Design — Glossary

A shared lexicon for the design docs. When a term keeps causing confusion in design conversations, pin its precise meaning here so the docs (and we) stop talking past each other. One word, one meaning.

This is a living list — it grows as terms get nailed down. Each entry gives the definition and points at the doc that owns the full model.

Social layer — relationships & standing

The two are deliberately distinct — one is an edge (between two parties), the other a node (about one) — and mixing them is what caused the confusion this glossary exists to fix. A pair can carry both at once: two houses that loathe each other (a low relationship) where one is still the most important house in town (high standing).

The whole social layer is just these two derived numbers plus facts that feed modifiers into them — there are no bespoke “buff systems.” A modifier only differs by which number it targets: Venerability (holding the Magistrate seat) bumps standing; kin (a marriage between two houses) bumps the relationship between them.

Relationship — a directed number: how one character or dynasty feels about another. An edge, A→B. Derived on demand from the memory ledger (baseline + decaying sum of memories) plus any standing modifiers (e.g. a marriage warms the baseline), never stored. memory.md calls the character-scope version opinion and the dynasty-scope version attitude; relationship is the umbrella term for both. → memory.md §5, relationships.md.
Standing — how important a character or dynasty is in the world: a standalone node property of one party, independent of who is observing. Derived from wealth, titles/offices, guild rank, age, and active modifiers (e.g. Venerability). Feeds vote weight, a witness’s / defendant’s weight at trial, and more. → relationships.md.

Aliases (the same thing under an older name)

Opinion — the character-scope relationship (character → character or dynasty). → memory.md §5.
Attitude — the dynasty-scope relationship (house → house). → memory.md §5.

The outside world — the Crown & Kingdom Events

The Crown — the off-screen sovereign; the rest of the kingdom, represented abstractly. An environmental force, not a negotiating party — it reaches into the town’s single market and bends it, but you do not petition or treat with it (that is parked diplomacy). The thematic roof over the guilds (the Crown charters the guilds…). → crown.md.
Kingdom Event — a named, timed, announced bundle of modifiers on the market’s demand/supply pools — the mechanism through which the Crown acts. Carries one or more effects, each one of exactly four kinds (demand+ / supply− / supply+ / tariff); adds no new market machinery, just turns existing pool knobs for a duration. Ambient events fire on a weighted timer; the relief valve (crisis import) is a reactive Kingdom Event the City fires to restart a seized market. → crown.md.