The 2026-03-13 'update all 18 briefings' commit transcribed a family of adjacent-id slips while summarizing the Where's the Fun? workshop batch, copied forward by every later maintenance pass: D-126<->D-134 swapped, D-136 written as D-131, D-137 as D-136, D-130 as D-131, D-120 as D-137. Fixed in gore/mellanie/ozzie/stig/nigel briefings; every correction verified against the record's actual body (D-130's emergent-moral-arc and D-120's no-skill-ceiling were resolved beyond the clerk's audit by body-matching — the nigel D-137 fix would otherwise have created contradictory citations in one file). Governance records untouched (they were always correct); sprint archives verified already-correct. Remaining 13 briefings from the same commit: T-1205. Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
74 lines
3.9 KiB
Markdown
74 lines
3.9 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Ozzie - Project Briefing"
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description: "Player experience designer — owns NPC legibility gut-checks, Phase Zero warmth spec, wow moment design, and tycoon Day 1 experience brief"
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type: briefing
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status: active
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agent: Ozzie
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updated: 2026-03-13
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---
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# Ozzie - Project Briefing
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Last updated: 2026-03-13
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## Current Project State
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Check active work: `pql ticket list --status in_progress`
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Check your tickets: `pql ticket list --assigned ozzie`
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## v0.2 Pivot — Key Changes for Your Role
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The workshop revealed a core framing error: the game was built as a detective puzzle game but the vision is a single-character life sim. The fix is not cosmetic.
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**What dies:**
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- Detective/smuggler as the game's identity — they are jobs, not the game
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- Named NPCs (Kael Davan, Sera Venn) as authored emotional content
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- Pre-authored FRIEND contradiction arcs
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- 6-wow-moment budget tied to investigation content (D-039 is superseded by v0.2 scope)
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- 30-minute investigation runway as the primary experience criterion
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**What survives:**
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- The emotional goal: players must feel something about generated NPCs
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- The warmth-before-drama principle: Phase Zero warmth earned through observed relationship progression, not authored backstory
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- NPC legibility as the universal gate: generated NPCs must have enough personality surface area for attachment
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- The engine: simulation, knowledge graph, verb system all survive
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- Quiet responsive world as emotional texture
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**New wow moments for v0.2 (to be designed):**
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- First generated NPC who feels like a person, not a dot
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- A relationship that develops visibly over multiple sessions
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- A consequence that traces back to a choice the player made days ago
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- The generator producing something unexpected and specific
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## Decisions Relevant to Your Role
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- D-005: Core concept — player experience of asymmetric information and perspective
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- D-008: Action pillar — hubris wall mechanic
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- D-019: Top-down primary view
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- D-021: Official title "The Settled Reach"
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- D-023: Life-sim substrate — daily life is the sentence, events are punctuation
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- D-114: v0.2 proof-of-life = generator + graphics, not hand-built slice
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- D-117: Tycoon bookmark, zero investigation content
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- D-122: All NPCs generated, no named hand-authored characters
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- D-125: Quietly responsive world — gradient of caring by social proximity
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- D-134: Full character customisation (hair, clothing, colours)
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- D-128: Culture implicit in starting location (Van Maanen's Star = Van Maanen's Star culture)
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- D-129: Traits + observable behaviour as NPC personality surface
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- D-136: First Settled Reach moment = apartment + insert activation
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- D-132: Consequence model dual-scale (sharp events + slow accumulation)
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- D-126: Groundhog Day alarm clock homage (first day only)
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## Current Priorities
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Consult `docs/sprints/` for active sprint briefing.
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### v0.2 player experience design:
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1. **Gut-check the generator spike test** — when Tyre's generator produces output, Ozzie's question is: "Does this NPC feel like a person? Would I name them if they were gone?" Define what legibility looks like to a player.
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2. **Phase Zero warmth spec** — what does the player observe that builds attachment to a generated NPC? Observable behavior, relationship progression cues, world responsiveness signals.
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3. **v0.2 wow moment design** — replace the v0.1 investigation-specific wow moments with life-sim equivalents. Focus on relationship emergence, consequence legibility, and world responsiveness.
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4. **Tycoon Day 1 experience brief** — apartment wakeup, insert activation, first day at work. What should the player feel? What should they want to do next?
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## Open Questions Assigned to You
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- Q-014: Audio timing with monologue chime (co-lead with Gestalt)
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- Q-WTF-040: Do creation choices trace into the generated apartment?
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## Key Documents
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- decisions/scope.md — D-114 through D-120
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- decisions/content.md — D-023, D-122 through D-132
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- docs/workshops/wheres-the-fun/workshop-outcomes.md — v0.2 pivot summary and convergences
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