Missions, Pressures, Events, and Consequences
These systems are what turn a setting into a living campaign. They track not only what the player wants, but what continues changing around them.
Missions answer “what are we trying to do?”
A Mission is an objective-driven task with stakes and possible outcomes. It can be a quest, investigation, operation, personal goal, political negotiation, rescue, competition, construction project, or social objective.
Useful Mission information includes:
- Known information
- Hidden truth
- Required and optional objectives
- Complications
- Rewards
- Failure outcome
- Partial success
- Source Pressure or Faction
- Current progress and status
Do not create a Mission for every spontaneous idea. Create one when the objective should remain visible across scenes or when its outcome needs structured consequences.
Pressures answer “what gets worse if nobody deals with this?”
A Pressure is an unresolved force that escalates, mutates, spreads, or creates consequences when ignored.
Examples:
- A spreading plague
- A political coup
- A monster migration
- An unstable reactor
- A family feud
- A collapsing school festival
- A serial disappearance
- Public unrest
- A divine omen approaching fulfillment
A Pressure can have segments, escalation stages, warning signs, affected Locations and Factions, mutation rows, dormancy conditions, and resolution paths.
A Mission may come from a Pressure, but they are not the same thing. “Find the missing doctor” is a Mission. “The disease is spreading through the district” is a Pressure. The Mission can fail while the Pressure continues.
Events answer “what happened?”
An Event records a meaningful occurrence after or during resolution. It gives Memories, Legacies, Reputation, Locations, Factions, and later stories something specific to reference.
Use Events for occurrences with persistent historical weight. Do not create one for every minor beat.
Public Reputation answers “what does this audience believe?”
Reputation is not one universal good-or-evil score. Different audiences can interpret the same action differently.
A vigilante may be:
- Beloved by one neighborhood
- Feared by local police
- Useful to a political faction
- Condemned by the press
- Admired by criminals who misunderstand their motives
Public Reputation stores the subject, audience states, drivers, dominant narrative, volatility, and polarization. It records perception, which may be unfair or factually wrong.
Collateral Incidents answer “what else was harmed?”
A Collateral Incident records damage beyond the main objective:
- Physical destruction
- Civilian harm
- Social fallout
- Political damage
- Ecological effects
- Magical contamination
- Technological disruption
- Emotional or cultural harm
This prevents the campaign from treating victory as consequence-free simply because the central target was defeated.
Pending consequences
World Pulse can queue consequences that are due immediately, next scene, at a deadline, during a faction turn, in downtime, or when relevant.
A pending consequence should include enough information to know:
- What will happen
- Who or what it targets
- When it becomes due
- Where it came from
- How visible it is
- Whether it has surfaced, resolved, or been cancelled
Do not use pending consequences as vague threats with no delivery condition. “Something bad may happen someday” is not useful state.
How the systems connect
A typical chain may look like this:
- A Pressure escalates because the player ignored warning signs.
- A Faction creates a Mission to contain it.
- The Mission resolves with partial success.
- An Event records what happened.
- A Collateral Incident records the district that was damaged.
- Public Reputation changes differently across audiences.
- NPC Memories and Relationships change.
- A delayed consequence is scheduled in World Pulse.
- The Event eventually becomes a Legacy.
You do not need to create every record in that chain. Create only the records needed to preserve future behavior.
The meaningful-change rule
A change deserves persistence when it affects future:
- Choices
- Availability
- Knowledge
- Relationships
- Resources
- Reputation
- Objectives
- Routes
- Faction behavior
- Pressure
- Consequences
If it will never matter again, it can remain in the scene transcript. The engine should remember what changes the world, not everything that happened inside it.