Guide to Portraits

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What are portraits?

Portraits are player or moderator NPCs. They originate from Decollage’s setting, and exist as art works. Portraits can take a variety of forms: Humans, animals, mythical creatures and landscapes are just some of the options!

Inside their art, they're the gods of worlds they fully control, and it is in these worlds that they force teams to play their games.

What is their role in Decollage?

A portrait’s role in decollage is to run games! While a portrait may have a personality and personal history, they shouldn’t be treated the same as player characters: their history and personality are beholden to the game’s needs. They’re tools for you to use so you can run games.

What do portraits know?

Portraits all have their own distinct histories and backstories, based off the type of artwork they are, and these don’t relate to the world outside their portraits or to each other. One portrait may be living with the dinosaurs, and another might be a futuristic cyborg from a giant city where dinosaurs never existed.

Excepting moderator NPCs, they currently have no knowledge of Decollage’s history and plot save what is revealed via IC plot participation.

All portraits, however, are aware that Mary exercises power over the games.

Why do portraits run games?

Games are the easiest way for a portrait to contact the outside world, in a way that’s real and meaningful. Portraits have total control of their own portrait, but it’s a shallow dream world, only containing what they’ve designed. They can’t change the outside world, and though they can leave their own frame and wander through it, they aren’t really connected.

But the teams have been shown to be. They compete and draw power to grant their wishes back to them with the tether of their sacrificed memories and skills. A few portraits have experimented with that, like when Systems corrupted the first setting of Decollage, the gallery. When portraits run games, they receive power for it, from channeling that power through their own worlds. For some of them, the games might be a bid to become more real.

But power aside, they might have personal reasons, too. Maybe your NPC just thinks they’re amusing playthings, or skeeving on watching them kiss is a good way to spend an afternoon. There’s also a variety of different reasons that might motivate an NPC to run games, but the draw of the potential the teams represent is factored in there somewhere, for all of them.

What are their powers?

Inside their portrait, they are all-powerful. A portrait is the god of their own little world, and cannot be harmed by players or other portraits that enter. They are capable of exerting this power to run games, or for whatever other purpose they desire.

If they venture outside of their portraits into the setting itself, they possess only the powers inherent to what they are. For example, a dragon will still weigh a hundred tonnes and be able to breathe fire, and a witch may cast magic spells. But they are at the upper level of the power cap: Capable of soloing any one character, but not capable of the world-destruction they can do inside their portraits.

A portrait cannot change the setting outside their world. Portraits lack the power to alter Decollage’s environment. They can’t release animals native to their portrait into the setting, or change the paint scheme in a corridor, etc. Even during a game, the game- and their power to run it- only exist inside their portrait. The only method a portrait has of exerting force outside their portrait is to leave their portrait and do it by hand, or to try and convince a team to perform that task for them.

How should they treat player characters?

Portraits may treat characters in a variety of ways depending on their personality, but it’s important to remember that portraits are tools used for running games, and for player characters to act against. Portraits cannot be so heroic and altruistic they ignore the system, or are willing to sacrifice their god-like powers to save them from the system, because they are the system. There may be some flexibility towards personal goals as the plot develops, or for patrons to develop more intense ties to their team, but sympathetic saviors and portraits who aren’t interested in running games at all are types that would be better suited to be applied for as original characters!

Make sure if people ask for things of your portrait, your portrait is always getting something out of it in return. Nothing should be free, or given more cheaply than it's worth just out of niceness.

As for the player characters themselves, they are simultaneously are threats and potential. They have access to the world in a way portraits don’t! You might resent them for it. You might want to use them to gain power, either through the approved channel of competitions and getting them back skills and memories, or through approved personal plots.

Player characters are also dangerous and with their arrival, things have changed. Past plots have included the total destruction of the original outside setting, the gallery. Players have burned and killed a portrait, and attacked others. In another plot, Sys was able to use them as contagious vessels to spread his power because they aren't limited the way portraits are: while they have no world of their own, they can wander between and aren't set apart.

Interested in applying for a portrait?
For a more in-depth look at portraits and their tasks, read:
The Guide to Games
The Guide to Patrons