Customize Output:Pronouns

AdventureJS handles pronoun switching via the game.settings.person setting. All of AdventureJS's built-in responses to players (over 1,000 of them) are pre-formatted to support pronoun switching. The below example shows how to set a game's pronoun property. The same function call can also be used to change the setting dynamically during runtime.

MyGame.settings.set({ person: "second", });

The game's person setting is distinct from a player character's gender property. For instance, the player character might be female while the parser uses second person pronouns. AdventureJS comes with these pronouns out of the box: first, plural, second, male, female, non-binary, and non-human.

Pronouns are stored in a lookup table at game.dictionary.pronouns. The table also includes a few common contractions. We use plural pronouns as lookup keys for our pronouns table, because that is the only set of pronouns where every item is unique (for example, consider our|ours vs his|his). See the table below for a complete list of substitutions.

Pronoun Lookup Table

	First	Plural	Second	Non-binary	Male	Female	Non-human
we	I	we	you	they	he	she	it
us	me	us	you	them	him	her	it
we'd	I'd	we'd	you'd	they'd	he'd	she'd	it'd
we've	I've	we've	you've	they've	he's	she's	it's
we'll	I'll	we'll	you'll	they'll	he'll	she'll	it'll
we're	I'm	we're	you're	they're	he's	she's	it's
our	my	our	your	their	his	her	its
ours	mine	ours	yours	theirs	his	hers	its
ourself	myself	ourselves	yourself	themself	himself	herself	itself
ourselves	myself	ourselves	yourself	themself	himself	herself	itself
don't	don't	don't	don't	don't	doesn't	doesn't	doesn't
haven't	haven't	haven't	haven't	haven't	hasn't	hasn't	hasn't
weren't	weren't	weren't	weren't	weren't	wasn't	wasn't	wasn't
have	have	have	have	have	has	has	has
were	was	were	were	were	was	was	was
are	am	are	are	are	is	is	is

Adding Pronouns

Authors can easily add new pronoun sets to a game, as shown below. (The example only shows the first couple of pronouns, but of course you'd want to add a complete set, as listed in the table above.)

MyGame.settings.set({ person: "foo" });
MyGame.dictionary.pronouns.foo = { we: "IFoo", us: "MeFoo", [...] }

Placeholder Text

In order to write text that adapts to the game's person setting, use pronoun and contraction placeholders, as in the example below.

MyGame.createAsset({
  class: "Thing",
  name: "unexceptional thing",
  description: `{We} {don't} see anything special about the unexceptional thing. `,
});

To learn more about placeholders, see Customize Output: Placeholders.