People
People are the most traversed layer in any settlement — the nodes players interact with most directly. Every conversation, alliance, betrayal, and revelation routes through a person.
In engine terms, people nodes are the primary interface between players and everything else. A person posts into factions (allegiance), settlements (where they’re findable), quests (what leads they carry), and lore (what they know).
In This Folder
| File | What It Covers |
|---|---|
| Residents | Creating NPCs tied to specific landmarks — the Street Magic procedure |
| Rivals | Generating opposition NPCs from faction conflict — the BF&B face card procedure |
| Quick NPCs | Mid-session person generation in under 2 minutes |
The Opposite Face: Factions
A person without allegiances is just a name. Every person node requires at least one post to the Factions layer — how they came to be affiliated, what they owe, what they resent. People without faction ties are strangers, outliers, or structural dissenters. The absence of a faction edge is itself information.
Findability
Every person must be findable. This means every person node has a post to a settlement node — a specific landmark where they work, live, or spend time. Players don’t search for people abstractly; they go to the Forge Quarter and ask for Jorn the Smith.
This is also what makes “I know a guy” work — the engine finds the lowest-entropy uncollapsed person node, which means most posts, including a specific place.
Generation Sources
People nodes are pinned by Street Magic (NPC vignettes, True Names), Beak, Feather & Bone (face card rivals), player declarations, and session play.
Where This Connects
People carry lore. They belong to factions. They anchor quests. The leads players need to pursue goals almost always route through a specific person first.