Heroes, Actors, and Portfolios

Context: HL Kit … Basic Concepts and Terminology … Structural Building Blocks 

Heroes and Actors

The fundamental purpose of HL is to facilitate the creation and management of characters for role-playing game systems. Within HL, individual characters are typically referred to as "heroes", although each game system can define an alternate term for display to users if appropriate. Since the term "hero" can be renamed, and since "hero" isn't really a suitable term when creating villains, monsters, and other types of NPCs, the Kit often uses the term "actor" instead.

There is no difference between the terms "hero" and "actor" within the Kit. They are interchangeable.

Portfolios

HL saves actors within a "portfolio". Multiple actors may be saved within the same portfolio.

Each portfolio is self-contained and makes no references to any external files. If an actor has a character portrait image file associated with it, the image is thereafter managed and stored within the actor and portfolio, with no further connection to the original file.