# Story and world events

The **Story** step holds everything that belongs to the world as a whole rather than to one
place or person: how the game opens, how the narrator sounds, and what happens without anyone
starting it.

![The Story step with opening hook, narration tone, and world quest](/images/docs/story-step.png)

## The premise

**Intro hook / story premise** is the situation players walk into. The narrator reads it at the
start of every session, so write the situation, not a summary of the plot:

> The lighthouse at Gull's Rest went dark three nights ago. The keeper hasn't been seen since,
> and the fishing fleet is due back tonight.

Tick **Use this exact text as the starting narration** to have the first message be your words,
unchanged. Leave it off and the narrator writes its own opening from the premise. Write the
opening yourself for anything you publish: it is the one paragraph every player reads.

## Narration tone

A few words on how the narrator writes: *gritty noir*, *whimsical fairy tale*, *dry and
understated*. It shapes every reply, so keep it short and concrete. "Short sentences, bleak
humor, never cheerful" steers harder than "atmospheric".

## World quests

Quests that belong to the world rather than to a person: a bounty on a notice board, a curse
that starts at a threshold, the main thread of the whole game. Quests a character hands out live
on that character instead.

A world quest can start three ways:

- a **Start a quest** step in any item, event or reaction,
- on its own, the moment its conditions hold,
- or the narrator opens it when the player learns of it, if you give it a condition.

Give it a location to have it found there, or leave it global. Stages and rewards work exactly
as in [Quests](/docs/quests-no-code).

## World events

An event fires by itself when its conditions hold: the bell tolls at midnight, the bridge
collapses once the flood level passes 3, the stranger arrives on the third day. World events are
checked every turn wherever the party is. Events that belong to one place live on that
location's **Events** tab and are only checked while a player is there.

Each event has conditions (when) and steps (what happens), and **Fires** sets how often:
**Once**, **Forever** (every time its conditions hold), or **N times**. A **cooldown** in
in-game minutes keeps a repeating event from firing every turn. A **chance** rolls **per turn**
by default. An event checked every turn can roll **per hour** instead, so its odds follow the
game time that passed: a wandering patrol is likelier to find a party that camps for the night
than one that stops to talk. A location event can list several places under **Also fires at**
and is still one event, shared between them.

## World flags

Named values the whole world shares: `FLOOD_LEVEL`, `BRIDGE_STATE`, `CURFEW`. Events, quests and
rules read and change them, and a location's backdrop can switch on them. Every flag is declared
here with the value it starts at; an empty value starts unset. A step can only set, and a
condition only test, a declared flag, so each control picks one from the list. **+ New** beside
any of those lists declares a flag on the spot, and a flag in use cannot be renamed or removed.