Trainers & Companions
A Character file is a person; a Companion file is one specific creature. Together they form the bond the whole game is about, and their fields are designed as two halves of one story.
Characters
Build the person the way the Player's Handbook asks players to: someone with a past, not a blank hero.
- goal is the concrete external drive — earn badges, find someone, get out of debt. It's what the world tests.
- wants, fears, secret are the internal engine. The secret is the one that generates play: it's a reputation waiting to happen.
- role and title are what the world calls them; trainerStyle is how they battle and bond — a play guide, not a stat.
- background and homeRegion ground them; age keeps them recognisably grown.
- personality and voice are how the GM plays them at the table.
- traits holds the six numbers the dice actually use — Brawn, Grace, Charm, Grit, Wits, Cool, each rated −1 to +3. New trainers allocate +2, +1, +1, +0, +0, −1; the creation wizard assigns exactly that spread, so keep any pregen you write inside the same range or players will notice the wizard sells them short.
- money and badges are the two pieces of trainer state that change during play. Money is the ledger the Economy rule reads from; badges are what the league counts. Both live on the sheet so the GM can move them mid-scene instead of remembering.
The reference fields do the linking: party (their companions), partner (the one that matters most), inventory (their gear), factions (who they belong to). A character without a partner is a background NPC; a player character without one hasn't started the game.
Companions
A companion is the individual instance of a species. The species file says what Pikachu are; the companion file says what this Pikachu is.
- species must resolve to a Pokemon file — that's the source of temperament, moves, and evolution.
- nickname and quirks make them singular. metHow and metWhere make them memorable — the catch, the stray, the egg, the gift, the theft.
- bond runs the emotional ladder (wary → working relationship → trusting → devoted, plus strained and broken). It's the party's second health meter, and it moves through play.
- condition runs the physical ladder (fresh → winded → struggling → failing → down). This is the game's HP, and it's described in fiction, not numbers.
- activeMoves (the four in use) vs learnedMoves (the full repertoire) — keep both honest, and note that moves are free-text in this framework. That's a deliberate choice; see Extending the Framework if you want them as files.
- heldItem is the one piece of gear the creature carries — a choice about who it is.
- arc is the creature's story over the campaign — what it's becoming, what it's working through. Most species entries hint at this in their evolution trigger; the companion's arc is the individual's version.
The two ladders
Bond and condition are enums because they're ladders, not sliders. Treat each step as meaningful: strained and broken are story beats, not penalties — the GM should play them as relationship scenes, and the Player's Handbook tells players the same. When you build a scene, ask which ladder it moves and which direction. Every scene should move at least one of them, or it didn't matter.
NPCs and the party
Most characters are NPCs and most companions belong to someone. That's fine — the graph handles it: an NPC's party can hold their team, a rival's partner is their ace, and factions ties them into the wider world. The player party is just the subgraph where the humans at the table are the characters.