The ClockWork Dark

A reactive game world called The ClockWork Dark uses a deterministic engine for mechanics, two autonomous LLM agents for improvisation, and a governance layer to maintain coherence. The system balances AI freedom with engine-enforced rules to ensure surprising yet fair storytelling, featuring a Doom Clock that reshapes the world as players confront the Dark.

The world is no longer static scenery — it reacts . unmake reckoning at the tower. The narrative spine is complete: tunnels open → descend → Hollow Hill → name the Hollow Crown → carry the older name → unmake the Dark. :focus-visible ; prefers-reduced-motion .A deterministic engine holds all mechanical truth; two autonomous LLM agents improvise on top; a governance layer reins them in; OKFS feeds them canon; media renders it. flowchart TB subgraph HARD "Hard Engine — engine/game/ the only authority " STATE "GameState · dice · combat · crafting · travel<br/ evil ticker · DoomClock · challenges · contracts" SKILLS "@skill registry — engine/skills/<br/ roll dice · resolve combat · craft item · move to · confront darkness" end subgraph AGENTS "Two Agents — engine/agents/" DRIVER "Storyteller / Driver<br/ big model · drives world · Evaluator gate + retry" ASSIST "Assistant<br/ small model · unreliable companion<br/ AssistantDirector: when / with-what / how-reliably" end subgraph GOV "Governance — engine/governance/ + engine/mcp/" PRE "PRE interceptors — shape the prompt<br/ LoreInject · DoomBeat · EvilPhaseTone · StorytellerMind · AwarenessGate" POST "POST audit — SceneRulesEngine R001-R005<br/ RulesGovernor records LLM overreach" end subgraph KNOW "OKFS Knowledge — knowledge/" OKFS "one concept per .md + frontmatter + links<br/ lore · NPCs · items · arcs · runbooks · metrics<br/ content-hashed index.json" end subgraph MEDIA "Media — engine/media/ graceful degradation " IMG "ComfyUI images / cutscenes" VOICE "Voxtral TTS / STT" end OBS "Oracle — engine/observability/ · /api/metrics" SKILLS <-- STATE AGENTS -- "propose, never decide" -- SKILLS PRE -- AGENTS -- POST KNOW -. "RAG / progressive disclosure" .- AGENTS AGENTS -- MEDIA AGENTS -- OBS POST -- OBS The balance we chase: let the AIs run loose enough to surprise ; rein them with the engine + governance enough to stay coherent and fair . | System | What it does | Key tools | |---|---|---| Deterministic dice / skill engine | All randomness is engine-rolled and reproducible. The LLM must call a tool before narrating any outcome. | roll dice , resolve skill check | Grounded combat | Engine-authoritative d20 to-hit, damage dice, fear/exhaustion, fleeing, defending, and sympathy — the “unmaking” damage that works against clockwork foes. | resolve combat , query combat state | Crafting | Baking, herbalism, tinkering. Engine consumes inputs, grants output; recipes gate on location & ingredients. | craft item , list recipes | The Doom Clock | Turns evil drift into a story — arcs quiet life → whisper → march → convergence → consumed , once-only world-sign beats cog-harvesters, brass scarecrow, vines, the opened tunnels, the tower , and the terminal consumed ending if you never push back. Engagement rising when you confront the Dark slows the tick ~40%, but decays — so you must keep pushing. | confront darkness | The reactive world | Doom Clock beats reshape the map — each fires declarative effects flags, discoveries, rumors, NPC relocations onto GameState . Crossing a beat unlocks new ground, displaces villagers, and gates notice-board postings. The world remembers. | apply beat effects | Set-pieces | Authored, world-gated challenges — the tunnel-mouth a branching underground descent and the warden barrow Hollow Hill — learn the older name or trust the faceless Assistant . Presented by the engine, resolved by the standard challenge system, with per-node scene art and riddles. | start set piece | NPC movement | Named villagers relocate as the Dark spreads — Aldric abandons the forest margin, Greta leaves the shrine, the gate thins. npcs at reflects it; displaced villagers are marked and wear road-worn faces. Maris does not move. | npc moves effects | The Forge | Brann Holt’s smithy off the square — station-gated recipes mend a blade, forge a warded blade, reforge a relic . The mundane anchor: honest anti-Dark gear, craftable only at the anvil. | craft item station: forge | The convergence | The approach to the clockwork tower as ordered reckoning beats and the player’s last engine-resolved choice stand / unmake / walk away , adjudicated on d20 + engagement vs a progress-scaled DC. Learning the older name in Hollow Hill sharpens the unmake roll. | resolve reckoning | The unreliable Assistant Director | Each turn, from trust, your struggle, the evil phase, and how recently it last appeared, decides whether the Assistant shows up, with what quip / hint / lore / warning / gift , and how reliably low trust → its advice may mislead . Help feels earned and uncertain, never owed. | grant hint , reveal lore , change form , assistant gift | Ephemeral structured challenges the novel bit | The Storyteller can compose a rule-bound encounter mid-narration — a skill gauntlet , decision tree , puzzle , or dice table — by handing the engine a declarative spec validated against a fixed schema. The AI supplies structure; the engine adjudicates the outcome. An improvising narrator that can’t cheat its own dice. | start challenge , resolve challenge | Notice board & contracts | Opt-in work in three tempers: mundane dawn-bread, a tinker’s lost cog , bounty the wandering scarecrow , and anti dark still the harvester — raises engagement . The board reacts to the world — postings appear as their beat-flags fire, with signpost poster art. Rewards are engine-granted on genuine completion. | list contracts , accept contract , complete contract | Chance encounters | Seeded, deterministic rolls on arrival — from the destination edge’s danger dc and the evil phase. Yields none calm , a harmless discovery engine-granted reward , or an ambush naming a clockwork-tagged foe. | query encounter foes | The Oracle | A slim observability backbone. Every turn — latency, eval score, governance violations, the Assistant’s intervention/gift rate, evil drift — is recorded and rolled into aggregates at /api/metrics , so pacing the heart of the dread stays visible. | GET /api/metrics | Knowledge at runtime | Agents search the OKFS bundle and pull a single concept’s body — progressive disclosure, not 3,000 lines at once. | query knowledge , read concept |