MythOS Playtest · published
# MythOS — Major Update ("Living World")
*The biggest update yet. The world is now genuinely alive — NPCs with personalities, goals, and grudges; a real economy; grand-strategy scheming; disasters; a fully reworked battle system; and a huge stability pass. Compact rundown below. Everything is engine-driven and deterministic (the AI narrates it, it doesn't invent it), and genuinely **genre-agnostic** — the engine reads structured roles and tags instead of English words, so it all works the same in fantasy, sci-fi, wuxia, or modern settings.*
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**⚔️ Combat & Warfare**
- **One unified battle system for every genre.** Units fight by **capability** (ranged, armored, cavalry, siege, flying, shielded, anti-armor, bracing…) with real rock-paper-scissors — cavalry runs down archers but dies on spears, anti-air rules the skies, siege breaks forts.
- **Far better pacing** — battles that used to grind for days now resolve in hours, scaled to your world's tempo. Thinking armies **rout** on broken morale; the **mindless** (undead/robots/insects) fight to the death.
- **Chokepoints & heroes matter** — a small force or lone hero can hold a pass/doorway, and a hero can cut down an enemy commander to break their army. Stances set battle **posture**, ranged forces fire **opening volleys**, and commanders unlock **flank / ambush / encircle**.
- **Faction Power reworked** — now counts real military (incl. home garrisons) + treasury + diplomacy, with **fog of war** (rivals must scout you to know your true strength).
- **Fleets carry armies across water & space** — capacity-aware, so one boat can't ferry a horde; a ferried crossing is a **vulnerable window** an enemy navy can sink. Custom terrain "mediums" supported.
- **Combat XP** — earn it from kills now (configurable, anti-farm scaling).
- **Cleaner fights** — combat is now **AI-driven** (the old manual Attack/Cast buttons are retired — just describe your actions) and **side-aware** (NPCs fight NPCs, arenas & spars work, and bystanders aren't randomly turned on). AOE no longer friendly-fires your own side; non-lethal venues (arena/dojo) **knock out** instead of kill; real characters go **downed/unconscious** before death (adversaries die outright); combat survives a mid-fight save/reload, and mid-fight arrivals join the turn order.
**🏛️ Factions & Grand Strategy**
- **Long-term ambitions** — factions adopt and pursue multi-month goals (develop, conquer, corner a market, seize a nation) from an editable **Goals catalog**.
- **Shadow Control** — a guild or cult can **covertly seize a rival nation's ruler over time** (infiltrate → influence → puppet), siphoning income from the shadows. Get caught → scandal and war. Against *you*, it surfaces as plots and rumors you can investigate.
- **Ascension** — a powerful merchant league or secret order can **rise into a sovereign nation** (found on its own land, or absorb one it controls). Earned via a Power threshold, not a free flip.
- **Living Vassals** — loyalty responds to how you treat them (fair tribute, autonomy, subsidies, protection). New tools: set tribute, grant autonomy, subsidize, reassure, grant independence, integrate. Mistreated vassals go **restless → defiant → secede**, with warnings.
- **Timed policies** (auto-expiring laws) that no longer runaway-snowball a nation; **merchant caravans** auto-ship surplus to shortages; faction **agendas dispatch a real officer** who must travel on-site before a project progresses.
**☄️ Disasters & Terrain**
- **Full disaster system** — earthquakes, floods, wildfires, eruptions, storms, plagues, famines, meteors, plus **space** (solar flares, hull breaches, ion storms, reactor meltdowns, orbital strikes) at **Minor / Major / Catastrophic**.
- One event **scars the land** (halting production), kills population, drains the treasury, crashes the local market, stirs unrest, and sends **refugees** fleeing. **Recovery is automatic & reversible**, faster with relief or rebuilding. Disasters are **earned** — the world raises **omens** over primed regions rather than striking at random.
- **Reversible terrain scars** — disasters/destructive spells can ruin a place without erasing it; a restoration rite, terraform, or reclamation agenda heals it and production resumes.
**🌍 A Living World — NPCs, Society & Rumor**
- **Personality-driven lives** — NPCs pick daily goals from their own nature, get hungry/tired, keep homes & workplaces, flee danger, and go on **real long journeys** (exploring, pilgrimages, trade) that pay off with genuine finds. Time-skip life events now fit who they are.
- **Real relationships** — NPCs form bonds and rivalries, seek out people they like, and **marry** (a leaders' marriage becomes a political alliance; a cross-house marriage moves a spouse's allegiance). Each NPC also builds private feelings toward *you*.
- **Nobody is omniscient** — events spread as **rumors** from witnesses and kin outward, fading with distance and time; NPCs act only on what they've heard. Reputation travels by word of mouth (a hero the town never met can still be admired).
- **One general reaction system, good & bad** — murders, assault, theft, betrayal, affairs breed grudges / calls for justice / fear / vendettas (scaled to the offense); aid, rescue, healing, charity, heroism earn gratitude, respect, and **esteem** (a grudge in reverse). Grudges **fade** if unacted, **rekindle** on repeat offenses, and can be **mended** by reconciliation, restitution, or a peace treaty. Revenge finds closure when a target dies; victorious officers become famous, fallen ones are mourned.
- **Knowledge-gated news** — your **World Report is YOUR view**, not an all-seeing ticker. Reports can arrive **UNCONFIRMED**, be wrong, and later be **corrected or retracted**. Spying and scouting genuinely matter. (World Inspector / Chronicles / personal Timelines now sort events automatically — no fiddly severity slider.)
**💰 Economy & Jobs**
- **Real, conserved money** — coin *moves* between wallets, treasuries, and markets instead of being minted or deleted. Wages are paid from a faction's actual treasury (unpaid people go desperate); markets always have cash and the owning faction earns a small **sales tax** (never taken from the seller).
- **Independent towns are alive** — unowned settlements run their own economy, produce, trade, and can prosper or fall into shortage and unrest on their own.
- **Markets react and hold** — war, disasters, and sabotage cause real shortages/surpluses/crashes that persist for days then recover; NPCs create genuine **supply & demand**.
- **Notice Board, done right** — a real **Accept → Do → Turn In** loop with a ~24-archetype job catalog; objectives include kill, **hunt N (live counter)**, explore, deliver, investigate, protect, and sell-to-a-shortage; generous deadlines. **Jobs change the world** (restock, calm unrest, feed the starving, shift relations), and rewards scale with distance/danger/cargo.
- **Org faction directives** (member-only jobs that raise your standing *inside* that org), **AI-authored bespoke contracts**, and a **✒️ Write Up the Contracts** button for in-world flavor.
- **NPCs don't auto-win jobs** — they travel, work on-site, then roll a **skill check**, so *who you hire matters*; a botch reopens the job. **Sabotage really hurts a rival** (drains treasury, damages assets, sows unrest) and can be **traced back to you**. Loot stays separate from the trade market.
**🧙 Characters & Progression**
- **New spell/ability effects** — teleport/blink, summon, reanimate a corpse, dispel/cleanse, and drain/lifesteal, on a flexible multi-effect system.
- **Earn XP from journeys, jobs, and kills** (all configurable), and the engine keeps XP/levels in sync so leveling can't get **stuck**.
- **Attire vs. body + Secret Identities** — clothing is separate from a character's physical description (change outfits without rewriting their look), and a character can hold a secret **alias** (think Bruce Wayne / Batman) only the in-the-know connect.
- Deliberate boss/elite stats are no longer nerfed by the auto-roller; cleaner character/item/monster cards.
**🧠 How the AI Sees the World (Context & Perception)**
- **Proximity-driven context** — each turn the world-brain is handed the nearest, most relevant slice of the world; your current location/scale is **guaranteed**, and every in-context entity carries an exact engine-measured **distance** ("~40 miles from you"), so "in context ≠ in the room."
- **MEASURE oracle** — the AI can ask for exact distance, direction, and travel time between any two things at any scale, and trusts the engine over guesswork.
- **AI Spotlight** — the storyteller can keep its own off-screen villains/plots in view across turns (separate from your ⭐ pins); a global roster now includes a **skills digest** of what everyone can do.
- **Reasoning Passes** — a designer knob (1/2/3) that splits a turn into focused steps for steadier results on faster models (default 3).
**🗺️ Maps, Movement & Distance**
- **The engine owns all distance, direction, and travel time** between *any* two things at *any* scale — same room or across the world map (room ↔ city ↔ region ↔ planet ↔ galaxy). The storyteller asks via **MEASURE** and trusts the engine's number, so it stops calling far-off places "nearby" and narrates "~34 tiles NE" or "~40 miles west, ~2 days' march" accurately. It also knows an empire's territorial reach ("controls 12 holdings across 3 regions").
- **Painted, irregular maps are handled correctly.** Distance is measured to a location's **actual painted edge**, not a rough rectangle around it, and line-of-sight is blocked by a wall's **real painted shape** — so targeting, range, and vision work right even on hand-painted, non-rectangular maps.
- **One consistent footprint.** A location's on-map size now comes from a single source of truth (its painted shape, or its `token_scale` square, default 2×2) — so `token_scale` genuinely affects where you can walk and enter. (Three different movement paths used to each guess a location's size differently, which made the setting cosmetic and caused inconsistent collisions.)
- **Entering a place is reliable.** Stepping onto any location token — city, building, dungeon, ship — "swallows" you down into it (fixed a case bug where only an exact-lowercase type auto-entered), and door-snapping drops you just **inside the entrance** rather than the middle of the room.
- **Exiting drops you in the right spot.** Walking off the edge of an interior ejects you up to the parent map, **right beside that location's token on the side you left** — no more landing across town or at the far edge of the map — with loop-prevention so you don't immediately bounce back through the door.
**✨ World Creation & Tools**
- **Build My World** — type a one-line concept, pick a preset, or roll **🎲 Surprise Me**, and the AI fills the **entire** creation wizard; one click can generate a finished, playable world. Or fill one field at a time and **↻ Refine** ("make it darker", "add a rival empire").
- **Design Leveling with AI** — describe a vibe and the AI tailors your level cap, resource pools (rename Mana → Sanity/Heat), class gains, and milestones; the engine's math stays safe.
- **Settings from the main menu**, a **/advance** GM command that takes time units (minute→year), clearer **three chat modes** (Narrative / GM Console / Meta), an editable **Goals** rules tab, **📋 Full Example** cheat-sheets on every template tab, and smarter God-Mode Auditor/Creator (now covers jobs, blueprints, skills, orgs, armies, goals).
**🖼️ Visuals & UI**
- **ComfyUI workflows now live in-game** — paste API-format workflows into an Image Workflows tab, keep several named ones, and assign a specific workflow **per image type** (Characters, Maps, Items, Adversaries…). Bestiary/adversary cards can **auto-generate their art**. Fully backward-compatible with `comfy_api.json`.
- **Delete a campaign** from the load lobby, plus general map/token and window polish.
**🛠️ Stability & Fixes**
- A **game-wide code audit, front to back** (every backend + frontend file read line-by-line) — dozens of crash and save-loss fixes across trading, combat, save/load, disasters, news, the map, world creation, and Linux support.
- Highlights: stuck jobs, midnight money/goods leaks, towns draining to zero, caravans not delivering, loot valued at 0, instant environment-death deletions, characters mislabeled as armies, phantom "gold shortage" jobs, policy snowballs, and dead buttons — all fixed.
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*As always — thank you for testing. Please flag anything odd via feedback on Discord so we can hunt it down.*