A Profile Test measures something about a player rather than testing what they know: a player type, a working style, a team role. You define the scale once and weight ordinary questions toward its traits. Each player then gets a character sheet that fills in as they answer. The official Marczewski HEXAD is built in and installs in one click.
Switching It On
Turn on Profile Tests on the Features tab of Adventure Settings. That adds a Profiles tab to Manage Content and a Profiles section to Stats.
The Pieces
- A profile — the scale, such as "Marczewski HEXAD" or "Team Role Profile". It belongs to the Adventure, not to one milestone. A long test and a short re-test can score against the same profile and stay comparable.
- Traits — what the profile measures. Each one is either allowed to be a player's headline or measured only.
- Questions — ordinary steps in any milestone, each weighted toward one or more traits.
- The Profile Result step — shows the player their sheet, wherever you place it.
Creating a Profile
On Manage Content → Profiles, press New Profile:
- Profile name — what the scale is called.
- Draw the result as — Polar area (like the Hexad), Radar / spider, or Horizontal bars.
- Status — Published or Draft. Only a published profile can be picked by a question.
- Can a player take it again? — No (the default) or Yes. See Retakes below.
- Description — a sentence or two, shown above the result.
Press Create profile, then add its traits. Give it at least two: the Profiles list flags a profile with fewer.
Traits
- Name and Colour — the colour is the trait's slice of the chart and its bar.
- What it means — shown when this trait is the player's headline, and in their full breakdown. Player tokens work here.
- Icon or Badge image — optional artwork for the headline. A badge image is used instead of the icon when both are set.
- Can this trait win? — "Yes — it can be the headline result" or "No — measure it only". A measure-only trait is scored and charted but never announced as the player's type, and the sheet says so. That's how the real HEXAD treats Player and Disruptor.
- Award this achievement when it wins — optional. Point it at a path achievement and a result becomes something the Conditions engine can gate content on.
- Order — where the trait sits on the chart. The breakdown under the chart always ranks high to low.
- Weight key — set once when the trait is created and never changeable afterwards, because every question's weights point at it. Leave it blank to derive it from the name. Renaming the trait later is fine.
Writing the Questions
There's no separate test builder. Once the Adventure has a published profile with traits, every milestone's step picker gains a Profile group with three step types:
- Weighted Options — a question with several answers. The editor shows one column per trait. Give each answer a weight toward the traits it says something about, and leave the rest at 0. You can let players pick more than one answer, in which case each pick adds its own weights.
- Agree / Disagree Scale — one statement, answered on a numbered scale (1 to 7 unless you change it) between two labels such as "Strongly disagree" and "Strongly agree". The value picked goes to the one trait you choose. Write every statement so that agreeing means more of the trait: the score is added as given, so a reversed statement scores backwards.
- Profile Result — show the sheet — no question, just the player's character sheet for the profile you choose.
Each of these steps names its own Profile, so one milestone can carry questions for more than one scale and each is scored separately. Because questions are just steps, you can give a test a milestone of its own. You can also scatter the questions through story milestones, so players answer them without noticing they're being profiled.
How a Reading Is Scored
A player's reading is rescored every time they answer one of the profile's questions. It counts every answer they've given for that profile anywhere in the Adventure. A half-finished test is therefore a real, partial reading, and the sheet says how many answers stand behind it.
The headline is the highest-scoring trait that's allowed to win. If a measure-only trait comes out on top, the player gets the best of the eligible ones instead. If no trait in the profile can win, the sheet shows the player's full mix with no headline.
Weights are never shown to players. They stay on the server: the browser only says which option was picked, and the sheet never shows answers back. A player can't read the weights to steer their result, and can't forge a better one.
Placing the Result
Put a Profile Result step wherever the reading belongs: right after the questions, at the end of a later milestone, or in a milestone of its own. It reads everything the player has answered for that profile anywhere in the Adventure, so it works even when the questions are spread across the journey. A player who reaches it before answering anything is told nothing has been measured yet, rather than shown an empty chart.
Players can always find their reading again on their Journal's Profiles tab, which appears as soon as the Adventure has a published profile.
Pasting a Question Set
Opening the step drawer twenty times for twenty questions is slow. Once the Adventure has a profile, a saved milestone's Steps section has Paste a question set. Write the questions in any text editor, one per line, with the trait after a |:
- An agree/disagree statement is one line:
I like overcoming obstacles | Achiever - A weighted-options question is the question on one line, followed by each answer on its own line starting with
-, for example- A way nobody has tried | Disruptor, Free Spirit - Name traits however you see them (
Free Spiritorfreespirit), separate several with commas, and addx2to make an answer count double.
Choose which profile These questions measure, press Check it to preview (this writes nothing), then press Add these questions. Nothing is added unless every line parses. Problems come back as a list that quotes the lines to fix. New questions are always added, never replaced, and they land before any Profile Result, win or fail step already in the milestone. Agree/disagree statements come in on a 1–7 scale from "Strongly disagree" to "Strongly agree".
The Official HEXAD in One Click
On Manage Content → Profiles, Add the official HEXAD creates the Marczewski HEXAD profile with its six traits and their descriptions: Achiever, Player, Socialiser, Philanthropist, Disruptor and Free Spirit. As in the original, Player and Disruptor are measured only, and retakes start off. It's safe to press twice: anything already there is left exactly as it is, and only missing pieces are filled in.
The button creates the scale, not the questions. To add those, open the milestone that should carry them, expand Paste a question set and press Use the official HEXAD questions. That fills the box with the 24 agree/disagree statements, four per type, interleaved so no type comes up four times in a row. You can edit them, trim them or split them across milestones before adding.
Retakes
Retakes are off by default, because a reading a player can redo at will is one they can steer. Set Can a player take it again? to Yes and players get a Take it again button on their own sheet. It only appears when every question they answered for that profile sits in one milestone. There's no sensible way to re-run questions spread across several story milestones, so in that case no button appears. A retake clears that player's answers and result for the profile and sends them back to the milestone. An achievement they already earned from the old headline stays.
Seeing How the Cohort Came Out
The Profiles section of Stats lists each profile with its traits and questions, how many players have a reading, their average number of answers, and the most common headline. Click a profile for the cohort view:
- How many readings there are, and how many players haven't started.
- Cohort average per trait — the shape of the group. Bars are relative to the highest average: a profile's point total depends on how many questions you wrote, so only the differences between traits mean anything.
- What they came out as — each headline trait with its count and share, and the players who got it, each showing how many answers their reading rests on.
Only enrolled players count, so staff rehearsing a test don't move the numbers. You can also open any player's Journal to see their full sheet, and the Players roster gains a player-type column once anyone has a reading.
Good to Know
- Profiles are authored on the template and shared by every cohort. Each cohort's readings are its own.
- Deleting a profile deletes its traits. Questions weighted toward it stay in their milestones but stop scoring, and saved results are kept but stop showing a chart. The confirmation tells you how many of each.
- Deleting a trait means any weights set against it stop counting.
- The Profiles list shows each profile's questions ("10 questions in 1 milestone") and how many readings have been taken. You can filter it to profiles being measured or ones with no questions yet.