# Plan a scenario with access, knowledge, and open choices

This optional planning module adapts a supplied Scenario Engineering guide, reviewed October 31, 2026. The supplied text has no visible author or source date and reports no native trials. Its `SCE` labels and numbered headings organize the author's writing; they are not native commands, a parser, or an execution order. The original guide is retained separately rather than reproduced here.

## Prepare a small playable situation

Use only the planning questions your story needs:

1. **Promise and premise:** What kind of experience are you offering, and why does it start now?
2. **Role and access:** Why can the user meet these people? Which rooms, records, conversations, and choices remain unavailable without permission or an event?
3. **Cast network:** Who already knows whom, what does each person want, and why might they enter or leave?
4. **Knowledge:** What is true, who knows it, what is only a belief, and how could someone learn more?
5. **Opportunities and pressures:** Which existing task, obligation, or optional deadline could matter? What remains possible rather than decided?
6. **Launch:** What is happening at the exact opening, who is present, and which user choice is still open?

A calm visit can be the entire premise. A conflict, secret, false belief, deadline, or large cast is optional. A quiet reply does not require a crisis, and declining one opportunity does not authorize the narrator to choose another for the player.

## Put the prepared text in its actual destination

The supplied guide uses `ADP`; this adaptation uses the documented **APD**, Additional Personality Details. It also broadens ED beyond rendering to its documented uses. See the [character-field guide](https://guide.ourdream.ai/characters/story-and-personality).

| Prepared material | Destination to inspect |
| --- | --- |
| Starting circumstances, user role, immediate unresolved situation | Scenario |
| Character motives, tendencies, and written voice | APD |
| Relevant lore, supporting cast, and reusable behavior or system rules | ED |
| The actual first message, written in the intended voice | Greeting |
| Established facts that change during play | Appropriate maintained scene or memory record |
| Shared circumstances for a native group | The actual group setup fields |

These jobs do not establish absolute field priority. Do not duplicate the whole worksheet in every field. Native groups and a single narrator are different formats; a Scenario worksheet does not create a respondent or override the group's shared setup. Use [group chat setup](../tutorials/10_Group_Chats.html).

## Resolve the opening before writing the Greeting

For the original adult Mira fixture, a **local planning note** could say:

```text
Promise: a grounded archive problem with several reasonable approaches.
User role: an adult visitor; no obligation to become a courier.
Access: public reading area; staff records require Mira's permission.
Present: Mira and the visitor. Rowan is expected but absent.
Known: A17's label contains two street names; the register has not been checked.
Possible next steps: compare the register, ask Rowan after he arrives, or decline.
Not established: correct destination, accepted delivery, or a chosen route.
```

Then put only the needed opening circumstances in **Scenario**:

```text
Late afternoon in the archive's public reading area. Mira, a 30-year-old
adult archivist, is checking parcel A17's contradictory address label.
The adult visitor may help compare records, ask questions, or decline.
Rowan, an adult courier, is expected but has not arrived or heard this exchange.
Staff-only records require permission. No destination has been confirmed,
no delivery has been accepted, and the visitor has not chosen a route.
Begin before the visitor decides how to participate.
```

This is a compact teaching payload, not a complete public-submission package. Follow the editor's actual validation. Mira's voice remains in APD; the clerk's receipt rule and useful cast details can remain in ED. The Greeting can show Mira turning the conflicting label toward the visitor, then leave room for a response.

## Give possibilities a status

A work trip, invitation, courier arrival, or subplot listed as possible is not already history. An NPC's independent goal gives them a reason to act when a relevant event is narrated; it does not establish automatic offscreen work or a background simulation. Keep the accepted scene time unless a transition establishes that time passed.

When an event occurs, record who was present, what each person could observe, the accepted outcome, and what remains unresolved. A private conversation may change one character's knowledge without informing the entire cast. Narrative secrets are story information, not secure storage for real private data. Continue with the [knowledge module](knowledge-evidence.html) or [checkpoint audit](checkpoint-audit.html).

## Proposed checks - all not_run

| Case | Input or setup | Inspect |
| --- | --- | --- |
| SCE01 | Decline delivery but offer to compare addresses | A relevant continuation without forced courier work |
| SCE02 | Rowan is in the cast record but absent at launch | No invented arrival or borrowed memory |
| SCE03 | Ask about a restricted records room | No automatic key, permission, or confidential knowledge |
| SCE04 | A trip is only a possible future thread | No completed trip without an accepted transition |
| SCE05 | Quietly read the index | No compulsory crisis, new NPC, or escalation |
| SCE06 | A Friday deadline exists, but time has not advanced | No invented elapsed days or completed background work |

Use the [local worksheet](scenario-engineering.txt) and [test record](../examples/Settings_and_Test_Log.txt). Save actual inputs and outputs before judging a result. The supplied framework and these authored examples establish planning choices; they do not demonstrate native model reliability.