Emotional Decision Making Response of Non-Playable Characters in a Role-Playing Game

Role-Playing Games (RPGs) provide the user with a story where the decisions taken by the user move the story forward. Apart from the user, there are many Non-Playable Characters (NPCs) in the games that provide coherence to the overall story. These characters however have limited choices and functionality and always behave the same way in a game. The actions performed by the NPCs are never unexpected and we do not receive an emotional response from the NPCs. The authors propose a system where every character has some specific objectives and to achieve those objectives the character formulates a plan and acts on it according to its defined ethical orientation. Once the plan has been created, there is a possibility that the character might behave emotionally to that plan based on its orientation. As a result, the user gets a dynamic system where every character has the possibility of influencing a change which is governed by the mental makeup of the characters.