The Career Ledger
One screen for everything you're working toward: tools, story, permits, skills, Census tiers, service ranks, commendations and economic opportunities. Each suggested goal tells you:
- what you could achieve
- why it matters, meaning what it opens up afterward
- where you stand, what's met and what's missing
- what to do next, with a place or a person where that helps
By default it shows two nearby opportunities and one longer-term ambition. Pin what you care about, dismiss the rest, or browse other directions. Pin a permit and the Ledger shows how gathering, training and paperwork lead toward it.
It will never give you an overall level, a completion percentage or a score for playing correctly.
What your meters mean
Every important meter gets one consistent explanation, opened from the meter or the Ledger: what changes it, what it unlocks, whether it's spent, kept as a qualification or managed, and where you use it. Money, credit, experience, reputation and regulatory attention will each look distinct, and requirements will say whether you need to have something or pay it.
Consequence notices
When the world changes in a way that matters, a notice will tell you the cause, the change and what you can do about it:
Upstream clearing increased runoff in this district. The canal now needs maintenance.
Notices point to the places and services involved. You'll see them on entering an affected district, inspecting a change, or finishing work with wider effects.
Credit will be honest. Shared work credits everyone involved, and one player gets named only when the game can prove their part. Some notices will just explain a trade-off. Small changes are bundled, so alerts won't bury your screen.
District news boards and the World Timeline
Notices fade. News boards stay. Each district board lists current conditions and open problems, recently finished works, the demand they created, and public decisions with the people recognised for them.
The World Timeline keeps the big moments, like finished shared works, notable discoveries, major incidents and lasting district changes, each linked to where it happened. Casts, sales and footsteps stay off it, and so does personal information.
The Reaction Journal
Your lab notebook, filled in as you see reactions in play. Each entry holds the ingredients, elements or tags, the conditions you've confirmed, what happened, any collateral warnings, and where it's useful once you know.
Entries grow from a first sighting into a rule you understand. It only records what you've seen and won't guess at conditions you haven't tested. You can search it and pin experiments. Nothing is revealed upfront. You find out by trying.
Discoveries and the Codex of Firsts
When a journal entry might qualify for the Codex of Firsts, the journal tells you the next step: repeat the result, confirm a condition, show a use, or submit your evidence. Recognition always comes from what actually happened in the world. A claim on its own earns nothing. Your discoveries still count for you even if someone else got the world first.
Permit rumours
The full catalogue stays a mystery, but you won't guess blind. Clerks, conversations, boards and the Ledger will hint that something unusual might be legal, who handles it, what experience or evidence helps, and a concrete next step.
Hints sharpen as your interests and experience line up. Tinker with waterworks and you might hear about an unusual infrastructure permission. Once you discover a permit, its real requirements are laid out clearly.
Seeing trouble coming
Regulatory attention, Logic-Friction and an approaching forced repair will all become readable: warning levels, visible signs in the affected place, what's driving the risk, and your options to reduce, redirect or accept it. Exact numbers where planning needs them, clear stages elsewhere, warnings early enough to choose. Risk is part of the fun. You should just know you're taking it.
Helping strangers, earlier
In your first few hours you'll be able to chip in materials for someone's work, handle part of a delivery, team up when a job needs different tools, co-sign paperwork, or share credit for a joint repair.
Joining in is always optional, with clear limits and fair credit. Nobody can tie up your goods or lock you into something you didn't agree to, and everything works when the world is quiet. Cooperation should pay better. It should never be the only way forward.
Chore distinctions
Chores will notice how you solved them. A clean job with little collateral damage, smart use of resources, a different reaction that also works, a team effort, saving something the usual fix would destroy: each is its own accomplishment, with no single efficiency score on top. Spectacular and expensive can impress as much as tidy and minimal.
A normal finish still pays fairly. Distinctions add recognition and modest bonuses, with safeguards against farming. I'm starting with a handful of chores where the alternatives are actually interesting.
Your look, your desk, your legacy
Earned rewards meant to be worn will finally be wearable. You also get a small desk for permitted decorations and trophies that mean something. I'm starting small. Large housing districts aren't in this plan.
Finished bridges and works can carry plaques naming the steward and verified contributors, and qualifying world firsts get visible recognition. It's tied to your account and survives a name change. Plaques have limits and moderation, so nobody gets a billboard. Travel a while and you'll know the places, and who changed them.
Fairer qualifications, lighter dailies
Some gates use one flawless streak to prove you're both competent and elite. I'm splitting those apart. A competence route will teach you, with clear feedback on mistakes, and the flawless achievement stays as prestigious as ever. Neither money nor grinding will decide the new route.
Dailies move onto one board that says what each is for. Pick the few worth your time. You don't have to clear it, finishing it earns no bonus, and missing a day never takes away progress you've earned.
The next world decision
The Wrong-Way Waterworks showed what one shared choice can do to a place, permanently. I'm building another, with:
- competing outcomes you can understand
- a real window to contribute, and more than one way to help
- clear rules for how it's decided
- visible consequences, and recognition for contributors
- something worthwhile for players who arrive after it's over
I'm starting with one, to see how participation, permanence and the aftermath hold up. Don't expect one every week.
