The human and agent experience

# The human and agent experience

One Domain is experienced through **three mediums**. They are peers, not stages of a ladder, and they
differ in what is prepared before you arrive and what is still open once you are there.

```text
Scenario     the card table   — you decide.   The situation is prepared; the move is not.
Experience   the visual novel — you read.     Everything is prepared; you choose among routes.
World        the map          — you wander.   Only the state is prepared; the rest is freeform.
```

- **Scenario** resolves. It is fast, abstract, and card-led, and it is the only medium of the three that
  writes canon — Will enters, the move resolves, the branch moves.
- **Experience** reads. A prepared branch delivered as a visual novel: routes, endings, POV, sprites,
  plates, saves. It generates nothing while you read it, and it writes nothing back.
- **World** wanders. The Domain rendered as a place at a chosen moment, explored by cursor rather than in
  order, with situated roleplay in it. It generates constantly — the opposite cost shape to Experience.

The rest of this document details Scenario and its Episode presentation, which are the developed pair; the
[visual-novel specs](../../../specs/visual-novel/README.md) own Experience and the
[World concept contract](../../../specs/world/README.md) owns World.

## Two presentations of the Scenario mechanism

Meridians offers two presentations of one branch-frontier RPG mechanism: **direct Scenario** and
**Episode-wrapped Scenario**. A Domain may sustain several live branch heads, so either entry mode can
develop divergent timelines without collapsing them.

- **Direct Scenario** is fast, abstract, and card-led. It exposes the decision grammar for rapid
  simulation and story development.
- **Episode-wrapped Scenario** is slow, spatial, and Stageplay-led. It hides the card table inside
  roleplay, situated information, strategic puzzles, and critical decisions for the key players.

The same scene can move between them. A user may play Scenario and then render its accepted scene as an
Episode. Or they may play a live Episode whose decision window instantiates Scenario underneath, resolves
the move through the same governed path, and stages the continuation.

## Two Episode postures

### Catch-up Episode

A scene, branch move, or canon event has already been accepted. Stageplay catches the experience up to that
record by turning it into an immersive passage. Playback introduces no new Will. Its value is canonical
storytelling, causal understanding, and emotional consequence.

### Live Episode

Stageplay presents the current branch-tip situation to one or more Domain participants who want to
roleplay. At a critical decision window it wraps a bounded Scenario instance: players issue orders,
compose plans, coordinate, trade, disclose or withhold information, allocate resources, or set processes
in motion. The player experiences an RPG scene rather than an explicit card game, but the underlying move,
resolution, branch write, and provenance are shared with Scenario.

Single-player and multiplayer are both valid. Each seat may receive a unique Episode composed from shared
public beats and private beats reachable through its role, graph position, knowledge, memory, permissions,
and tools. These are different compatible renditions of one branch situation, not separate truth. The
wrapped Scenario must preserve those information boundaries while generating moves and resolving Will.
Later public consequences may disclose what changed without retroactively exposing another seat's private
context. Perspective is therefore an authorization and roleplay contract before it is a camera choice.

The Episode never makes an action true because it showed an animation. Any prepared continuation is
revalidated against accepted branch state.

## Slower live storytelling

Live Episodes can form a humane serial experience for working professionals:

```text
branch tip and accepted history
→ prepared situated Stageplay
→ strategic story puzzle and visual explanation
→ wrapped Scenario decision
→ governed branch resolution
→ staged continuation or later Episode
```

“Daily” is a useful cadence hypothesis, not a constitutional interval. A user may follow several ongoing
stories across Domain branches. Several players may receive different passages over one situation; the
record keeps what each could know, what each directed, which rules applied, and what changed.

## The puzzle is strategic direction

Episode puzzles are not *The Room*-like object locks. The puzzle is a consequential mechanism the player
must understand well enough to direct: people, orders, timing, routes, evidence, capital, incentives,
permissions, institutions, information channels, contracts, or scarce tools. Several coherent moves may
exist.

Episode 006, *The Supply Tendon*, is the catch-up reference. A council evaluates reconnaissance, depleted
reserves, and logistics, then commits a sabotage order. A live version would leave the order, people,
timing, evidence, and risk open, instantiate the relevant Scenario decision, and stage the accepted result.

Maps, ledgers, graphs, dossiers, and infographics are explanatory instruments. The side-scrolling stage is
the embodied home; alternative views clarify a decision or disclose situated knowledge.

## From remembered world to player progression

The present pieces do not yet form a complete training loop. Extraction supplies strong upfront
comprehension; the Program maintains attention and a live read; chat permits repeated inquiry but is too
fragile and low-consequence to carry replayability by itself; direct Scenario already has a real
**Brief → Prepare → Commit → Consequence** turn; Stageplay and Episode can deepen immersion, explanation,
and strategic puzzles. The open work is joining those strengths into a return cycle that develops the
participant as well as the branch.

The working experience hypothesis is:

```text
Memory Palace + Program recall the situation
→ Episode or direct Scenario makes the problem inhabitable
→ the participant interprets partial information and commits Will
→ Scenario resolves and the branch preserves consequence
→ the Program and Stories debrief intention, result, surprise, and missed signal
→ the next situation adapts in difficulty, perspective, tools, or responsibility
```

The debrief is the missing hinge. Without it, repeated scenes produce content and history but weak
learning. With it, branch comparison, Position movement, calibration, active recall, and causal inspection
can show what the participant anticipated, what they missed, what another seat knew, and which belief or
capability should change before the next turn.

The maintained [Gameplay loop](../../../diagrams/flows/gameplay-loop.md) separates the shipped Scenario
play loop, the recurring Program activity loop, the proposed session practice loop, and the longer-term
progression loop. This prevents automation or accumulated branch history from being mistaken for player
development.

Exact RPG progression remains open. A Domain may develop roles, resources, permissions, relationships,
tools, reputations, quests, or economies; a practice track may rotate perspective, replay a branch under a
different information regime, or revisit a mechanism through spaced challenges. Those mechanics earn
their place only when they increase real ability inside the declared world. Generic XP, retention theatre,
or a universal score would obscure the purpose.

[Founder direction](../../../sources/founder/2026-08-29-founder-replayability-training-loop-2026-08-29.md)
· [External gameplay-loop lens](../../../sources/external/2026-08-29-types-of-gameplay-loops.md)

### The training loop is the product

Each complete turn — `recall → orient → inhabit → commit → consequence → debrief → adapt` — leaves the
second record the promise names: what the participant learned to notice, judge, or do, from a seat, in a
Domain, over an interval. Across returns that is the [practice record](../strategy/12-the-practice-monopoly.md),
the [training world](../../../specs/training-worlds/README.md) is the hour built to produce one turn of it,
and the **journey** — weekly hours aimed at one trait, each read on a Rasch scale and the next generated
from the reading — is the concierge subscription that is the plan. The loop is unbuilt (the debrief is the
missing hinge) and the guardrails hold: the record is a portrait of how they played and how that changed,
never a verdict; the latent model beneath it is not diagnostic ([latent model](../../../specs/latent-model/README.md));
and transfer is claimed only at the rung the proof programme has reached
([12](../strategy/12-the-practice-monopoly.md#the-proof-programme)).

## Branching stories cultivate Worlds

Direct Scenario and live Episode can develop multiple main-story timelines, accessible to different
players and perspectives. Each accepted branch accumulates characters, places, institutions, history,
rules, information, and reusable production assets. A Director may eventually designate one official
canon branch while preserving alternate timelines; the designation policy remains open.

Once a branch and its setting are mature enough, they can seed a **World**: a semi-permanent inherited
artifact pinned to that exact story coordinate. The first experience may be a tour or bounded activity in
the places Episodes developed. Bounded generation may fill unstaged gaps under the inherited ontology and
style. Later Worlds may support persistent seats, information and financial economies, social activity,
and MMO-like presence.

World replayability remains unsettled. A World might reset, fork, replay, or persist, but none defines the
concept yet. Its stable distinction is that it inherits a developed story world and can remain available
without silently advancing or rewriting the source branch.

## How the forms relate

```text
Domain      defines rules, entities, information, and open Fate
Branch      preserves official or alternate story history
Scenario    resolves consequential play, visibly or inside an Episode
Experience  reads a prepared branch as a visual novel — many routes, many endings
Episode     embodies accepted history or stages Scenario-driven live play
World       inherits a mature branch as a place to be wandered at a chosen moment
```

> **Domain defines. Branch preserves. Scenario resolves. Episode embodies. World inherits and lives.**
>
> **You decide in a Scenario, read an Experience, and wander a World.**

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