Relationships & Demeanor

Townstead records how each villager feels about each person they know: trust, affection, resentment and more. A story can read these feelings, change them, and change the villager’s manner to match. For how relationships work in play, see Relationships.

Qualities

Quality	Meaning
affection	How much they like the other.
attraction	How attracted they are to the other.
comfort	How comfortable they feel around the other.
familiarity	How well they know the other.
fear	How much they fear the other.
resentment	How much they resent the other.
respect	How much they respect the other.
trust	How much they trust the other.

Each quality goes from -100 to 100. A quality without a namespace means townstead:, so trust is townstead:trust.

Reading and Changing

In Ink	Effect
rel("trust")	The teller’s trust in the player, from -100 to 100.
trust(5)	Raises the teller’s trust in the player by 5. A negative amount lowers it.
contribute("affection", 3, "shared_meal")	Changes any quality. The last value is a short reason, kept with the change.
memory("id")	The teller keeps a memory about the player, such as memory("saved_the_harvest").

= done
~ trust(5)
~ contribute("respect", 3, "mended_nets")
You did it. I won't forget that.

Gifts can change qualities too. See Gifts.

Pace the changes

Small, steady changes feel real. A story that gives +20 trust for one chat makes the relationship feel cheap. Many stories raise trust a little on the first talk of each day, with a cap, and more for finished quests.

Demeanor

demeanor() gives one word for how the teller treats the player now. Use it to change the tone of lines:

{demeanor():
- "stern": What do you want?
- "jovial": There you are! Come here!
- else: Hello again.
}

Default Bands

Townstead tries the bands in order and uses the first band that matches.

Band	Matches when
stern	Resentment is 40 or more, or fear is 30 or more.
guarded	Resentment is 20 or more, or trust is below 0.
jovial	Affection is 30 or more, and resentment is below 10.
warm	Trust is 20 or more.
neutral	Always.

Your Own Bands

A story or a Persona can replace the bands with demeanor in its JSON file:

"demeanor": [
  { "name": "cold", "any": { "resentment": { "min": 30 } } },
  { "name": "fond", "all": { "affection": { "min": 40 }, "trust": { "min": 20 } } },
  { "name": "polite" }
]

Field	Description
name	Required. The word that demeanor() gives.
any	Rules, of which at least one must hold.
all	Rules that must all hold.

Each rule bounds one quality with min, max, or both. A band with no rules always matches, so put one last. When no band matches, demeanor() gives neutral.