NPC Archetypes
characterArchetypesKeyed personality scaffolds that NPC Details draws on for strong and higher-tier NPCs. Each archetype is a structured prompt block with **Drives, Traits, Morality, and Relationships** sections.
"Reusable character concepts the AI can draw from when generating new people for this world."
- Editor location
- Files → Other → Advanced → NPC Archetypes
- Editor type
- Edit in Studio + View JSON
- Size limits
No character-length caps for this section.
Schema
{
"characterArchetypes": {
"<key>": "string"
}
}Example
{
"characterArchetypes": {
"Survivor": "Drives: stay alive; keep the people they have chosen to care about alive.\nTraits: pragmatic, observant, slow to trust.\nMorality: situational — lines drawn by experience, not principle.\nRelationships: distrusts institutions; trusts demonstrated competence.",
"Scholar": "Drives: understand how the world works; preserve knowledge that power would prefer buried.\nTraits: intellectually confident, practically underequipped.\nMorality: believes understanding is inherently valuable regardless of consequence.\nRelationships: loyalty runs to ideas more than to people.",
"Operator": "Drives: get the job done, get paid, move on before complications follow.\nTraits: professional, efficient, allergic to drama.\nMorality: contractual — the client and the agreement define the limit.\nRelationships: respects competence; resents amateurs; networks deliberately.",
"True Believer": "Drives: serve a cause larger than the self; expand its reach.\nTraits: focused, articulate, hard to discourage.\nMorality: derived from the cause; ranks principles above persons.\nRelationships: warm to fellow believers, instructive to potential converts, dismissive of the indifferent.",
"Opportunist": "Drives: position for the next advantage; avoid being on the wrong side when the music stops.\nTraits: charming, observant of leverage, willing to discard plans for better ones.\nMorality: instrumental — every rule has an exception for the right price.\nRelationships: cultivates many shallow ties; deep loyalty to almost no one."
}
}Behaviour
Population DNA
Archetypes serve as the population "DNA" for the world: one is picked at random when an NPC is detailed, rather than being assigned per NPC. The more entries you define, the more varied the population. Voyage ships 22.
Pairing with playable builds
Pair with traits, skills, and premadeCharacters for playable builds. Archetypes are personality templates, not full PCs.
Tier gate
Note (
characterArchetypestier gate): Archetype selection is only invoked forstrong/elite/boss/mythictier NPCs duringgenerateNPCDetails, not fortrivial/weak/averagetier NPCs. For those, the default NPC Details instructions ask for personalities that stay close to common tropes, and your owngenerateNPCDetailssections apply as usual.
Override and suppression
Note: To override or fully ignore the engine-selected archetype inside
generateNPCDetails, see Behavior suppression and archetype override in the Advanced AI Techniques appendix.