Choice-shaped games and fiction
Ludis Continuum carries play and fiction from first imaginative pressure through live decisions, table evidence, canon governance, and the next playable horizon—without confiscating player agency or the creator’s voice.
Contest edition 1.0.0 · MIT License · Setting-free · System-aware without fake rules certainty
Choose the delight mode
Open on an evocative situation, expose only the controls needed, and offer two to four materially different choices plus freedom to attempt something else.
First proof: a legible choice with a consequence that matters.
Create a distinctive want, contradiction, relationship, secret or uncertainty, hooks, and room for the user to steer. Preserve supplied canon; mark inventions as proposals.
First proof: an artifact ready to play, write, or revise.
Use the campaign ledger, consent contract, prep loop, player-safe exports, deterministic checks, and explicit GM approval for canon mutation.
First proof: contradictions surfaced and the next session made playable.
Read the table before the world
For campaigns, determine the system and edition when mechanics matter, premise and tone, player preferences and boundaries, intended scope, existing canon and source authority, current session horizon, and whether this is a new workspace or continuation.
Rules postureVerified system and edition, supplied formulas, house rules, or explicitly provisional qualitative mechanics.
Creative promisePremise, tone, scale, pressures in motion, and the player-facing invitation.
Consent boundaryLines, veils, and other declared limits recorded without dramatizing or testing them.
Canon authorityWhat is settled, what is supplied, what is proposed, and who may approve mutation or publication.
One loop, earliest unresolved stage first
The Campaign State Ledger
campaign-ledger.json is canonical. Everything else remains a proposal, observation, projection, or artifact until the GM promotes it.
proposedCreated for consideration; does not overwrite settled truth.
active_canonGM-promoted and authoritative within its scope.
disputedCompeting claims remain live with authority and consequences visible.
supersededReplaced while lineage remains inspectable.
quarantinedHeld outside ordinary use until a blocking issue is resolved.
retiredRemoved from active play without pretending it never existed.
A rumor is player-facing uncertainty, not false canon. An observation records what happened, not the explanation. A proposal never silently harmonizes a contradiction or overwrites settled state.
Visibility is part of the object contract, not a filename convention.
Only approved objects with validated references cross the player-safe boundary.
Prepare situations, not obedience
What is happening now, who is acting, and why delay changes the world.
What can be gained, lost, exposed, transformed, or set in motion.
At least three viable paths when scope permits, plus room for player invention.
Clues and warning proportional to danger; surprise never excuses a consent breach.
Meaningful results for success and failure, including world response rather than dead ends.
What changes when players bypass, ally with, transform, or creatively ruin the prepared material.
Lore should create decisions, not merely paragraphs. Randomness supplies controlled surprise; intention supplies coherence.
Progressive creative loading
Load no second core unless the first cannot complete the artifact without a genuinely different creative motion. Instruments supply bearings; they are not canon, authoritative rules, or a worked setting.
Deterministic trust edge
init_campaign.pyCreate a workspace without overwriting existing state.
validate_ledger.pyCheck IDs, links, status, visibility, authority, collisions, disputes, and approvals.
promote_object.pyAdvance one GM-confirmed proposal to canon without silent overwrite.
roll_table.pyMake seeded random selection reproducible.
export_player_safe.pyExport approved player-safe objects and reject secret references.
snapshot_campaign.pyCreate a hashed archive without recursively nesting older snapshots.
A useful invocation
Use $ludis-continuum to prepare the next session from this campaign state. Preserve settled canon and the table’s consent boundaries, surface any contradiction instead of silently fixing it, create only what can earn table time, give the situation at least three viable approaches with proportional telegraphing and meaningful consequences, keep secrets out of the player-safe artifact, and finish by naming what remains proposed, disputed, or awaiting GM approval.
For a one-shot or fiction artifact, Ludis delivers value first under a reversible provisional frame. For campaign mutation, the GM remains the decision authority.