It’s amazing how, even after only a couple days, my mind is already beginning to feel refreshed!  I wonder if it has something to do with how little coffee I’m drinking compared to a typical day.  We’ll have to fix that!  lol

In any event, I’ve been thinking about Tako — primarily in terms of “traits”.  Traits are essentially just textual tags that are applied to agents via their mantles or via actions taken ingame.  Mantles can be restricted to certain traits, so for example you might not be able to equip the Paladin class (trait: “good”, restricted to “not evil”) to the Kobold race (trait: “evil”).  Events and agents will be able to query the party for traits to make decisions, so a Paladin agent won’t want to join your party if you aren’t “good”, and may attack you outright if you are “evil”.  Some encounter-options could also add traits to agents, so if the player chose to do something like slaughter a bunch of innocent people, their avatar would acquire the “evil” trait, and lose the “good” trait, if they had it.  Agents in the party may then choose to leave, or even to attack the player.

To make this kind of “vengeful defection” actually matter (instead of turning into a three-on-one massacre for the defecting agent), I reckon I’ll have something along the lines of giving the defecting agent a massive buff, turning them into something of a boss fight.  A defecting paladin might get a buff like Righteous Fury, granting improved stats and some kind of ultimate ability.

The trait system can be applied much more generally than this, though.  I’ll be able to assign personality traits to agents, and apply them in whatever means makes sense.  So I dunno, maybe one agent is particularly lazy (and won’t be eligible for skill checks).  Maybe one is wrathful, and gets a stacking buff every time the player does something wrathful themselves.  I suppose this implies that actions in encounter should be able to have traits as well, and allow agents to respond to some kind of trait-events…   hmmm!  More to think about, I suppose!

Ah, maybe traits can tie into combat encounters too!  Perhaps an agent with the “threatening” trait is more likely to be the target of attacks in combat.

Well, I suppose I should get back to vactioning.  🙂

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