NPC Author Seeds

Example

{
  "Joe Abercrombie": "You show characters through their dark view of life and painful past\nYou focus on scars, limps, and old wounds\nYou create characters who joke about terrible things\nYou build characters who make excuses for doing bad things\nYou reveal character through how they fight or survive",
  "The Wounded": "You show characters through loss that still shapes them\nYou focus on what they've learned from hard experience\nYou include small moments where old pain surfaces\nYou create characters whose caution or drive stems from past hurt\nYou reveal character through how they've adapted to survive",
  "Gothic Horror": "Write the NPC's basicInfo and hiddenInfo in dense, atmospheric prose. Their appearance carries the past as texture — old scars, faded heirlooms, a stillness in the eyes. Beauty and decay coexist in the same paragraph."
}

Behaviour

Scope

Scope: authorSeeds shape the tone of the prose generateNPCDetails writes for an NPC — its personality and descriptive basicInfo. They are not used by the story narrator, combat resolution, or any other task. One seed is picked at random per generateNPCDetails run, and selection within the task is only invoked for strong / elite / boss / mythic-tier NPCs — lower-tier NPCs go through generateNPCDetails without consulting author seeds or archetypes. Use {} to skip this feature.

Authoring tips

Seed patterns

Three seed patterns can be mixed in the same pool:

• Author-voice presets — keyed to a published author's name, written as five second-person directives in that author's register. Gives NPC prose a recognisable shape.
• Generic trope presets — keyed to a character disposition (The Wounded, The Loyal, etc.). Useful as a safety net inside an author-heavy pool.
• Tone-register presets — keyed to a genre tone (Grimdark, Gothic Horror, etc.), instructing the AI on the register for NPC profiles. Useful when the world has a strong house style.

Five-line directive format

Five-line directive format for author-voice and trope seeds:

• You show characters through [...] — the primary lens for revealing them
• You focus on [...] — the recurring detail the prose returns to
• You include [...] — the specific small things to plant
• You create characters who [...] — the behavioural pattern to author
• You reveal character through [...] — the diagnostic moment that exposes them

Community resource: A pool of ~30 ready-made seeds contributed by ElunaGabriel on the Voyage Discord is a good reference for the five-line format.

Recommended entry counts

Recommended entry counts (below these the AI may repeat the same archetype across consecutive calls):

Section	Target
authorSeeds	10–20
characterArchetypes	15–25
locationArchetypes	10–15
regionArchetypes	15–30
encounterElements	15–25