settled-reach/docs/workshops/wiki-review/lead-interview.md

Lead Interview — Between Round 3 and Round 4

Date: 2026-02-12 Format: Interactive 5-topic interview, one topic at a time Interviewer: Team lead (Claude Code) Interviewee: Jeroen (project lead)

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Topic 1: Cultural Groups

Decision: Ingredients menu, not fixed taxonomy.

Cultural groups are assembled by picking and combining from a menu of ingredients per society:

• Heritage roots (recognizable but not directly mappable — "feels Nordic" not "is Finnish")
• Settlement motivation
• Economic function
• Philosophical alignment
• Corporate presence
• Time since settlement / drift stage

Key rules:

• NOT required to pick from every category. What a society doesn't care about is as defining as what it does. Varying what matters creates flavor.
• Output must feel like a SOCIETY, not a matrix entry.
• Mechanical parameters (access tiers, trust defaults, investigation dynamics) DO need a structured matrix underneath.
• Heritage should be identifiable as a culture without feeling disparate.
• People migrate between heritages. Drift varies per location.
• Economics is missing from Nigel's 7 mechanical questions — must be added (what makes extra income tempting).

On heritage specificity: The specific real-world roots (Finnish/Estonian/Latvian for Van Maanen's Star) are Miri's reference material for building the culture, not something the player should clock directly. A character with a Nordic-sounding name in an East Asian-heritage district isn't wrong — they're a person with a history. The culture is the place, not the individual.

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Topic 2: Content Patterns (NPC Archetypes)

Decision: Three separate systems, not one list.

A. Thematic Patterns (what the character means to the story)

FRIEND, MIRROR, ANCHOR, GHOST, CATALYST, THRESHOLD, REMNANT, SYSTEM, NOBODY

THE NOBODY is new — a person who is just... there. Background becomes foreground when the player pays attention.

Major system decision: Evolving relationships. The lead explicitly wants a NOBODY to be able to become something more if the player invests attention. Quote: "evolving relationships sounds like a can of worms I would LOVE to open." This implies dynamic tier promotion, relationship-driven content unlocking, emergent narrative from player attention.

B. Functional Motivations (what the character is doing in gameplay)

HANDLER, WITNESS, TURNCOAT, CIVILIAN, OPERATOR, SKEPTIC

These are Nigel's list — motivations, not archetypes. Developed in parallel with thematic patterns.

C. Composition

Each NPC gets a thematic pattern + a functional motivation. ANCHOR + OPERATOR plays very differently from ANCHOR + CIVILIAN. At 300-world scale, generators pick these combinations.

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Topic 3: PC Archetypes

Decision: 8 archetypes at v1.0 as stress test.

• Insider + Investigator are deep because of v0.1 but must NOT become the permanent center. Other archetypes should feel equally primary in their districts.
• Newcomer = v0.2 content update centerpiece. Natural tutorial, fresh eyes on established world.
• Archetypes are FLUID. Players can move districts, change jobs, buy houses. The archetype is a current position in a community, not a character class. Archetype transitions are a game mechanic.
• "What still feels alive enough" is the question, not "how many per district." A bar 20 minutes from the gate in no-man's land still needs characters.
• The freedom to change your life flows naturally from the refocus on living a life.

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Topic 4: Randomization

Decision: Nigel's Sacred/Profane/Middle Kingdom framework approved.

With a key refinement from the lead:

• Sacred = rules of the system (mass interactions). "You DO randomize gravity — you don't randomize mass interactions."
• Profane = parameters the rules operate on. Drawn from pools. Gravity varies by world; the physics engine doesn't.
• Middle Kingdom = sacred structure, profane cast.

Gate topology as macro randomization:

• Core worlds always connected (Sacred)
• Peripheral systems vary per playthrough (Profane)
• Number of accessible systems may be fixed, which ones varies (Middle Kingdom)
• Unlockable worlds through random gate events or quests = chapter-level randomization
• Future possibility: planetary owner/developer DLC

Perception system note: Varying gravity is a great way to breathe life into stepping onto another world. Flag for perception team.

Generation is LIGHT — pick from pools of authored content, don't generate from scratch.

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Topic 5: Scale

Decision: 300 worlds before DLC.

This is why we're building strategy and generator inputs, not authoring content by hand.

Release path:

• v0.1 = proof of the interaction model (1 district, hand-authored)
• v0.2-v0.5 = testing generation systems and tooling
• v0.6-v0.10 = content pipeline at scale
• pre-v1.0 = 300 worlds populated via generators + style briefs + naming algos

Tooling first is absolute. The authoring/generation pipeline must be proven before scaling.

Key reframe: The style briefs, naming algorithms, character generators, and cultural parameter matrices ARE the product of this strategy work. They're generator inputs, not documentation. The planetary cultural identities are basically seeds — the cultural brief for a world IS the generation seed that parameterizes everything.

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Theme — Still Open

The lead has not picked a canonical framing. Candidates:

• Cost of participation (Gore)
• Collective bargain (Mellanie)
• What do you owe the people around you? (Ozzie)
• What do systems do to people inside them? (Miri)
• Cost of connection / entanglement (Paula)
• Knowledge as burden (Gestalt)

May resolve as strategy solidifies.