Guide

Broadcasts and world events

One line to a whole town, and events that are nobody's fault. New in 0.1.7. Optional: nothing else depends on it.

1 Broadcast a line

POST http://localhost:8767/v1/broadcast
{ "from": "the mayor", "text": "There's a tornado warning", "to": "all" }
->  { "ok": true, "heard_by": 34, "orders": 0, "wakes": 31 }

From the terminal, lw broadcast "There's a tornado warning" --from "the mayor". From an agent, the MCP tool broadcast.

to is one of:

`to`	who hears it
`"all"` (the default)	every named character in the last state feed
["Tobias", "Mara"]	those characters
{"near": [x, z], "radius": 40}	everyone within the radius of that point, from the last state feed

The answer comes back straight away. heard_by is how many journals got the line, orders how many characters were given the instruction in it, wakes how many will plan something about it. The reactions follow on the next ticks; your game only runs the commands it is sent, exactly as for anything else.

2 Order, news, offer, or a mix

The brain decides what the line is, once, for everyone:

An instruction ("everyone to the square", "take cover", "go home and bar your doors") goes to the command lane. It is read once and every listener gets the same plan, with "home" meaning each character's own home and a crowd sent to one place spread around it. Each plan passes the manifest's can and never for that character, as a typed order does.
News ("the harvest was good this year"), a warning ("there's a tornado warning") and an offer ("free food in the square tonight") are never turned into an order. Each listener reads it through the gate, like anything they perceive, and decides for themselves.
A mix ("a tornado is coming, get into the chapel") is both: the instruction part is an order; the warning is heard.

A line is an order only when part of it is shaped like one (an imperative, "everyone to…", "you must…") and the command gate can ground that part. Reported speech ("the guards told everyone to stay calm") is news.

3 Who said it

Every listener's journal records the line as kind: "broadcast" with told-by:<from>. It is hearsay, and it is treated as hearsay:

A wrong the line reports is held against whoever the line names, never against the player. "A stranger robbed the baker" gives nobody a grudge against the player; the listeners remember that a stranger did wrong. "Gregor stole the chapel silver", with Gregor in the feed, aims any plan at Gregor.
Only "the newcomer" or "the player" in the line names the player (Tell characters what happened).

4 What a character does about a hazard or an offer

A line classed hazard ("fire at the inn", "the river's rising", "raiders on the north road") or opportunity ("the fair opens at noon", "the smith is hiring") wakes a character when its weight times the character's persona reaches 5 (wrongs keep their own bar of 8). The persona shapes the plan:

who	on a hazard
a watchman or guard	warns others, then holds his post
a child	shelters at home
an innkeeper	shelters at her inn and opens the door to others
someone stubborn	finishes the task first, then shelters: a late shelter, not no shelter
whoever is at the hazard's place	gets out first
anyone else	shelters

An opportunity is attended when its time is free that day and no mission holds it. An all-clear ("the storm has passed", "the fire's out") ends a shelter and the character goes back to her day; a shelter also ends by itself after two game hours. A grudge she was pursuing is set aside for the reaction and resumes after it.

The manifest's per-character salience block replaces the persona's multipliers ({"hazard": 1.4, "opportunity": 0.5}; 0 means never wakes for this), and never rules still filter every move. See Manifest.

What reads these classes. The event gate 0.1.7 fetches reads hazards, opportunities and all-clears in your own words, next to the wrongs, gifts, needs and background lines it always read. A line it is not sure of goes to the unsure lane. If your world has phrasings of its own (a hazard only your lore names, an offer spelled your way), name them in the manifest's events section and they are stamped before the gate:

"events": {
  "hazard":      ["tornado warning", "the dam has burst"],
  "opportunity": ["free food", "the fair opens"],
  "clear":       ["storm has passed", "the fire is out"]
}

5 The moves need bodies

Shelter, warn others, evacuate, hold a post and attend are verbs of the town-2 vocabulary. Declare "vocabulary": "town-2" and list the ones your characters may use; a town-1 manifest keeps exactly its old behaviour, and a character with none of them simply does not react to a hazard. With no manifest loaded, every move is available.

verb	engine action (default)	what your game does
shelter	`seek-cover`	go indoors (the nearest door, or your own home), or behind something solid
warn-others	`say`, then `navigate-to`	shout the warning, then move
evacuate-to	`navigate-to`	run to the named place
hold-post	`guard`	stay put, alert
attend	`navigate-to`, then `idle_social`	walk to the event and join in

Rebind any of them to an action of your own with the verb's engine. lw manifest check lw.manifest.json --executes <your actions> lists every verb with no body in your game, so nothing silently does nothing.

6 World events, one witness at a time

For an event only some characters see, keep using the perception door, one line per witness:

POST http://localhost:8767/v1/perceive   { "char": "Mara", "text": "the inn's kitchen is on fire" }

The classes above apply the same way. There is nothing to list per event and nothing to script.

7 Reading what happened

lw watch shows the reactions as they happen; lw why tobias shows the plan, the move he is on and the line that woke him. The flywheel log carries deliberator_wake with the class, deliberator_hearsay when a told wrong was held against someone who is not the player, and deliberator_stand_down with all clear.

Next: Give orders.