Wormtongue

Word of mouth: witnesses, reports and heat, gossip, lies, silencing, secrets and favors. Named for the whisperer in Théoden’s ear.

The ideas come from Thief’s guards and Skyrim’s crimes (witnesses who report), Hitman (disguises), and Talk of the Town (beliefs passed a hop at a time, weakening as they go).

• Crimes
• Witnessing
• Reports and heat
• Repeats
• Silencing
• Gossip
• Lies
• Secrets
• Favors
• State
• API
• Terms
• Events
• Config
• With other modules
• Example

Wormtongue keeps what people know as Reverie beliefs. Without Reverie it can count heat and favors, but nobody remembers what they saw, nobody gossips, and nobody reports.

Crimes

world.fellowship.group({ id: 'watch', kind: 'authority', label: 'the Watch' });
world.wormtongue.crime({ kind: 'strip', severity: 0.6, reportTo: 'watch' });
world.wormtongue.crime({ kind: 'theft', severity: 0.4 });

CrimeDef:

Crimes come from three places: the game’s world.sense with a crime’s kind; a deed with crime reported with seenBy (world.did); and actions people do with crime (steal_food with crime: 'theft'), which everyone in the place sees with strength 0.8 (crimeSeen).

Witnessing

When something is sensed, each witness in seenBy (not the actor):

1. Recognizes the actor, or doesn’t. The chance is strength × (1 - disguise), times recognizeStranger (0.5) if they don’t know the actor. They know the actor if they have a relationship record with them (Fellowship) or a file on them (Reverie).
2. Believes it. They believe did:<actor>:<kind> (or did:someone:<kind> if they didn’t recognize the actor) with the value what (or true), as something seen, with strength at least 0.3 (sawStrength).
3. Remembers it, as a memory of kind saw:<kind>, with importance 4 + 6 × severity for a crime (3 otherwise). The severity is the stimulus’s own if it gives one (a harm’s, from Morgul), else the crime’s, and a report it leads to adds heat and infamy by it too.
4. Feels it, for a crime: the crime’s feeling.
5. Maybe reports it, for a crime whose actor they recognized: with probability report × (0.5 + lawful) × (1 - fear × 0.3) × (1 - max(0, regard) × 0.8) × (1 - known) × reporting, clamped to 0..1, where lawful is their trait lawful (else their value law, else 0.5), fear is 1 - courage (0.5 if they have no courage trait), regard is their regard for the actor, 0.3 and 0.8 are fearWeight and loyalty, known is how well they know the actor (with Voice on, their familiarity with them, times familiarReport, up to familiarReportMax; 0 by default, so it counts for nothing until the game sets it), and reporting is the headline knob (the world’s times the witness’s own; 0: nobody reports). A report is scheduled reportDelay (10 to 90) minutes later.

Any stimulus kind is witnessed this way (beliefs and memories); only crimes add feelings and reports. The witnessed event is emitted for each witness.

Reports and heat

When a report comes due, it’s made only if the witness is still around and still holds the belief unsilenced. Then:

• the report is kept (the last 200, for 14 days);
• the actor’s heat rises by the crime’s heat;
• the actor’s infamy rises by 0.2 × severity (infamyAuthority) with the authority and 0.1 × severity (infamyGroups) with each of the witness’s groups (Fellowship);
• every member of the authority now believes it too (told by the witness, strength 0.8, toldAuthority);
• a report log entry and event.

Heat is the weight of reports against someone. It fades by heatDecay (to 85%) every day (to the power of the headline knob cooling), and is dropped under 0.05 (heatFloor). The game reads it with heat(actor) or the heat term, and can add to it with addHeat.

A member of the authority who hears about a crime through gossip takes it as a report too, with the teller as the witness and the belief’s value as what (not when the belief is that it didn’t happen).

Repeats

With repeatDays set, each witness keeps count of the times they’ve seen someone do the same thing lately, so what they say and do can build: “Hey! That’s not yours!” the first time, “What did I just tell you?” the second, “I’m not telling you again” the third.

Tyrell.create({ moduleConfig: { wormtongue: { repeatDays: 3, repeatReport: 0.5 } } });
world.sense({ kind: 'strip', actor: 'player', seenBy: ['goro'] });   // the second time he's seen it
world.wormtongue.seenTimes('goro', 'player', 'strip');                // 2
world.wormtongue.warn('goro', 'player', 'strip');                     // he said something about it
cityspeak.addLines([{ key: 'again', topic: 'strip', when: ['witnessed:player.strip>=2', 'warned:player.strip>=1'], text: 'What did I just tell you?' }]);

• Each sighting counts, whether or not the witness could say who it was (step 1 above): they know it’s the same one doing it again. A count for each witness, actor and kind, with when it was last seen. The witnessed log entry and event carry times, and the story tells it as seen “again”.
• A warning counts when the game says the witness had a word with them about it: warn(witness, actor, kind) (an input), which logs warn. Only a sighting still counted can be warned about.
• It lapses: repeatDays without seeing it again, and the count (warnings and all) starts over from the next sighting; lapsed counts are let go at midnight.
• It makes a report likelier: each time before that the witness saw it multiplies the chance they report it by 1 + repeatReport × (times - 1) (0 by default: no change).

Read it with the witnessed:<actor>.<kind> and warned:<actor>.<kind> terms (lines, choices, anything with conditions), or seenTimes and warnedTimes. With repeatDays at 0, the default, nothing is counted or kept, and a world hashes as it did without it.

Silencing

world.wormtongue.silence('lena', 'player', 'pay', 40);
world.wormtongue.silence('kofi', 'player', 'scare');
world.on('silenced', (e) => console.log(e.witness, e.ok ? 'agreed' : 'refused'));

A witness can be paid or scared off. The chance they agree:

• paid: clamp(greed × 0.6 + min(1, amount / 100) × 0.5 - honesty × 0.4 + 0.1) (bribeGreed, bribeFull, bribeMoney, bribeHonesty, bribeBase);
• scared: clamp((1 - courage) × 0.8 - honesty × 0.2 + 0.1) (scareFear, scareHonesty, scareBase).

Traits default to 0.5 (config.traitDefault). If they agree, every belief they hold about the actor’s deeds (did:<actor>:*) is silenced: they won’t gossip it, a pending report is dropped, and they no longer count as a witness. A paid witness who agrees gets the amount added to their money; Wormtongue doesn’t take it from anyone, so take it from the player yourself. Scaring someone gives them the scared feeling and lowers their regard for the actor by 0.3 (scareRegard), whether or not it works.

Silencing works on what the witness believes about the named actor. A witness who didn’t recognize the actor (did:someone:...) has nothing to silence, and an authority that has already heard is past silencing.

Gossip

When two people meet, each may pass one thing on to the other: with probability gossipChance × (0.5 + talkative) × gossip, the last the headline knob (the world’s times the teller’s own; 0: nobody tells anybody). They pick the belief most worth telling:

• not silenced, fewer than maxHops (3) tellings from whoever saw it, not a key starting with @;
• not something the listener already believes the same way;
• not about the listener (“not to their face”);
• a secret only if the teller dislikes the person it’s about (regard under -0.3, secretSpite), and isn’t that person;
• scored by juiciness (a crime 3, any other did: 1.5, anything else 1: juicyCrime, juicyDeed) times strength times 0.99 (gossipRecency) per hour since they last heard it.

The listener believes it, as told, from the teller, with strength str × trust × 0.9 (toldKeep) and one more hop, where trust is clamp(0.6 + regard × 0.4, 0.2, 1) (trustBase, trustRegard, trustMin, trustMax) from the listener’s regard for the teller (0.7, trustAlone, without Fellowship). A told log entry and event follow.

Lies

A teller who is dishonest (honesty under 0.3, liarBelow) and dislikes the person a did: belief is about (regard under -0.3, lieSpite) lies with probability lieChance (0.5) times the headline knob lies: they shift the blame, naming someone else they dislike (regard under -0.2, scapegoat, not the listener) as the one who did it. did:ruth:theft goes on as did:dev:theft, with the same value. A lie never clears anyone: with nobody else to blame, or for a belief that someone didn’t do something (false), they pass on what they believe.

The told event and log entry carry lie: true only when the blame was shifted.

Secrets

world.wormtongue.secret('affair', { about: 'tomas', key: 'affair:tomas', value: true, knownBy: ['ines'] });

A Secret is { about, key, value, knownBy }. Declaring one (an input) gives everyone in knownBy the belief. Secrets are gossiped only by people who dislike the person they’re about. Each new teller adds the listener to knownBy; when four people know (exposedAt), an exposed event fires (once).

Favors

world.wormtongue.owe('kofi', 'dev', 2);     // Kofi owes Dev two favors
world.wormtongue.owes('kofi', 'dev');       // 2
world.wormtongue.owe('kofi', 'dev', -2);    // settled

Favors are a count per pair (debtor, creditor), dropped at 0 or below. Conditions read them with owes:<id> and owed:<id>.

State

In world.s.mod.wormtongue:

Pending reports are module timers in the world’s queue.

API

world.wormtongue. Input methods are recorded and safe from the game.

Terms

heat / heat:<actor>, owes:<id>, owed:<id>, saw:<actor>.<kind>, witnessed:<actor>.<kind>, warned:<actor>.<kind>. See Conditions.

Events

Log entries: witnessed (with times when it’s been seen before), warn, report, silenced, told, exposed, owes.

A '*' listener gets { kind, ...payload, event }. Read the event’s name from event: for witnessed and report, whose payloads have their own kind, kind is the crime ('theft').

Config

Tyrell.create({ moduleConfig: { wormtongue: { ... } } }):

A person’s own tune: { wormtongue: { ... } } multiplies the knobs for them: as the teller for gossip and lies, the witness for reporting, the actor for heat and cooling. The finer numbers, each explained in Tuning: heatPerSeverity (10), heatFloor (0.05), sawStrength (0.3), crimeMemory (4), severityMemory (6), plainMemory (3), fearWeight (0.3), loyalty (0.8), familiarReport (0) and familiarReportMax (1), crimeSeen (0.8), infamyAuthority (0.2), infamyGroups (0.1), toldAuthority (0.8), the bribe’s bribeGreed (0.6), bribeFull (100), bribeMoney (0.5), bribeHonesty (0.4), bribeBase (0.1), the threat’s scareFear (0.8), scareHonesty (0.2), scareBase (0.1), scareRegard (-0.3), and gossip’s secretSpite (-0.3), juicyCrime (3), juicyDeed (1.5), gossipRecency (0.99), liarBelow (0.3), lieSpite (-0.3), scapegoat (-0.2), trustBase (0.6), trustRegard (0.4), trustMin (0.2), trustMax (1), trustAlone (0.7), toldKeep (0.9), exposedAt (4). During play, world.tune('wormtongue', { ... }) changes any of them as an input.

With other modules

• Reverie holds everything people know (beliefs), what they saw (memories), and how they feel about it.
• Fellowship decides who knows whom (recognition), how far people trust each other (gossip strength), who lies about whom, and where reports go (authority groups, infamy).
• Voice: with familiarReport set, a witness who has talked with the actor and told them things is slower to report them.
• Mentat: actions tagged 'illegal' cost more to plan for honest people and people with heat.
• Gaff: metric:heat.player lets storylets react to heat.

Example

world.fellowship.group({ id: 'watch', kind: 'authority' });
world.wormtongue.crime({ kind: 'strip', severity: 0.6, reportTo: 'watch' });

world.on('report', (r) => { if (r.actor === 'player') showToast(`${world.get(r.witness).name} reported you. Heat ${r.heat}.`); });

// the game saw the player strip the market's till in front of Dev and Ruth
world.sense({ kind: 'strip', actor: 'player', what: 'till', place: 'market', seenBy: ['dev', 'ruth'] });
world.reverie.belief('dev', 'did:player:strip');      // 'till' (if he recognized the player)
world.wormtongue.witnesses('player');                  // the ones who did

// pay one off before the report comes in (and take the money from the player)
world.wormtongue.silence('ruth', 'player', 'pay', 40);