What You're Building

You have cloned a game system, not a map. What ships here is a spine: a rule set that defines how every character rolls and bleeds, a continuity that defines one storyline in detail, and a family of file types that let you build the rest of the world — or an entirely different one — without touching the rules.

This manual is for the person doing that building. It is written to a peer: what each piece is for, what makes an entry fit, and how to extend the whole thing to a new setting. It does not restate every field — the schemas are readable on their own. It tells you the intent behind them, so your additions land in the same voice as the ones already here.

The content loop

The whole project organises around one spine of dependencies:

• A Continuity is the storyline — what exists, in what order, and what is pointedly out of scope.
• A World State is the running record of play — what has actually happened, and who currently holds the power.
• Locations, characters, factions, threats, equipment, perks, wonder weapons, and intel are the raw material that both of the above point at.

The relationship is one-way and deliberate: content belongs to a continuity, the world state runs a continuity, and the world state's record is what makes a session legible to the next one. Start from the continuity, fill in the material, then keep the world state honest as you run.

Three priorities for everything you build

1. Make it GM-usable. The most valuable field on most types is the one that tells the GM how to act it out — behaviour, hazards, tell, adjustment. Write for a person who has to improvise with it under pressure.
2. Keep the GM truth separate. Secrets, hidden costs, and the twist belong on the file (GM notes, secrets fields). The player-facing text stays clean. A GM should be able to hand over the description without leaking the secret.
3. Respect the continuity wall. Almost every content type can be tied to one or more continuities. Content from other continuities stays out of play unless the world state points to it. That wall is the single most important consistency tool in the project.

Filling it out

The shipped examples are thin on purpose — one rule set, one continuity, one perk, one bare location — so a builder sees the shape without inheriting a finished canon. Your job is to decide how much canon to bring in, and the next chapter is about exactly that decision.