Vital information for each character (PCs, NPCs, GMs...) is kept in
LaTeX/Lists/characters.tex
--- their name, stats, badge info.... In that file you put a
\newchar\Ccharacter{data} entry for each
character. (That's the only place you ever use \newchar.)
\Ccharacter is a macro (control sequence) that will "remember" the
data for you; it must be unique. (Starting \C is just a convention.)
The {data} is a bunch of information whose format is described in
characters.tex and defined in
LaTeX/Styles/custom.sty, where your
Production Czar can fiddle with it (if they do, they should document it here!).
Player-relevant information for the character is then defined in
LaTeX/Lists/players.tex ---
player name, character gender (since that's usually set from player),
player address and phone and so on. In that file you put a
\player\Ccharacter{data} entry for each character (if you don't,
their player info will all be left blank). \Ccharacter are the same macros
you set up with \newchar in characters.tex. The format of {data}
is described in players.tex
and is also defined in
LaTeX/Styles/custom.sty where the
Czar can fiddle with it.
When you want to reference some of that information about a character, in a charsheet or bluesheet or ability card or whatever, you can do it through their macro. This ensures that whenever you change the information, everything that uses it updates automatically.
For each field in the data (as described in characters.tex and players.tex), \Ccharacter{field} gets it. That is,
\Ccorpse{first} becomes "Ima"
\Ccorpse{last} becomes "Corpse"
\Ccorpse{middle} becomes "" (blank)
\Ccorpse{number} becomes 000001
While the Template doesn't force you to use these, if you do they'll
keep your character sheets, other sheets, memory packets, etc, all in
sync with each other automatically. If your game has multiple runs this
is especially useful.
Further, you can say things like \Ccorpse{first last} to get "Ima Corpse."
If you want to be really wacky, you could do
\Cbond{I'm last. {\em first} last, that is.}
to get (presumably) "I'm Bond. {\em James} Bond, that is."
(Be careful not to do that if you have a "that" info field.)
Some combinations like that occur a lot --- for instance, you get the
full character name with \Cjones{prefix first middle last suffix}.
That's a bit of a pain to type, so LaTeX/Styles/custom.sty also defines
"combo" fields, which your Czar can modify and add to (and document
it here!). The ones the Template defines by default are
"char" for "prefix first middle last suffix" "map" for "char (player)"and "formal" and "informal," which are special. "formal" turns into the last name, unless there isn't one, in which case it's the first name; "informal" is the other way around. Why use these? Because that way if you say \Cbob{formal} but \Cbob doesn't have a last name, you'll get "Bob," whereas \Cbob{last} would be blank and probably look funny. So if you're using the first or last name without the other, you usually want to use "informal" or "formal" instead of "first" or "last." For instance, someone's titled name is probably \Cjones{prefix formal} (Dr. Jones, Dr. Bob...).
Since the full character name is the most commonly used thing, \Cjones{ } by itself is the same as \Cjones{char}, which is the same as \Cjones{prefix first middle last suffix}, i.e. the character's full name.
Most sheets, and many other .tex files, want to have a \name{ } entry. For a character sheet, it should be given the character macro --- Jones' sheet says \name{\Cjones}, Ima Corpse's sheet says \name{\Ccorpse}. A bluesheet or greensheet might say \name{MIT Assassins' Guild} or might also use a macro, \name{\Bassassins}, or whatever. Whatever is given as the \name is available thereafter as \me. That is, after saying \name{\Ccorpse},
\me{ } becomes \Ccorpse{ } becomes Ima Corpse
\me{map} becomes \Ccorpse{map} becomes Ima Corpse (NPC)
If you haven't set \name anywhere, \me{anything} becomes "Unowned."
For instance, most cards put \me{ } in the upper left corner, so
you know which character they're for. Don't put spaces around the \name
argument; they'll pass along to \me and end up making spurious spaces.
[Note for Production Czar only: after setting \me, \name calls \doname if you have such a macro defined in your style; for instance, sheets.sty has \doname make the pretty header at the top of the sheet, using \me to find the name.]
There's a special kind of "combo" field to do pronouns. One of the fields in the \player data is gender: M, F, or N for male, female, or neuter. (Any other character is taken as 'ambiguous'; it's also ambiguous if you didn't specify a gender at all.) The pronoun combos use this to see what to expand into: \Cjones{they} is "he" if Jones is male, "she" if female, "it" neuter, and "he/she" for ambiguous; \Cjones{They} is He or She or It or He/She. You can gender-swap by prefixing an @: \Cjones{@they} is "she" if Jones is male, "he" if female, "it" neuter, and "she/he" for ambiguous. As always, your Production Czar can add more.
You might well not want to use these even if you're always using the rest of the stuff in this file; this is aimed mostly at short games with multiple runs, which often have characters change genders between runs --- it's a pain to change all the pronouns in all the sheets by hand.
pronoun male female neuter ----- ---- ------ ------ they he she it them him her it their his her its theirs his hers its theirself himself herself itself spouse husband wife mate child son daughter offspring sibling brother sister sibling kid boy girl kid parent father mother parent parentsib uncle aunt parentsibling sibchild nephew niece siblingchild monarch king queen monarch heir prince princess heir person man woman person people men women people sex male female neuter (@pronoun) (female form) (male form) (neuter form)For instance,
\Cwilma{map}: \Cwilma{they's} \Cfred{first's} \Cwilma{spouse}.\Cjones{their @spouse} evaluates to
"his wife" since \Cjones is marked as {M; Jeremy Brown}; this is a good
thing to write if we don't have a character for Jones' spouse, and would
like to assume a heterosexual marriage. If we recast to {F; somebody}
it will turn itself into "her husband".
If you want to put something gender-specific in a sheet, but it's not
general enough to be worth putting in custom.sty, you can use \newpronoun
to make a local new pronoun:
\newpronoun{male use}{female use}{neuter use}{callit}{Callit}
where 'callit' and 'Callit' must be letters-only; then you can use those
as pronouns as above. E.g.
\newpronoun{real stud}{hot babe}{sexy person}{astud}{Astud}
then "\Cjones{they} is a \Cjones{astud}." (Watch out for loops; making
the "callit" be "stud" would mean \Cjones{stud} for male \Cjones becomes
\Cjones{real stud} becomes \Cjones{real stud stud} becomes....)