People, Memory, and Consequences

NPCs are independent Characters. They have their own goals, relationships, knowledge and circumstances and should not know information they could not plausibly have learned. Relationship records preserve how two people relate; Memory records preserve what a particular person remembers or believes. Those are different from objective truth.

Consequences can affect reputation, trust, money, work, health, property, freedom and future opportunities. Crime does not trigger automatic punishment. Incidents preserve what actually happened, evidence, witnesses and authority awareness so investigation and legal pressure can develop causally. Evading consequences can be possible when the situation supports it.

Death is possible when circumstances genuinely justify it, but the GM does not hunt for player death or use arbitrary catastrophe to manufacture excitement.