strategic-play

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Strategic play (game theory)

A facet of Play: the strategic layer beneath the prose. Each consequential beat is a decision the engine deconstructs and scores; the scores drive ELO and the player archetypes. Purely additive — written to scene.gameAnalysis, never mutating the force deltas.

Decision — A consequential beat, sealed and scored. Two kinds:

• Duel (2-player) — a strategic game against another agent. A full NxM matrix: each player picks from a menu, every pairing is a cell with both players' stake deltas.
• Solo (1-player) — a pivotal choice against the world, reality in the other seat. A row, not a matrix: one decider, a menu of options, one immediate stake delta per option (take the job, hold or fold, relocate, confess now or wait).

Decision Matrix — The per-scene sequence of decisions. Each carries an action axis and (for duels) a game shape, with integer stake deltas per cell. Also called incentive structures — the same artifact.

Stake delta — An integer in [-4, +4] scoring how much an outcome advances (+) or harms (−) a player's arc-level interests. Magnitude is importance: a pivotal beat uses the full ±4, a quiet beat stays ±1. Scored honestly per cell — never warped to justify what happened; a dominated cell landing as realized is signal.

Action axis — The dimension a decision trades on; both players' actions live on the SAME axis. Eleven: information, identity, trust, alliance, status, pressure, stakes, resources, obligation, commitment, timing.

Game shape — The strategic frame of a duel — one of sixteen: coordination, stag-hunt, dilemma, chicken, divergence, zero-sum, signaling, screening, principal-agent, stealth, stackelberg, bargaining, commitment-game, contest, collective-action, trivial. Solo decisions have no shape.

Nash equilibrium — A cell no player can improve on by switching alone. For a solo decision, the stake-maximising option (the rational pick against an indifferent world). Realized cell — what actually happened; landing off-Nash is signal (arc, identity, or principle over local stake), not error.

Arc cost — Stake a player left on the table: the best outcome available to them minus the realized one. For a solo decision, regret against the best option.

Stake rank — Where the realized cell sits in a player's preference order over the whole grid (1 = best).

ELO — Continuous skill rating per player, updated each decision. ELO_INITIAL = 1500, ELO_K = 32. The margin score folds margin-of-victory into the update — duel: clamp(0.5 + (ΔA − ΔB)/16, 0, 1); solo: clamp(0.5 + ΔA/8, 0, 1) against par (reality, a fixed non-learning opponent at 1500, ELO_PAR). K is stake-weighted so high-stake beats move ratings far more than low-stake ones. The player archetypes fall out of the trajectory plus the outcome mix.

Player archetypes

The behavioural tags a player earns from their decision record. Tag id matches its label (kebab-case) for consistency. Grouped:

• Role (one headline): prime mover (drives the game; the world bends toward them), adversary (dominates at others' expense), tragic figure (absorbs cost, declines anyway), mentor (gives more stake than they take), comeback (arc climbs from below), slipping (loses ground across the window), trickster (wins the information game, high variance), counterforce (exists to push against another's motion), anchor (stable, cooperative, near-baseline).
• Relational outcome (how realized cells split): extractor (gains at the other's expense), sacrificial (pays so others gain), scorched-earth (lands in both-lose cells), uneven ally (cooperates but takes the bigger slice), ally (genuine even cooperation).
• Trajectory: dominant (lands near the top of every grid), rising / falling (rating climbed / eroded), high-variance (wins big, loses big), steady (rating barely moves).
• Solo decision style: soloist (most calls are 1-player bets against the world), sure-handed (usually takes the stake-maximising option), gambler (passes up the safe-best, plays for the upside).
• Strategic style: defies the odds (keeps winning moments rational play says they shouldn't — the prime-mover signature), strategist (overwhelmingly plays the Nash move and it pays), off-script (rarely plays the rational move).
• Agency (from game-shape participation): schemer (wins information-asymmetric games), power-broker (sets the terms — first mover in commitment / bargaining), combatant (lives in zero-sum / chicken / divergence), coordinator (builds shared action in alignment games).
• Arc shift: upward arc / downward arc (late outcomes substantially better / worse than early).
• Relationships: rival: X (losing record concentrated against X), leads: X (winning record against X).
• Role bias: initiator (almost always the prime mover / Player A), responder (almost always reacting / Player B).
• Affinity: axis: X (characteristic action axis), X-heavy (characteristic game shape).