth to check from time to time.
P.S. Also check the same thread in our TWC forums for reference
