We present ADAPT, a flexible platform for designing and authoring functional, purposeful human characters in a rich virtual environment. Our framework incorporates character animation, navigation, and behavior with modular interchangeable components to produce narrative scenes. Our animation system provides locomotion, reaching, gaze tracking, gesturing, sitting, and reactions to external physical forces, and can easily be extended with more functionality due to a decoupled, modular structure. Additionally, our navigation component allows characters to maneuver through a complex environment with predictive steering for dynamic obstacle avoidance. Finally, our behavior framework allows a user to fully leverage a character’s animation and navigation capabilities when authoring both individual decision-making and complex interactions between actors using a centralized, event-driven model. CR Categories: I.3.7 [Computer Graphics]: Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism—Animation