Demeanor

The demeanor system gives you a way to set how your character automatically reacts to certain actions directed at you by others. It represents to some extent how trusting you are, or how receptive you are to physical contact and proximity.

Demeanor Basics

Some activities require trust, and trust can make things quicker and easier between people. You might accept a hug automatically from a loved one, but not from a stranger. Then again, maybe you consider everyone in the world to be a loved one. So optimistic! In either case, you can set a demeanor or level of trust that reflects your general attitude towards the world, or towards certain individuals or groups.

Trust Levels

Your default levels of trust towards others can be changed. The varying levels of trust are, from most to least trusted: LOVED ONE, FRIEND, ACQUAINTANCE, STRANGER, ENEMY.

Things impacted by trust level include: consent socials (like HUG), contact socials (like LEANING on someone), carrying someone, attempting to grapple with someone, moving into someone's vicinity, approaching to touch someone, automatically accepting first aid treatment or massages, and so on.

In most cases, roundtime for a less-trusted approacher will be substantially increased, and allow the approached person more time to react and potentially avoid the action. This mimics a more reserved demeanor, and a sense of having your guard up around people. At the same time, hugs, massages, and medical treatment would be automatically accepted from a loved one, for the sake of keeping interactions smooth and realistic regarding your guard being down around very familiar and beloved people.

Setting a Demeanor

To represent your overall attitude and trust level, you can set a default demeanor with demeanor default <trust level>. You can also set a separate demeanor towards specific people by entering trust <person> as <trust level>. More broadly, if your character has certain favorable biases or unfavorable prejudices that you'd like to represent through your demeanor, you can additionally set blanket demeanors towards:

• organizations (ex: the Mistwatch, the Lion Guard),
• heritages (ex: Elukoi, Yehani, Amunati),
• places of origin (ex: Idiri, Ruleska).

If you haven't set a specific trust level, an unknown person will be categorized by whichever party you have the strongest demeanor towards (enemy being the strongest, followed by loved one, friend, acquaintance, and stranger). If an unknown person has no recognizable party affiliation or you do not have any demeanor towards any of their affiliations, then they will receive your default trust level.

Trust and Relationships

Setting trust levels is not necessarily a stand-in for developing relationships, but when you develop a relationship by categorizing it as something that matches a trust level, that person will be automatically assigned that level of trust. You can clear your trust towards them if it was unintended (for instance, if in actuality, you deeply distrust your wife and do not actually consider them a 'loved one' despite classifying the relationship type as 'wife'.)

Usage

• DEMEANOR / TRUST
• TRUST <party> as <trust level>
• TRUST clear <party>
• DEMEANOR default <trust level>

See also

• Relationships