Outside the realm

What is in this build

Everything the game contains lives behind the threshold, in a world that runs in your browser, so a reader who has not played it can only establish that it is small. Every number here is counted from the world itself when this page is drawn, rather than written down and left to go stale.

Counted from the world

Settlements2
Emberford, where you stand, and Ashmere half a day downriver. 9 named places between them.
People10
Each with what they know, what they wrongly believe, and what they cannot see. 10 of them can be talked to about 135 subjects.
Lives you can take up7
One for every seat a person holds in a working organization, and one downriver of a decision she cannot reach.
First mornings21
Somebody finds each life before the list of demands does, with what they have been waiting to say. three for every life at least, and which one a realm meets is fixed when the realm is made.
Situations8
The morning after the Wend came over. Frost is coming. The thaw, and what it uncovers. The long light, and nothing forcing it. The second autumn, and what the long light was spent on. The second frost, and the night it was decided in. The thaw, and the shape the town has taken. The long light again, and what will still be here. Each one authored from what the last one left, and opening in the season it belongs to: harvest, frost, thaw, green, harvest, frost, thaw, green.
Demands across them49
Each with a ground truth that differs from its public account. 37 get worse if nobody holds them.
Hours in a day10
Looking costs 1, telling somebody 1, committing 2, convening the council 3.
Words of the realm defined12
Shown on the first day, for a reader who has met eleven proper nouns in thirty seconds.

What a day contains

A guided first day
The town arrives one person at a time, each with two residents who would do it differently and only the choices that life actually has. The whole board opens when you ask for it, or when the day turns.
Choices that carry their price
Every control says what it costs in hours before you press it, and what a commitment costs in people is drawn from the town when you make it.
Consequences that keep
A promise names what it displaces and comes back on the day you set. A demand nobody holds gets worse, once, and the person who asked says so in their own words.
A record that follows a choice
Your chronicle hangs what followed beneath what you did, and lists what was left as left.
Standing that moves and shows
Trust moves on every action and is shown by name with the record’s own reason. Somebody you have passed over enough stops bringing you what they know.
Lives that carry on without you
Put one down with a limit and an instruction, and it keeps at the work inside what you authorized, and hands back at the edge of it.
Looking back
Once a day has turned: what did you protect, what did you let go, who decides the next thing. In your words or not at all.
A copy you can keep, and one you can send
The realm exports as a plain file and comes back from one. The record also comes out as plain text, wrapped to paste anywhere, with your own words on it marked as yours. Neither is uploaded, because there is nowhere for it to go.

What is not here, and why

Other players
A shared realm needs accounts, moderation and a named owner of every record before anyone is invited into it. None of those exist, so it is single player, and that is what makes the privacy promise simple enough to keep.
A hosted model
Every character answers from an authored voice inside their own knowledge, on this device. A hosted model would mean your play leaving the browser, which is the one thing this build will not do.
Recorded sound
None, and there is no audio file anywhere in this build. What the sound control offers is a river made in the browser out of filtered noise: it weighs nothing, is fetched from nowhere, and is off until somebody turns it on. There is no music, and nothing makes a noise when a promise is kept or broken.
More towns, more seasons
2 settlements and 8 situations, counted above rather than promised. The realm is meant to grow, and it will grow by authoring rather than by generation.
Anything that counts you
No score, no band, no streak, no timer that punishes absence, and no measurement of any kind inside the realm. Nothing here is a basis for judging anybody.

What it looks like

Ten people, each drawn once, and the ground they stand on. Everything below is in the build and is reached by playing it.

Emberford from above: the town on the west bank of the Wend, the ford of stepping stones, the broken wall along the east bank, and the fen upriver under morning mist
Emberford from above. Ashmere, half a day downriver, is drawn rather than photographed, and both are walked from the same map with the places on them.

What has changed

Read out of the repository rather than kept by hand, newest first, so a reader coming back can see movement without having to derive it.

  1. A record you can paste, and a save that is not one
  2. The river, made in the browser rather than fetched
  3. Every demand in the chain has somebody to answer for it
  4. Three first mornings per life, and three things that outstayed their day
  5. The build page shows the world and says what changed
  6. Ashmere is a seat you can hold
  7. A second year in Emberford, authored from the first
  8. The year ends, and the realm says so
  9. A seat that cannot decide says so as the town, not as the software
  10. Nothing happened when you pressed Tell Maren, and the realm was refusing all along
  11. Two of the three deferred gaps were shipped, and this file said so itself
  12. A record worth keeping, and Ashmere's own ground
  13. Four of the five browser suites could not fail the build
  14. The build page said situations open on the morning after, and they do not
  15. The game was the tenth thing on the page
  16. Ashmere is in the game again, and every card opens on people
  17. The accessibility block was measuring the server shell
  18. The long light, and the calendar that makes it possible
  19. The day ends on something true, not on a summary of itself
  20. The thaw opened on a wall, which is the one thing it must not do
  21. Seven lives, and the field that said six was read by nothing
  22. The commitment form answers you at the moment you press it
  23. The thaw, and a realm that had run out of situations
  24. The roadmap said seven lives and the game has six
  25. Where you stand is on the screen from the first morning
  26. The chronicle is yours to write in
  27. Lives that move whether or not you looked
  28. The other two browser suites can be run outside CI
  29. The hour that asks for nothing
  30. Fixing the worker made it slow, because it intercepted everything and cached almost none of it
  31. Two features that looked shipped and were not: the service worker and the provider seam
  32. The roadmap stops calling the second settlement unbuilt
  33. Record tonight's work in the roadmap inventory
  34. A public inventory, and the two things nothing had measured
  35. Lines to choose, and the box kept underneath
  36. The phone check walks the guided day and the town it opens onto
  37. A guided first day, and two people who would do it differently
  38. One clock, a price on every choice, a purpose, and what is running out
  39. Said to the life that hears it, and measured on a phone
  40. A life without authority has a move, and every life sees only what it can do

The entranceNotes from the publisherCross the ford and play it