Generally the first thing to do in a game will be to describe the characters currently being played. These commands can (and may) be used at any point in a game, but will often be primarily associated with beginning a new game.
A note on terminology: the Bee refers to the objects that it manipulates as characters and this documentation will refer to them as such, but they don’t necessarily have to be “characters”. In HCE terms, anywhere you see the word character you may mentally replace it with “thing with a Life Wheel”.
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A character needs to be created before it can be played. [Address is playing Character Name.] where Address is the player (IM address, email address, or Wave address) that will own (play) that character. Keep in mind the character naming rules, and this command will be your first and best place to learn if the Bee has any problems with the name you chose.
[jim@example.com is playing Tommy Jones.][I am playing Barnaby.]
This command is a rare exception to normal Pronoun handling: Because this command deals specifically with a player rather than a character, the Pronoun here represents “the current player”. This command automatically sets “the current character” to the newly created character, for pronouns in subsequent commands.
The “have verb” sets a number of tokens for a given spot on the life wheel for a character. The basic forms look like:
[I have Number ego.][I have Number will.][I have Number Element.][I have Number ego drained.][I have Number will drained.][I have Number will spent.]
One or more of these can be combined, “have” will accept a list of forms above, optionally separated by a comma and/or “and”.
“Ego” and “will” refer to ego and will tokens in the source, while the “drained” form refers to tokens in the ego and will spaces of the life wheel. The drained forms should be rarely used in the event of resetting a game or correcting a Bee mistake. “Dissipated” can be used as a synonym of drained, and “spent” is used with will to denote will placed upon the ego space on the life wheel.
[I have 9 ego, 12 will, 3 life, and 3 energy.]
[I have advanced Number in profession Number.] Professions are referred to by number (1, 2, or 3) and multiple professions can be set in a single sentence, chaining them with an optional comma and/or “and”. Professions can also be referred by a cardinal number (“first”, “second”, or “third”) in the form [...in my Cardinal profession.].
Although the verb here is “advanced” (or “have advanced”), the number provided is the absolute number of tokens (and thus can in fact represent a decrease in profession).
[I have 3 in my first profession, 2 in profession 2, and 3 in my third profession.]