One person, wherever they go

Every NPC is now one person with one record. Their feelings, body, memory, friendships and work follow them from the camp to the city, through a job change or a move.

Until today, an NPC was really several characters held together by a name. The camp knew them one way, the city another, the fighting systems a third, and the talk a fourth. Rename a camp and its people quietly became new people. Send a farmer to the militia and he came back in a fresh body with no memory of the shift.

Now each person has one record that lives with your world. It holds who they are, how they feel, what their body has been through, what they remember, who they like and who they hold a grudge against, and what work they do and how good they are at it. Every body you see is just a view of that person, and every system reads the same record.

It shows in small ways. Make someone angry at the fire and they're still cross when you come back. They're cooling, and they'll tell you why. A camp hand bitten by a wolf is still sore after a reload. The woman who learned your name last night still knows it, and she still remembers the neighbour who shoved her off the woodpile.

It shows in big ways too, because people can move now. A camp person can go to live in Porta Cobra and take their memories with them, and someone unhappy for days will leave on their own. When a camp grows into a village, its people stay exactly who they are. The travellers who come into the city each day are real people now, who come back and remember you.