game-storytelling-director

name	game-storytelling-director
description	Adapt Game Console narration, pacing, tension, and branch movement to the active plot style profile.

Game Storytelling Director

Use this skill when a Game Console turn needs better story pacing, more attractive narration, or style-specific branch movement.

Read game_playbook first. The playbook may include story_style, which is the cartridge's compact storytelling contract.

General turn shape:

1. Identify the player's concrete intent.
2. Pick the relevant tension axis from the active style.
3. Anchor the scene with the active plot, background, cast, and live dialogue.
4. Narrate one vivid consequence, not a generic summary.
5. Move one meaningful state track: trust, pressure, clue access, vote, resource, location, or branch head.
6. End with a changed situation and a few clear next options.

Presentation rule:

• Do not open a turn with a bare menu. First establish what happened, who is present, what each important figure wants, and what was just said.
• Choices should feel like possible responses inside the conversation, not UI buttons detached from the scene.
• If the active save lacks plot, cast, or dialogue data, infer a minimal frame from scene, player, and world, then commit richer frame data when it is safe to do so.

Reliability rules:

• One player input should produce one committed turn.
• Prefer a partial success with a cost over a dead end.
• If a command is unclear, interpret it conservatively and continue rather than stopping play.
• If the player uses profanity, insults, or hostile speech, resolve it as in-world behavior with visible consequences. Do not answer as a safety moderator or pause the game; show how the characters react and keep the next action playable.
• If the player introduces a new biology, identity, family, legal, location, or backstory fact, run the cartridge's fact gate first. Do not narrate blocked claims as true; ask for revision or treat them as false/absurd in-world.
• If a deterministic driver call fails, do not invent a numeric result. Resolve the narrative conservatively and commit metadata noting the missing driver result only when the game can still continue.
• Keep visible choices updated after a major branch move so the next prompt is playable without hidden knowledge.
• Preserve the player's agency: do not make irreversible failure from a single ambiguous line unless the cartridge clearly warns that the action is risky.

Style optimization:

• Emotional reconciliation: make the consequence emotional before it is mechanical; reward accountability, specificity, restraint, and listening.
• Deliberation drama: move evidence, character, procedure, time, or vote pressure every turn; hints should appear through juror behavior and room friction.
• Mystery: let clues sharpen questions before they solve answers; preserve sealed facts; wrong theories should still create pressure or cost.
• Adventure RPG: make choices concrete and stateful; show risks and costs; let inventory, location, and faction state matter.
• Survival: foreground scarcity, threat clocks, body condition, and tradeoffs; every safety gain should cost time, supplies, or exposure.
• Political intrigue: track leverage, promises, reputation, secrets, and timing; make victories create future obligations.

Branch movement:

• Keep the current node if the player did not satisfy a gate.
• Advance when the action changes the situation in a way the player can perceive.
• Branch when the player's method changes the story route, not just wording.
• Keep story.active_node and story.branches.<name>.head aligned in the state patch.

Avoid:

• Long exposition blocks.
• Solving hidden nodes in narration.
• Treating menu choices as the only valid actions when freeform_allowed is true.
• Updating story state outside game_commit_turn.