Text & Placeholders

Write Whole Sentences

Townstead joins the parts of a line with a space. Each part must be a whole sentence or a whole clause that ends with punctuation:

Good	Bad
”Phew.” + “This rain won’t quit."	"This rain” + “won’t quit."
"Oh, and.” + “Guess who got married?"	"Oh, and guess” + “who got married?”

• Do not split one sentence across two parts. Translations cannot follow a split sentence, and parts from different lines will not fit together.
• Each part must end with ., !, ?, …, a closing quote or bracket, or 。, ！ or ？. Townstead reports other parts when data loads.
• Townstead capitalizes the first letter of each part. A part can start with a placeholder, such as “{who} got married.”
• A question goes in the last slot of a line. See Questions.

A line stays on screen for 30 + 2.2 × characters ticks, from 2 to 8 seconds. A set-piece turn can set its own duration.

Placeholders

Write a placeholder by name, in braces:

"i_heard_who_got_married": "I heard {who} got married to {other2}!"

Placeholder	Value
{self}	The speaker’s name.
{other}	The listener’s name.
{self_demonym}, {self_demonym_plural}, {self_demonym_adj}	What people of the speaker’s culture are called: one person, many people, and the adjective. For example, “Highlander”.
{other_demonym}, {other_demonym_plural}, {other_demonym_adj}	The same for the listener’s culture.
{home_demonym}, {home_demonym_plural}, {home_demonym_adj}	The same for the culture of the speaker’s home village.
Any other name	A slot of the subject, such as {who}, {biome}, {mob} or {a_mob}. See Source Types for the slots of each source.

Townstead finds the placeholders in the text. A part is only used when the subject has every slot that the text names. For example, a line with {where} is not used for a mob sighting that has no place.

The demonym placeholders work with every subject. They come from the demonym of the culture file, with the same fields as a Root demonym. A subculture with no demonym uses its parent’s. When the culture has no demonym, the placeholder has no value, and a part that uses it is not used. _adj uses the singular when the culture has no adjective.

A slot name uses lowercase letters, digits and underscores.

Word Forms

A selector picks a word form from a fact about a slot:

{slot.fact:value=text|value=text|*=text}

"you_made_master": "Look at you, {other.gender:f=mistress of the craft|m=master of the craft|*=master of the craft}!"

Fact	Slots	Values
gender	self, other, self_demonym, other_demonym, and person slots such as who	m, f, or n for a villager with no male or female gender.
number	biome	singular or plural.

• Townstead uses the first option whose value matches, else the * option.
• Always give a * option. When the slot has no value, or the fact is missing, Townstead uses *. With no * option, the text is empty.
• In the English text, a selector’s slot counts like a placeholder: the part is only used when the subject has that slot. self and other are always there.
• In a translation, a selector can name any slot, also one that the English line does not use. When the subject has no such slot, Townstead uses the * form.

English rarely needs selectors. Translations need them often, for example for past tenses in Russian and French. See Translations.

Slot Values in Other Languages

Names of people are the same in every language. Some other slot values have translations:

Slot	Translation key
{biome}	townstead.biome_phrase.<namespace>.<path>
{mob}	townstead.mob_name.<namespace>.<path>
{a_mob}	townstead.mob_name.<namespace>.<path>.a
Demonyms	The translation key in the culture’s demonym, when it uses one

When a language has no key, the English value shows. A translation can also ask for a form of a value, such as {self_demonym/genitive}. See Translations.

Style

These rules keep villagers sounding like villagers:

• Keep parts short. A line joins up to six parts.
• Match the tone of the pool. A farewell part says goodbye. It does not start a new subject.
• A person slot without persp is always someone else. Write “{who} got married.” for gossip, and use "persp": {"who": "you"} for “I heard you got married!” See Perspective.
• Give personality lines to the personalities that would say them, with personalities. A general line suits everyone.
• Do not use em dashes in lines.