Character portraits: what they are and how to get more from them

If you have been playing a campaign for a while, you may have noticed small portraits next to the NPCs in the Character Panel, and an empty slot near your own vitals. Portraits are easy to ignore, but a few details about how they work will change how you use them.

Where portraits come from

A portrait is not drawn from the narrator's most recent prose. It is rendered from a character card's structured physical traits, combined with the active style for the campaign. This is the reason a character's face tends to stay recognisable between sessions: the image is a rendering of stored facts about that person, not a fresh interpretation each time.

Portraits are cached by their inputs: the traits, the style version and the model version. If none of those change, asking again returns the same image rather than generating a new one. A portrait regenerates when one of the inputs changes, for example when an appearance trait is retconned.

A newly rendered portrait is also compared against the character's current canonical portrait by a vision check, so a scar that migrated to the other cheek or a changed hair colour is meant to be caught before you see it. If repeated attempts fail the check, the previous portrait is kept.

Mood does not change the face

A portrait represents identity, not condition. An NPC who becomes angry or frightened does not get a new canonical portrait. The mood indicator on the NPC's chip carries that information instead. That is deliberate: appearance should not drift because the story got tense.

Your own portrait waits for you

NPC portraits are generated automatically when a card is created. Your own character is the exception. Its portrait is never generated automatically, even if you have filled in physical traits. Instead, the slot at the top of your vitals shows an empty state with a Generate Portrait control.

The reasoning in the specification is that you should choose the timing, and the first impression, of your own character's face rather than have one appear unprompted. Activating the control shows a confirmation with that request's credit cost before anything is spent, and the image fades in when it is ready without taking you off the game screen. Once it exists, it behaves like any other portrait.

Habits that get better results

Fill in the physical traits first. Because the portrait is compiled from the card, a card with a few concrete traits (build, hair, a distinguishing mark, clothing) gives the renderer something specific. Vague traits produce vague images, and if a character's portraits keep failing the consistency check, that is a signal the traits are under-specified.

Change appearance deliberately. Editing a physical trait is what invalidates the cached portrait. If your character gets a scar in the story and you want it in the image, update the trait and expect a regeneration. If you only want to adjust the mood of a scene, you should not need to touch the portrait at all.

Check the confirmation before you confirm. Generation is metered, so the cost is shown up front. If you are not sure the traits are right, review the card first.

Treat a missing portrait as normal. Image generation is optional and can be switched off, exhausted on balance, or still in progress. An NPC with no portrait yet shows a placeholder, and the chip works the same way otherwise. When a portrait is generated later, the same chip shows it on the next render.

A quick walk-through

Say you start a new campaign and meet a lighthouse keeper in the first scene. A chip appears in the Character Panel with a placeholder, because the portrait is still rendering. A little later it fills in. Three sessions on, the keeper's chip shows the same face, because nothing about the keeper's physical traits has changed. Then the story gives the keeper a burn scar, and the traits are updated to match. That one change is what causes a new render, and the old portrait is superseded rather than edited in place.

Your own slot works the other way around. It stays empty until you decide, and that is a feature rather than something unfinished.

Why bother

A portrait is a small thing, but it is one more place where the campaign's records show up on screen. When the face on the chip matches the person you remember, the game is doing what it is meant to do: keeping the world stable between your sessions.

If you have a campaign waiting, open it, look at the Vitals panel, and see whether your character has a face yet. If not, check the traits on your card and decide when you want to meet them.