Crafting a Character

This guide includes recommended practices and specific advice for a variety of character creation applications.

Keeping a Character "On Brand"

This advice centers around making a corporate marketing "Brand Ambassador" character, but can also apply to any character in a game that needs to strongly represent a specific faction, belief system, in-game product, or similar thing.

There are several approaches you can take to assure such a character stays "On Brand," and focuses on talking about the specific product, faction, or entity you wish them to.

On Brand: Core Description and Role

The single most impactful thing you can do to make sure a character stays on brand is to assure that their Core Description refers to your brand.

In addition, assure their Role mentions they are an ambassador for your brand, ie: "Ambassador for Brand X" or "Representative of the Carpenter's Guild".

On Brand: Motivations

When getting them to talk about a specific topic, your character’s Motivations play a major role.

Assure these Motivations align with representing your brand.

On Brand: Facts and Knowledge

In addition, assure the character's Facts and Knowledge include supporting information about the brand and products. You can also use the Knowledge system to add example dialogue that includes slogans, branded messages, and similar sayings.

On Brand: Goals and Actions

Finally, if additional brand reinforcement is needed, you can use the Goals system to craft scripted greetings, sales pitches, and any other verbatim dialogue you require.

Staying In-Character

When maintaining an immersive world, it is important that each character does not do anything that would cause them to break character, thereby shattering the illusion of verisimilitude.

There are a few things you can adjust to assure a character stays in-character when interacting with the user or player.

In-Character: Define Limits of Knowledge

The most powerful tool you have to restrict a character's responses is by limiting what they know.

To define the limits of a character's knowledge, use the Personal Knowledge and Common Knowledge systems.

By restricting what the character knows using these systems, you are able to assure they cannot expand outside the limits you set for them.

In Character: Preventing Mention of a Topic

To further limit a character's ability to talk about specific topics, use their Core Description and Personal Knowledge fields to specifically mention topics that your character won’t discuss.

If you wish, you can also use these fields to give the character emotional reactions to certain topics. For example, maybe a stable hand becomes irritated or confused when someone brings up politics, and will quickly change the subject to tending horses in the stable.

Controlling a Character's Actions

In certain situations, you may want to directly control a character's actions, making them do, react, or say something in a specific way.

There are several things you can do to achieve this greater degree of control over a character.

Controlling Characters: Asking a Specific Question

If you want a character to ask a specific question at a certain point in the interaction, utilize the Goals system to guide the conversation through multiple steps.

At the appropriate time, have the character “say verbatim” the desired response.

Controlling Characters: Answering a Question in a Specific Way

If you want the character to give a specific answer to a pre-determined question, you can include the details of the answer within the Core Description and/or Personal Knowledge fields.

This answer can be explicit, such as: “If {player} asks {character} about pets, they will talk about their two corgis, Rodgers and Hammerstein.”

You can reinforce this answer by including a reference in the character's Example Dialogue such as: “I love going for walks with my two corgis!”

Controlling Characters: Scripted Lines of Dialogue

If you need the character to say scripted lines of dialogue, you can use the Goals system to guide the conversation through multiple steps.

At the appropriate time, the character can “say verbatim” the specific line you want them to say.

Controlling Characters: Proactive

If you don’t want a character to sit around chatting but rather lead the player through an experience or narrative, there are a few things you can do.

Using a combination of Scenes and Goals, your character can be made to lead players/users through a narrative, branded experience, or educational training.

Controlling Characters: Using a Specific Greeting

If you want a character to always greet the player in a particular way, create a Goal that is specifically designed for greeting the player.

Within the instruction for this Goal, write a variation on “greet {player} by saying the verbatim greeting, for example: ‘Welcome to the madhouse!’”

Controlling Characters: Gaining Knowledge

If you want a character to gain or shift their knowledge at a specific point in your game, using a Scene Trigger allow you to progress their story, learn new things, and create new settings.

Specific Character Types

Sculpting a more specific character such as one from a specific time period, species, culture, planet, or other exotic origin requires a higher degree of detail to get right.

Specific Characters: Using Slang

To get a character to use slang, use the Dialogue Style section to create a custom speaking style that references your intended slang in the Colloquialism field.

You can enhance this further by including complimentary adjectives and adverbs in the Custom Dialogue Style section.

Additionally, you can demonstrate examples of the desired slang within the character’s Example Dialogue section.

Specific Characters: Non-Verbal Animals

If you are you looking to create a talking animal, you can follow the same design process as you would for normal characters.

If you are designing a non-talking/monosyllabic animal character, the process is slightly different.

To create a character that can only say “Woof!” for example, write only “Woof” in the Core Description, Motivations, Personal Knowledge, Example Dialogue, and Colloquialism fields.

This tells the AI that every interaction with the character will consist of this single response.

Specific Characters: Famous or a Historical Figures

To re-create a famous individual or historic figure, try to best represent them as they really are.

This involves providing an accurate Core Description, likely based on existing biographies, Wikipedia, and other information.

In addition, use their full name in the Identity field to ensure the AI recognizes them, along with the Wikipedia link, if available.

Also fill their Personal Knowledge field with accurate facts known by them and real opinions they have. Results are further improved if you can include a number of more obscure references.

Finally, in their the Example Dialogue field, use known quotes and interview segments that best represent the public or historical figure.

Multi-Character Conversations

Inworld offers support for multiple characters participating in the same conversation with its Multi-Agent system.