2026-09-07 13:16:10
Anonymous:
Visionary: show Flood pressure, worthwhile intervention combat and an inhabited refuge response; retire chat-bound notice
hold the flood/brief.md ..
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**2026-09-07 · Game Visionary · Working design direction.** The owner has authorized an hourly vision pass and changes or removals where the design contradicts its identity. The direction below synthesizes the current campaign and D024; it is a design judgment, not owner approval of the fiction or permission to develop.
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**The game:** You are a surveyor keeping a refuge alive in a drowned city. Survive the Flood long enough to understand the machinery that moves it, turn that machinery into routes and weapons, and decide what your home should keep running once you discover what powers it.
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**The game:** You are a surveyor keeping a small refuge alive in a drowned city. The Flood is the mass of creatures that overruns its machinery and roads. Survive that mass long enough to understand what moves it, turn the machinery into routes and weapons, and decide what your home should keep running once you discover what powers it.
**The theme:** Survival makes you responsible for the system you depend on. The machine that endangers you also keeps your refuge working. Mastery can remove an immediate danger and earn an easy, profitable return. Responsibility lies in the lasting state you choose for the city; it does not require a new fight, payment or uncertainty on every visit.
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**The recurring player experience:** prepare for an intended intervention; enter under crowd pressure; observe and test a cause; change a route, circuit or machine; bring home salvage and understanding; return because that understanding or a previous intervention makes a different approach worthwhile. Combat, exploration, equipment and refuge investment must feed this experience.
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### One return, in plain language
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### Two visits, in plain language
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*Written illustration from [Campaign’s later Tram visit](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign?revision=0cafb9), not playtest evidence.* Earlier, you learned that the arriving crowd is delivered through the city’s machinery. Before returning, you close an upstream holding gate to delay its first delivery. At the tram yard you clear the enemy blocking the rail, switch power to the tram and ride up. Below, the warning lamp flashes and no crowd arrives: your understanding worked.
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*Written illustration from [Campaign r9's Tram visits](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign?revision=93f482), not playtest evidence.* On your first trip, you switch power to an old tram. Its lamp draws a whole arriving mass up the road behind you. A large creature blocks the rail; while you cut it down, the crowd catches the tram. You fight only long enough to climb aboard, spend your medical kit at the next quiet moment, and put out the lamp at the summit. The mass spreads where the light abandoned it. You read the timetable, take one bundle and return by the dry stairs through the edge of that spread crowd. You learned that light can tow the Flood—and that every powered route darkens another.
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You leave the tram’s light at the summit so the next crowd climbs away from the road your refuge uses. That keeps the lower gates unpowered, but you know their hand crank. You take a salvage bundle down the dry stairs, crank the gates open and go home before the next crowd. No extra fight is inserted to cancel your successful plan. If you choose to stay for another observation, you can sacrifice that bundle to extend a decoy lamp’s fuel instead. Understanding, equipment, danger and care for home are parts of the same decision.
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Much later, you have learned that the creatures are delivered through the city's machinery. You close an upstream holding gate before returning, delaying this district's first delivery. You clear the same rail obstruction, switch power to the tram and ride up. Below, the warning lamp flashes and nothing arrives: your understanding worked. You leave the tram's lamp at the summit so the next crowd climbs away from the depot road used by your refuge, take a salvage bundle down the dry stairs, crank the dark lower gates open and go home before that crowd comes.
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At home, the consequence is more than a board icon: the familiar runner waiting beside the barred depot-route marker moves it to open and takes the refuge's handcart onto the safer road. No currency or upkeep task appears. The lower Tram gates remain dark, and the next crowd now occupies the summit road you may need for the head-works. You traded one future approach for a route your people can use now. Dread became confidence, then responsibility.
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### Why combat belongs
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Combat earns its place when it buys an intervention rather than replacing one. At the [Lock Flight](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign?revision=93f482), the surveyor deliberately keeps the main crowd held at the lower light, steps to its edge and kills ten pursuing walkers to fill one battery. That charge powers the dry lock-house door for two seconds without lighting the upper road and calling the whole mass there. The choice is exposure now versus a worse route later; its visible consequence is an open door and a crowd that stayed where planned. Fighting with no useful place to spend its local charge does not earn a required encounter.
### What earns a place
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**The decision test:** name the player's choice, its visible consequence, and the part of this experience it serves. If those cannot be stated plainly, simplify or combine the element; if it still contributes nothing, remove it from the active design. A feature's origin in an inspiration, its author, and its prior acceptance do not answer this test. Existing control, safety and readability rules can earn their place by making that choice understandable and playable; each small rule need not carry the whole theme.
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**Current vision pass — 2026-09-07.** Kept the established identity and the catalogue’s distinct functions provisionally; removed Siphon’s adjacent-cargo restriction from [U5](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Equipment/Utility%20Modules#siphon-u5-retained-targetfeed-and-overflow-defined) and its dependent rules, examples and reader definitions. The meaningful sacrifice is salvage for power, not where the bundle lands. [Build Paths](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Equipment/Build%20Paths) now follows the integrated Tram: an earned early return or optional extra lure margin, with its actual available fuel. [Equipment](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Equipment) opens with the player’s purpose and retires its superseded catalogue to existing history.
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**Current vision pass — 2026-09-07.** [REV106](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=615c4d) was right that the owner-facing illustration showed mastery but skipped the danger that made it meaningful. The Brief now pairs the retained first Tram visit with the earned return, defines the Flood at first use, drops the distracting optional-converter aside, states the later route cost and gives combat one job that serves a machine intervention. The easy return remains easy.
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**Refuge decision:** keep the no-upkeep, no-population-management boundary; reject an uninhabited refuge. [Colony](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Colony#visionary-decision-the-refuge-is-inhabited-not-simulated) now requires a small recurring survivor cast and shows the existing Tram intervention through their behavior at home. This is presentation of current route and Stop states, not a new economy or defence system. It adds a real character-asset burden; identity outranks the earlier attempt to avoid every human presence.
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**Persuaded by the lead:** [Campaign r8’s mastery challenge](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign?revision=0cafb9#for-the-visionary-the-intended-experience-as-the-lead-understands-it-and-three-tensions) is right: forcing another wait or fight would punish the understanding this game promises. The theme now says so explicitly. Teach the machinery’s distinct causes through successive discoveries, not a pitch that front-loads every term. **Still unresolved:** the refuge’s consequences are mostly conveyed by boards and later district states; the player’s sense of caring for a lived-in home needs a concrete treatment. Next pass: follow one existing district change home and decide what must become visible there, without adding upkeep or a new subsystem. Earlier vision wording: [Brief 0fff74](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief?revision=0fff74).
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**Next pressure point:** decide the support-assembly contest using the same-objective comparison already requested, then test whether the route runner and manual-bench aftermath survive that choice. Project-room messages handled this pass: **4, 16, 17, 18 and 20**; last successfully processed message ID: **20**. Conclusions used: Equipment accepts the Siphon simplification; World submitted its notation pass; PM accepts earned ease, requests the early encounter and refuge consequence, and withholds acceptance of World's separate wording regression. The World correction remains its author's task. Earlier vision pass: [Brief 6d869e](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief?revision=6d869e).
## PMU008 — owner feedback changes the immediate priority
