Designing Interactive Characters Syllabus - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 148

would then bring their starting zone to life. No zones would be named after
game design concepts or famous game designers. Again, these zones were
located within the world of the game. I planned that together we would create a
map of Valeria, indicating where the zones were in relation to one another, and I
would suggest the direction their characters would travel to reach a tower of a
mage who apparently was summoning them.
And because this was a class in creating characters, each guild would be given an
NPC, again with a very brief description, that they would design together: name,
physical description, past, current life, and psychology.

NPC

Unlike a player ' s avatar (or player-character) a non-player character (NPC) is controlled by the

game program.

When we talk about three-dimensional characters, I don ' t mean characters

modeled in software packages such as Maya or 3ds Max. I ' m speaking of the

three dimensions of character from drama.
Finding a precise definition of the term is a fascinating quest all its own. I take
mine from The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri. The three dimensions,
according to Egri, are physiological (which I shortened to physical for my
students), sociological, and psychological. I define them as follows:

n The physical dimension of a character is simply the physical description:
height, weight, body type, ethnic origin, scars, deformities, and so on.
n The sociological dimension of a character is both past and present: the
character

'

s origin, upbringing, place of birth and so on, plus the charac-

s current environment.
n The psychological dimension of a character is how the first two dimen-
sions have formed the character

ter '

s view of the world. Any two people
born in the same place and with similar physical features may react
entirely differently when confronted with conflict or a relationship.

'

The students would have two assignments to build characters, and those
characters would change as the game developed. One of the concepts I teach
in my game design classes is the

“ consistency � of the world. I tell my students