Living worlds
Memory and relationships
Director of Realms keeps a canon of what happened, who knows it, and how everyone regards everyone else, across sessions, reloads and even a change of AI model. Promises come due. Grudges are written down. Danger clocks tick towards the thing you keep ignoring.
Memory & canon
What it remembers
After every Director turn, the summary, the party's travel, quest outcomes, NPC notes and changes in faction standing are stored and indexed by who, what and where. The most relevant memories and the canon facts go back into the next turn.
- Canon is locked. A newer canon fact replaces an older one, which is kept as history.
- Contradictions are caught. A claim that contradicts canon is recorded as a conflict, and the GM is whispered “Canon conflict noticed”.
- Nothing is lost in a reload. State lives in your Foundry world, not in the AI model, so switching models doesn't erase your campaign.
The drowned bell rang at midnight.
The bell has been silent for forty years.
The Drowned Bell · active
The party reached the harbour at dusk.
“No one has rung it in living memory.” Held for the GM.
Relationships
How NPCs feel about you
Every relationship is directed and measured on nine axes: personal, factional, political, religious, law, obligation, fear, romance and rivalry. The Director proposes what changed; the GM rules on it, and the ruling sticks.
Captain Vex → Aria
Aria called the captain a bought woman, in front of her own watch.
The GM decides. In Automated play the Director rules on its own proposals, marked “auto-ruled”.
- Players see labels, not numbers. Aria's journal might read “Personal: wary”.
- The Director sees who is present. Standings between the people in the scene go into its prompt.
- Feelings fade. Readings decay between sessions: fear fastest, rivalry slowest, obligation never.
NPC dossiers
NPC dossiers
For each NPC in the scene, the Director is handed a GM-only dossier and told to let secrets out only through discovery the players have earned.
- Evidence, not whims. A change to an NPC's mood or goal needs an exact quote from the narration behind it.
- GM overrides. Lock an NPC's state of mind and the Director keeps to it.
- Debts are remembered, open or paid, alongside private attitudes and objectives.
Sister Marn
- Role
- Keeper of the drowned chapel
- Voice
- Soft, formal, never finishes a threat
- Motivation
- Find out who else heard the bell
- Secret
- She rang it herself
- State of mind
- Frightened, and hiding it Locked by GM
- Debts
- Owes Aria her life · open
Danger clocks
Danger clocks
The Director declares clocks for rising threats and tells the narration to telegraph them. They advance with the story, and, with Living World on, with world time too. When one fills, its consequence becomes part of the world.
The Drowned Choir completes its ritual
A six-step clock only the GM can see. As it fills, the narration starts hinting at singing under the lake. Ignore it for long enough and the ritual happens, whether the party turns up or not.
Every setup gets its payoff
Foreshadowing, vows, debts and offscreen threads are kept across sessions until they're paid off, and overdue ones are brought back into the story.
Stories you didn't plan
An NPC who keeps turning up, or a thread left unpaid for too long, is proposed to the GM as a new story arc.
The one that got away
A named NPC who survives a fight with the party, or suffers a hostile act, becomes a recorded feud with its grievances written down.
What the party knows
Each turn, the Director is told which events the party knows about and which undiscovered ones it must not reveal.
Living World mode · optional
Letting the world move on its own
Switch on Living World and the world advances whenever in-game time moves, and every few Director turns, before the Director narrates.
- Hostiles stir. NPCs near the party reposition by their tactical role, pathing around walls and closed doors.
- Clocks and feuds move. Danger clocks advance, and feuds escalate or cool off.
- Word gets around. Notable events become rumours in chat, some accurate, some exaggerated, misattributed or reversed.
- No AI calls. The simulation is deterministic and seeded, with budgets that back off when ticks run slow.
You can always take the wheel
See every simulated NPC by level of detail, with its goal, progress and last move (and why). Take control of any NPC or release it, or pan straight to its token.
Also here: a Tactical Doctrine dialog for each token, a Relationship Browser reachable from every actor sheet, and Campaign Studio's world map and game clock.
Questions
Questions people ask
Does the world keep moving between sessions?
It moves when in-game time moves. With Living World switched on, advancing the game clock, resting, or any other change to Foundry's world time runs a world tick. There's no real-time timer running while nobody plays.
Does it simulate economies, factions and kingdoms?
Not yet. Faction standing is tracked and shown to players, and merchants price by it, but settlement, economy and faction simulation are on the roadmap rather than in the build.
Do players see what NPCs think of them?
Players see their own standings as labels, like “wary”, in their journal, never the numbers. NPC dossiers and secrets are handed to the Director as GM-only context.
Does Living World cost more to run?
No model is called for the simulation itself. It's deterministic code with presets that cap how many NPCs are simulated and how much work each tick does.
Interested?
Follow along while I build it
Still in Alpha, so things will change. Follow along for free on Patreon; the software itself comes later.