Character Design - Standard

Creating a New Character

Once you’re ready to create your own character, click the “Create New Character” button in the top right corner of the workspace. A pop-up window will have you enter your character’s name and core description. The core description is optional here and can be entered later within the character’s profile.

If you’d like to speed up the process of filling in the character’s additional profile details, click the Auto-Gen checkbox. You can use the Auto-Gen outputs as a starting point and edit them afterward.

Once your character’s initial details are entered, click the “Create” button. You’ll be given the options to “Chat in Studio” with your initial character framework or to click “Continue to Character Creation” to open the character’s profile and add more details.

Core Description

Once you’ve entered the character’s profile, the first section is the Core Description. If you didn’t enter these details during “Create New Character”, you can enter them now.

Core Description

Core descriptions should focus on answering questions about the character’s current circumstances, their backstory, their hopes, and how they present themselves. If there are any key relationships, businesses, or locations related to your character, they can be mentioned here. Also, if the character uses a particular manner of speaking, you can also add that.

Try to use stylized writing in the Core Description. How would a novel or magazine article describe your character? What adjectives would they use? How would they paint a picture to capture your attention?

Keep in mind, if your character’s profile has spelling, grammatical, or formatting errors, then you run the risk of your character learning from those errors. Similarly, contradictory facts and examples can confuse Inworld’s AI. To ensure high-quality output, provide high-quality input.

TIP: We suggest using {character} and {player} in place of actual names. This helps ensure there are no disconnects if you decide to change the character’s name in the future.

⚠️ Limit: 2000 characters

Motivations

In the Motivations section, you’ll want to add single sentences describing what motivates the character when talking to others. It could be to accomplish a goal or desire, make an opinion known, or help the user learn about something. It is important to think about what drives your character. Do they need to survive a zombie apocalypse? Do they want to help customers discover a new shade of eye shadow? This will impact the character’s responses and they will look for opportunities to inject their motivations into the conversation.

⚠️ Limit: 250 characters

Flaws

In the Flaws field, enter single sentences regarding your character’s shortcomings and fears. What is holding them back from accomplishing their motivations? How do they express their internal conflict through outward dialogue? What topics will trigger a negative reaction? Have they endured countless hardships, making them leary of the player's intentions? Perhaps they use sarcasm to hide their insecurities. Or maybe their own shortcomings will make them more relatable and help users open up about their own self-doubts.

⚠️ Limit: 250 characters

TIP: For both the Motivations and Flaws, your wording can determine how a character is impacted. Your character could be “aggressively” trying to achieve their motivations, or maybe they approach their flaws “comically”.

Narrated Actions

Below the three forms fields is a checkbox labeled “Enable narrated actions”. Click to enable and the character’s responses will now include narrations with further details and nuances about the character’s actions and scenarios. This is especially useful for making text-only interactions more immersive. The narrated actions will be differentiated in bold font.

TIP: To respond to the character in narrated actions of your own, just type an action with asterisks around them like this. The player’s text won’t be emboldened, but the character will understand it as a narrated action.

Identity

The Identity section is used to enter a character’s name, pronouns, and other details specific to them. Be creative! Your character can be anything from a virtual influencer to an angry ferret.

Name

If you need to rename your character, this is the form field where you do it. We suggest only including a character's first and/or last name.

If they are already a public or historical figure (Albert Einstein), include their full name to ensure Inworld’s AI will make the correlation. Otherwise, they might be ambiguous until further details are added. Don’t include a character’s profession (Sally the Instructor) in their name. This can cause duplication and confusion with the actual Role field.

Pronouns

Choose from the three available options - she, he, they. This field can also be left blank if no pronouns suit your character.

Role

This provides a framework for how the character interacts with the world around them. It can be something broad like “Hero” or “Assistant”. However, more specific archetypes or professions, like “Medieval Warrior” or “Brand Ambassador for Company X” will help to better inform Inworld’s AI. For example, entering “World War 2 Private” will give the character a context that a “soldier” wouldn’t have.

Stage of Life

Choose from the options provided. Consider how age will impact the character’s approach and dialogue. A younger character might use different phrases than an elderly one.

Alternative Names

These can be included to add more depth to a character. They may have a formal, professional title (Madame President) or a nickname shared amongst friends. If a user refers to the character by an alternate name, the character will recognize it. They might even introduce themselves by that name or inject it into the conversation (“My bowling buddies call me The Dude.”).

⚠️ Limit: You may enter up to four alternative names.

Hobbies and Interests

Include a short list of your character’s hobbies and interests. Your character may refer to these in conversation. They can be broad (ex. Helping solve users’ problems) or specific to the character’s motivations (ex. Ambushing rival gangs).

⚠️ Limit: You may enter up to ten hobbies or interests.

Wikipedia

If your character is a famous/historical public figure or a popular fictional character, they might have a preexisting Wikipedia entry that additional information can be pulled from. This will be expanded to additional external knowledge sources in future updates.

Personality and Emotions

This section will help hone in on the character’s overall emotional arc and how they will react to different conversations and situations.

Personality Traits

Add a variety of adjectives that best describe your character’s state. These will help Inworld’s AI create the appropriate personality and responses. Check out the examples below for inspiration, but remember that the possibilities are limitless!

Type	Examples
Positive	Accessible, Adaptable, Friendly, Kind, Methodical, Patient, Trusting
Negative	Abrasive, Careless, Compulsive, Cynical, Disobedient, Egocentric, Lazy
Neutral	Casual, Obedient, Reserved, Predictable, Surprising, Ambitious

⚠️ Limit: You may enter up to 10 traits

Mood and Personality Sliders

Who doesn’t love sliders?! They decide what kinds of emotions your character will have in response to interactions. They also color what your character says – if you create an upbeat character, they’re typically going to respond with upbeat responses.

• Fully fleshed-out characters will have a range of emotions and can switch between them. Don’t just use one emotion!
• Mood is related to how your character feels, while personality is about how they relate to others.
• Characters’ facial expressions, gestures, and vocal intonations are connected to their emotions. This is important to note if you’ll be using our avatar features or integrating your character with Unity, Unreal, etc.

TIP: For the emotional fluidity slider, a character with full dynamic range might end up changing from one emotion to another with every utterance – which works for certain characters! Turning emotional fluidity to zero will disconnect your character from Inworld’s emotional AI engine. The character will draw strictly from the traits and sliders settings that you have entered.

TIP: The insecure/confident slider’s setting needs to be handled delicately. If you make a character very confident, they might come off as arrogant or constantly argue with the users’ opinions and ideas. Of course, authoritative characters can sometimes be very appropriate.

Facts and Knowledge

The Facts and Knowledge section is where you add both Personal Knowledge and Common Knowledge.

Personal knowledge is anything the character knows personally whereas common knowledge is where you can add broader information about a time period or a game world that multiple characters will share.

Personal Knowledge

For personal knowledge, you’ll add information that is relevant to that character, and perhaps only they will know. This includes information about their:

• Backstory
• Relationships
• Specialty
• Personal opinions
• What they’re wearing
• Favorite sayings
• Things they hate or love
• Subjects they’re ignorant of
• Any facts that you would expect the character to reference offhand

These facts will not influence the character constantly (you should put things you want to have that effect in the Core Description).

Use this feature to establish a well-developed backstory that gives the player a sense of your character's history.

TIP: Characters will often draw from facts for their talking points. With this in mind, consider writing a portion of the facts in the voice of the character. Almost like they’re talking in third-person. When they draw from the facts, it will already be in their tone of voice.

TIP: Similar to the third-person suggestion, how would the character describe their closest relationships, cherished items, or most hated foes? Is it their “mother” or their “beloved mum”? Is it their “axe”, or their “indestructible battle axe”?

⚠️ Limit: You may enter up to 150 characters per fact and up to 1000 facts

Common Knowledge

See Common Knowledge section for more details

Voice

Inworld’s platform has a variety of male, female, and non-gendered voices to choose from. You can easily cycle through them all by using the “Listen” and “Previous/Next” buttons.

Once you’ve determined the voice that best fits your character, you can then adjust the pitch and talking speed. Pitch controls the tone of your character’s voice. Lower values will lead to deeper voices, while higher values will lead to higher-pitched voices. Talking speed provides the option to change the rate of a character’s speaking voice. Lower values will make the voice slower, while higher values will make the character speak faster.

TIP: Generally, a voice’s quality will become less satisfactory the more you alter the pitch and speed. Of course, this can also be used to your advantage for certain characters, such as a robot or an otherworldly being.

⚠️ Limit: If none of our voices is the right fit for your character, please contact us to discuss working with voice actors and third-party integrations.

Dialogue Style

You can choose from a variety of Preset dialogue styles or else design your own Custom style. This feature (combined with Personality and Emotions) will determine how the character delivers their responses. They can be inquisitive and ask lots of questions. Or be mysterious and not give too much away.

• Default responses are engaging and realistic. (person on the street, virtual assistant)
• Bubbly responses are thoughtful and energetic. (influencer, children’s entertainer)
• Blunt responses are short and very direct. (sports coach, celebrity chef)
• Formal responses are very matter-of-fact. (scientist, lawyer)
• Inquisitive responses will usually include a question. (detective, psychologists)
• Commanding responses will be intense and determined.(drill sergeant, personal trainer)
• Villainous responses will be sinister and cruel. (criminal mastermind, corrupt politician)
• Entertaining responses will be animated and comical. (stand-up, cartoon character)
• Empathetic responses will be gentle and compassionate. (teacher, animal rescuer)
• Raconteur responses will be entertaining and descriptive. (podcast host, tour guide)
• Sarcastic responses will be snide and contemptuous. (teenager, columnist)
• Hypochondriac responses will be neurotic and fearful. (doomsayer, bomb defuser)
• Long-Winded responses will be verbose and meandering. (historian, professor)
• Moral responses will be principled and incorruptible. (environmentalist, superhero)
• Tenacious responses will be determined and persistent. (pro athlete, entrepreneur)
• Laidback responses will be informal and nonchalant. (yoga instructor, surfer)
• Mysterious responses will be elusive and cryptic. (secret agent, fortune teller)

Custom dialogue styles allow you to design specifically for your character’s traits. Mix and match Adjectives (limit of 3), Adverbs (limit of 2), and Colloquialisms (limit of 1) to create a dialogue style that is unique to your character.

Example Dialogue

Example Dialogue is an effective way to provide Inworld’s AI with references to the demeanor that you are trying to capture. They help to complement and dial in the details entered in the other fields through specific examples of your character’s dialogue. If you’ve entered elsewhere that the character is “pompous,” this is your opportunity to convey that in a specific quote.

Do not include “Character:” or make any references to the player or their dialogue. For best results, use standalone dialogue examples.

TIP: Good examples of times to use example dialogue would be character-specific greetings, required/scripted lines, catchphrases, and colloquialism examples.

Character Design - Advanced

Inworld’s advanced features are typically used in conjunction with integrations outside of the platform. That said, Goals and Scenes can easily be tested by using your character’s “Chat” function and opening the three-dot menu.

Goals and Actions

Goals and actions allow you to create triggers for your character to react in a specific way based on certain interactions or scenarios. Click the plus button and you’ll get a popup where you can give your goal a name and auto-filled ID.

If we want the character to react immediately once triggered, click on the “Invoke Conversation” toggle button. If not, the character will wait for an opening in the conversation to interject.

Next, click “Add Instructions” and enter how your character will react in this situation. Will they say or do something particular? On the right side of the goal instruction is a three-dot menu. Click here to add a trigger, an emotional change, reorder the instructions or delete it.

The trigger can be connected to a user defined-event and cause additional actions to occur within your project’s integration. Additionally, if the character should convey a particular emotional change in this situation, you can update it accordingly.

Unlike other fields where you differentiate by using “{character},” goals don’t require this. Consider the instruction field to be a continuation of the sentence “The {character} needs to…” where you are required to fill in the rest. What action verb would come next?

TIP: If you don’t want a character to remain in a particular emotional state that’s been caused by a trigger, in the following instruction, choose a different emotion or Neutral to return to the default state and allow for emotional variance thereafter.

TIP: For characters and projects with a narrative arc, consider following the structure of a script. Break down your character’s interactions into separate acts and then have specific beats within those.

Scenes

Scenes provide context by describing the immediate surroundings of your character. If you just plan on talking to your character in Inworld’s studio or in the Inworld Arcade, then you won’t need to add a scene unless it’s for added context. But if you plan to integrate your characters in Unity or Unreal Engine, you’ll need to create a scene, as you need a scene key to move your characters over.

To create a Scene, navigate to Scenes via the left sidebar and select “Create New Scene”. Add the Scene Name (Wild West Saloon) and then under Scene Description, you can write the description of the environment that your characters are in. This can include details like the time of day or objects in the surrounding area.

Add existing characters to the Scene by selecting the + icon and picking your character from the dropdown list. You can also return to a character’s profile and add them to the Scene from there.

Scene Triggers

Scene triggers can be used to add immediate context to a change that may occur in a Scene. A Scene trigger is a custom system event that you can invoke in your integration. To create a Scene trigger, select the “Create New Trigger” button. Enter an alphanumeric string for the Name field and write a short description in the Description field.

You can add multiple scene triggers to your scenes. However, only one scene trigger can be active at a time and it will remain active until it’s replaced by a different scene trigger.

TIP: Scene triggers can be separate scenarios like a character greets you in a certain fashion or you touch a certain item they attack you. Alternatively, they can be progressive scenes, where one event follows another, like a plotline or instructional guide.

⚠️ Limit: 500 character limit