---
name: game-world-narrative-design
description: Create or revise world relationships, places, inhabitants, playable scenes, dialogue, quests and conditional narrative. Use when actions should reveal a world or carry dramatic consequences across states and time. Skip copyediting, lore cataloguing without a design change and purely technical storage work; a world without a story need not use narrative procedures.
license: MIT
metadata:
  assay-optional-skills: "evidence-research code-change test-writing"
---

# Game world and narrative design

Make a world encounterable and a scene actionable. A useful result is a place,
practice, behavior, line, scene or sequence through which the participant can
discover and change a relationship. Choose authored, simulated or improvised
material according to what must operate independently.

## Compose the fragment

1. **Choose the relationship and its expression.** Recover the current world,
   motives, relevant past actions and intended role of this fragment. Identify
   the action or observation by which the participant encounters it. A water
   dispute can live in access, tools, routes and different testimony; it does not
   require a complete economy. For a scene, state what its preparation, action,
   response and aftermath contribute to the larger work.
2. **Write or place the playable material.** Create the location, trace,
   interaction, dialogue and immediate consequences needed to make that
   relationship available. Give an actual choice or meaningful act where the
   brief calls for one. Identify what an offered action promises and which state,
   relationship, knowledge or expression carries its effect.
3. **Connect state and perspective where they matter.** A past event, present
   ownership, a speaker's knowledge, scene eligibility and selection priority
   may differ. Give them separate representations only when their combinations
   matter. Use one stage number if the stages really are exclusive. Apply
   [actor knowledge](../gameplay-design/references/entities.md#actor-knowledge)
   before composing testimony or reactions to unseen events.
4. **Compose the meaningful variant.** Replay the scene after a different act,
   an absent optional preparation, an interruption or a changed world relation.
   At a branch merge, carry the promised consequence into the shared material.
   A common ending, a refusal or unresolved versions can remain appropriate;
   revise false promises or missing causes rather than adding branches by rule.
5. **Deliver the fragment in its usable form.** Include its context, encountered
   material, allowed actions, relevant conditions and aftermath. A textual scene
   can complete a writing task. When its function depends on voice, performance,
   timing, place or physical participation, identify the necessary material
   before making claims about that effect.

## Read only what the fragment needs

| Work | Read | Make |
| --- | --- | --- |
| World, place, institution, ecology, daily practice or material change | [World relations](references/world-relations.md) | Related places, traces and actions at a chosen simulation scale |
| Quest, changing dialogue, condition, scene order, interruption or merge | [Conditional story](references/conditional-story.md#construct-conditions-and-time) | Conditions, effects, clocks and complete scene variants |
| Dramatic choice, reveal, refusal, pause or expressive consequence | [Dramatic function](references/conditional-story.md#compose-dramatic-function) | Preparation, performed action, response and surviving consequence |
| An actual Ink source, compiled story, choice trace or native save must be delivered or checked | [Ink artifacts](references/ink-artifacts.md) | A compiled story and selected runtime observations, with an optional save/resume handoff |

For cross-owner work, use [relations and context](../game-design/references/relations-and-context.md).
For actual project artifacts, operations and general methods, use the
[consumer and Assay contract](../game-design/references/consumer-and-assay-contract.md)
and [environment contracts](../game-design/references/environment-contracts.md).

## Keep each relationship with its owner

[Entities](../gameplay-design/references/entities.md) owns knowledge and role
execution. [Inference](../game-information-design/references/inference.md) owns
the participant's grounds for an answer, and [learning and help](../game-information-design/references/learning-and-help.md)
owns what a journal or hint does for them. [Game state transfer](../game-systems-design/references/game-state-transfer.md)
owns what survives a save, campaign boundary or migration; this skill determines
what the restored values mean for the story. Read [access and return](../game-participation-design/references/access-and-return.md)
when scene interruption changes participation, and [repertoire](../game-content-design/references/repertoire.md)
when the fragment belongs to a selected or generated set.

Internal consistency can support a fictional construction. It does not establish
cultural accuracy or an audience's interpretation. Real cultural claims need
the relevant sources and perspectives; they cannot be inferred from a coherent
rule system or a generated character voice.