> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://ostomo.gitbook.io/ostomo-notes/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://ostomo.gitbook.io/ostomo-notes/general-principles.md).

# General principles

The core idea is a **radically social and organic game world, within an engaging, disbelief-suspending setting**. This has several corollaries:

* NO RPG GIMMICKS. No stupid missions you have to do repeatedly to gain points, etc.
  * We want players to do actually meaningful creative activities.
  * Not lure them into some dopamine-generating loop.
* Intensive, simulation-based procedural generation to "fill out" the world
* Highly polycentric game infrastructure run by players
  * Implies: everything open-source, no "anti-cheat"
  * Implies: game mechanics must be designed around things like "aimbotting" being pervasive
* "Single shard" persistent world
* Detailed, handcrafted setting that nevertheless does not have a fixed storyline for the future
  * See: *Kaiserreich* HOI4 mod, which does this beautifully
* Vast human-directed automation
  * Basic model: a hierarchical "chain of command" ending in some sort of in-game sovereign polity. Every node in the CoC can either be AI-controlled or human-controlled.  
    * Orders are "mid-level", between grand strategy and RTS. HOI4 is again a good guide.
    * AI units will blindly follow orders, modulo their own algorithms' calculations of how best to reach the goal.
    * Humans see orders but may or may not follow them.
  * First reason: nobody wants to do manual labor in a game
  * Second reason: this fixes the false dichotomy between a rich, ordered world and a Second Life-style "real-life social media disguised as a RPG".
    * See: *Distant Worlds*