# Loner: Character Emulator *Created:* 2026-10-30, *Modified:* 2026-10-31 ![[Loner - Character Emulator (cover).jpg|300]] **Loner: Character Emulator** is the NPC half of the **[[Loner]]** Oracle. The core game assumes one Protagonist and puts every uncertain question through the same Chance-vs-Risk roll; this supplement is the procedure for the people the Protagonist talks to — what an NPC says, what an NPC does when left alone, and how to keep several of them in play without a scene turning into a string of individual rolls. It adds no dice, no stat blocks, and no second resolution system: everything runs on what the core already gives you — tags, **Advantage** and **Disadvantage**, the **Twist Counter**, the Promotion Rule, Relationships, Meanwhile, and the Living World. ## Setting There is no world in this book. It leaves **Loner**'s settings exactly as they were and works on the people already standing in them — the informant, the clerk, the enforcer, the one who saw everything and will not say so. Whatever world your **Loner** game runs in, this is the layer that populates it. ## Mechanics ### Three Limits Three limits are stated up front, and they are the reason the book stays small: - **Not a replacement for Meanwhile.** Meanwhile gives the world a turn when the Scene Transition comes up 6; these tools give one NPC a turn whenever the fiction asks for it, and both can run in the same session. - **Not prep.** Every tool fires in the moment, when an NPC's words or actions are actually uncertain — Quick-Build exists for the NPCs you did not see coming. - **Not a mandate to roll for every NPC.** **Loner** runs on judgment first, the Oracle where judgment runs out; most NPCs in most scenes need no tag and no roll. Reach for a tool when you catch yourself inventing a reaction that nothing in the fiction supports. Every tool in the book is optional, the same way Challenge Tracks, Leverage and the Status Track are optional in the core rules. ### The Triage Sort the scene's NPCs before rolling anything — two questions, no dice. First: **can they change how this scene goes?** Then: **does the scene turn on what one of them in particular does?** - **Dressing** — no to the first question. No tags, never rolled: the crowd, the other diners, traffic. - **Background** — yes to the first, no to the second. One shared Group tag, rolled only as a group: the guard detail, the office pool, the night shift. - **Foreground** — yes to both. An **Agenda**, plus a **Disposition** if they talk, rolled individually through **Conversation** or **Character**: the guard captain, the executive who called the meeting. A lone night watchman who could raise the alarm is **Background** with a tag of his own until the scene turns on him. ### Quick-Build Three d66 rolls make an NPC on the spot. **Concept** (Weary Informant, Ruthless Climber, Unreadable Stranger) says who they are; **Agenda** says what they want right now — and it is the tag that **Character** consults when you ask what they do next. **Disposition** is the clever one: the two digits cross instead of picking a line, so the tens digit sets their **Stance** toward the Protagonist (openly hostile, wary but civil, indifferent, cautiously helpful, eager to please, secretly conflicted) and the units digit sets their **Awareness** (knows nothing useful, knows a fragment, believes something false, knows the basics, knows more than they are letting on, knows the whole picture). **Stance** modifies the roll, granting **Advantage** or **Disadvantage** like any tag; **Awareness** shapes the answer, limiting what a *Yes* can contain. An NPC can therefore be hostile and well-informed, or friendly and wrong. ### Voice A d66 **Voice** table gives an NPC a verbal signature — the tic, register or habit that makes them recognisable — so you can play them consistently without writing dialogue in advance. It is a manner, not a script. ### Conversation and Character Both are answer-band tables rather than generators: you ask the Oracle a normal question and then read the six possible answers as the NPC's behaviour. **Conversation** covers what they say — a *Yes, and…* answers fully **and** volunteers something the Protagonist did not ask for; a *No, and…* refuses and reacts badly, hardening their **Disposition** or alerting someone. **Character** covers what they do on their own initiative — acts decisively and opens a complication, acts as expected and advances their **Agenda**, or holds position and gives nothing away. ### Factions as Actors The same treatment scales up: a **Faction Concept** d66 says what kind of organisation this is, and a **Faction Beat** answers what it does off-screen, in public or in secret, when the fiction gives it a turn. ### The Cast List and What NPCs Remember The **Cast List** is the tracking sheet — name and concept, voice, agenda, disposition, relationship to the Protagonist, and **last seen**. That last field is the one that earns its keep: it has to be specific to be useful (*gave up a name, flinched when asked for a second* supports a reappearance on its own; *was talked to* does not). The optional memory module separates an NPC **referencing** what happened — colour — from an NPC whose **Agenda** changed because of it, which is a standing consequence that belongs in their row; and it rolls **How They Remember It** at most once per reappearance, only when their version of events matters to the scene. **Cast Twists** closes the loop: when the **Twist Counter** fires and the Twist lands on a character rather than the situation, a 2d6 roll gives what changes and how it lands. ## Editions **Loner: Character Emulator** (2026) — a **Loner 4e** supplement published in the free **Loner SRD** on October 29, 2026, under CC-BY-SA-4.0; *in the library* as the SRD edition, 30 pages. ## References - [Loner SRD — Character Emulator (free full text) - Zotiquest Games](https://lonersrd.zotiquestgames.com/core/character_emulator.html) - [Loner SRD - Zotiquest Games](https://lonersrd.zotiquestgames.com/) - [Loner - Official Website](https://loner.zotiquestgames.com/)