A gaming world is nothing without players and monsters running around.
Nevertheless, creating them can be a little daunting at first. But don’t worry.
In this chapter, you can find the basic information you need to create characters
and give them a life of their own in your game—all in an easy-to-follow format.
In this chapter, you learn how to do the following:

■ Define characters
■ Control characters in play
■ Use spells with characters
■ Deal with interaction between the player character and NPCs

Players, Characters, and Monsters, Oh My!

Prior to this chapter, the game components are pretty standard. Those components—
graphics engines, object handling, and using scripts—are easy to handle.

Now you come to what can seem like an impasse because fashioning characters can
be difficult or easy depending on your game’s needs. You must handle the player
characters (from now on referred to as PCs) that are under the control of the
player, the non-player characters (from now on called NPCs) that are running
around populating the world and carrying on with their own lives, and the monster
characters (from now on called MCs) that want nothing more than to strike you down.
In this section, I introduce you to the various topics that help you design and define your game's
characters, ranging from a character's controls, abilities, and features.

NOTE
A player character is your player’s alter ego. Non-player characters are the characters
for whom your player has no direct control. NPCs are often townsfolk, shopkeepers,
bankers, healers, and monsters.Yes, even monsters are NPCs, I like to make a clear distinction between an NPC and an MC. NPCs do not attack players, whereas MCs do attack.

Talk about pressure! How do you handle every little aspect of these three types of characters? You might first break those aspects into the following categories and then determine how to proceed:

■ Definition. You determine everything that a character can accomplish in
a game by using a set of rules. Those rules need to establish exactly what a
character is capable of accomplishing. Character definition includes a character’s
abilities (such as physical strength and agility) and a character’s
graphical appearance (as defined by 3-D meshes, for example).

■ Navigation. Characters need to navigate through the world, whether on foot,
by horse, or in an airship.

■ Conversation. PCs interact with other PCs and with NPCs by talking or via
other communication channels. The course of your game can change with
a single spoken word, or the story can be permanently laid out by means of
canned responses from talking dummies.

■ Resource management. Resource management plays a large part in roleplaying
games. You have a PC inventory that consists of armor, weapons,
potions, keys, and whatever else the PCs can fit into their virtual pockets.
Those items, of course, are used at some point in the game, and it’s the job of
PCs to figure out each object’s use. Spells and magic also fall into this category.

■ Combat. Combat is a PC’s means of ridding the world of evildoers, who take
the form of NPCs or other PCs, and of giving PCs a chance to gain experience
and power. Remember that a major element of role-playing games is to
take your big, bad characters and build them into even bigger, badder characters!

■ Character building. As I just mentioned, the purpose of typical role-playing
games is to consistently increase your characters’ powers and experiences so
that they are better prepared to take on the more challenging aspects of the
game. As characters’ experiences increase, they gain knowledge of new skills,
powers, spells, and abilities.

■ Character actions and appearance. Characters can do only so much in a
game. They can walk around, attack, cast spells, use items, and what have
you. Each action that a character can perform is matched by a graphical representation,
such as a 3-D mesh displayed on the screen.