THE GRID — a city where your name is the money
A megacity, its docks, its clinics, its data vaults, and its syndicates — the setting the genre is built on. The engine is unchanged, and the theme pack adds one mechanic: Standing is the currency. Every act costs Standing, every contract pays in Standing, and the market trades in reputation.
01The pitch
You are a name on the Grid. You work the dock, run a route, keep a clinic open, keep a vault honest. There is no separate money: the number that buys things is the number that says who you are. A bad act costs it, a good contract pays it, and the top-10 share of Standing is printed on the season page every week.
The fantasy is the genre's own: a city, a crew, a name that moves. This theme is the control experiment — it is the theme closest to what the incumbent's players already want, so it is the theme that tells us whether the engine's fairness rules can carry the genre's emotional core.
Why this theme is fifth and not first: it is the hardest to make honest. A reputation economy is a social club, and a social club is exactly the structure that makes new players material for old ones — the thing opening 2 in the design document is built to remove.
02The theme pack — the engine's nouns, in theme words
Four bars, four stats, six jobs, twelve acts, six offices, twelve commodities. The numbers are the prototype's starting values, sized so a season in any theme is comparable to a season in another. This is the theme file, printed.
The bars (renamed, same shape)
| Engine bar | Theme name | Spent on | Recovery rule the theme supplies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vigour | Frame | the dock, the route, the muscle | rest, and a clinic: a facility raises the recovery |
| Nerve | Nerve | the run, the data vault, the night route | rest, and the rota the Grid Marshal sets |
| Focus | Focus | fixing, coding, clinic work, teaching | a workshop: a facility raises the Focus cap |
| Standing | Standing | contracts, office, brand, command — and it is the currency | the market pays it, a court lowers it, a brand contract lends it |
The jobs (6)
| Job | Wage / day | Stat gain | Requires | Daily points, spent on promotions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dock hand | 200 | Body +1 | none | Dock points |
| Courier | 260 | Body +1, Nerve +1 | a route share | Route points |
| Clinic nurse | 300 | Focus +2 | Focus ≥ 15 | Clinic points |
| Data runner | 340 | Focus +2, Nerve +1 | Standing ≥ 20 | Data points |
| Security | 420 | Body +2, Nerve +1 | Standing ≥ 30 | Security points |
| Fixer | 500 | Nerve +2, Insight +1 | Standing ≥ 40 | Brand points |
The acts (12) — a theme names the verbs, and only names them
| Theme name | Engine act | Cost | Ticks | Published risk | Published reward |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| work the dock | freight | Frame 12, Standing 4 | 2 | 4 % loss | 120–300, in Standing |
| run a night route | risk | Nerve 14, Frame 10, Standing 6 | 2 | 14 % loss | 200–600, in Standing |
| fix a rig | craft | Focus 10 | 2 | 7 % fail | 160–340, in Standing |
| keep the clinic open | upkeep | Focus 12, Standing 3 | 1 / tick | 0 % | the ward stays open |
| run data | risk | Focus 14, Nerve 10, Standing 8 | 3 | 18 % loss | 300–800, in Standing |
| muscle a contract | risk | Frame 16, Nerve 12, Standing 12 | 2 | 22 % loss of Standing | a contract, at a rate |
| sign a brand contract | trade | Standing 10 | 1 | 6 % default | a brand fee, in Standing |
| lease a dock window | trade | Standing 6 | 1 | 3 % dispute | dock time, in Standing |
| audit a vault | office | Focus 8, Standing 5 | 1 | 0 % | the price history is checked |
| teach an apprentice | teach | Focus 6, Standing 4 | 2 | 0 % | apprentice gain +1 |
| garrison and watch a strip | defence | Frame 8, Standing 5 | 1 / tick | 0 % | defence + garrison value, and every warning printed |
| go before the court | office | Standing 8 | 1 | 0 % | the court hears it |
The map — the prototype's six districts, tiered
| Tier | Position | Yield / day | Garrison required | Upkeep / day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | the residential strip | 20 | 2 | 5 |
| 2 | the clinic | 60 | 6 | 14 |
| 3 | the arcade | 110 | 10 | 25 |
| 4 | the dock window | 180 | 12 | 35 |
| 5 | the data vault | 320 | 18 | 60 |
| 6 | the syndicate strip | 600 | 26 | 120 |
Offices, commodities, currency
03The signature mechanic: Standing-as-Currency
One mechanic per theme, and one only — the rule that keeps five themes on one engine. The formula below is what the engine computes every tick, printed in the rules page in the game.
Why it is a mechanic, not a flavour
The economy is the social layer
Money and reputation are the same number, so the season's money rules (the top-10 share, the median net worth) are also the season's fairness numbers. There is no place to hide an oligopoly.
Bankruptcy is a position change, not a punishment
Standing at zero costs an office and a contract. It does not remove a person, and it is recoverable by a contract. A poor player is not a target; they are a name with less to spend.
This is the theme that tests the fight
The muscle act costs Standing and gains a contract. If the cohort wants a person-against-person layer, this theme is where the kill test will show it, and the honest answer will be a tier-matched arena with no loot.
Beat 1
the strip is chartered (40 names)
Beat 2
the first Standing audit: every name's gross, printed
Beat 3
the clinic is built; the ward rota is set
Beat 4
a brand contract defaults, and the Debt Master's register is audited
Beat 5
the data vault opens (tier 5)
Beat 6
the dock window is contested (tier 4)
Beat 7
a Standing appeal goes before the Brand Judge
Beat 8
the Grid Marshal election, and the watch rota is printed
Beat 9
a security contract, executed by the engine
Beat 10
the syndicate strip is contested (tier 6)
Beat 11
the top-10 share crosses 30 %, and the season's next rule is tax
Beat 12
the season ledger publishes every name's gross, every brand, every default
04Art direction, and the feel
Text-first: no images, no animation, no sound. The theme supplies words, a palette, and a shape, and every object carries its numbers in text.
05What breaks this theme
The risks, named before anyone builds it. Each one has a test attached, so the honest list is a plan, not a mood.
A reputation economy is a club Undecided
Standing-as-currency means an established name is rich in the same number that says they are known. That is exactly the structure that makes a new player material for an old one, and the design's answer is the no-person-target rule plus the tier match. If the tier match is weak, this theme reproduces the genre's worst feature with better paperwork.
Test: Measure the day-1 to day-7 retention of the first ten new names.
No fight, in the closest fight theme Undecided
This is the theme players pick because it looks like the game they already play, and the engine has no person-against-person layer. The first season will feel like a missing room. The honest fix is the tier-matched arena from the kill tests, and the honest risk is that adding it reopens the griefing problem.
Test: Run kill test 2 in this theme first, not last.
Standing is intangible on a screen Undecided
A player can see a district; a reputation number is a row. A theme with no physical object to lose has weaker moments, and this theme's object is a number.
Test: Count how many players mention a Standing change in the season page, against a district change.
The market trades in dignity Undecided
A bankruptcy is a loss of face, not just of money. The engine treats it as a position change, and people will not.
Test: Ask the cohort what a bankruptcy felt like, at week 6.
Neon is the crowded skin Undecided
Street Crime, Gangster Nation, The Fifth Family, Velkran, Bootleggers, BadFellas, Mob Wars, Mobsters United, Made Man Mafia: the genre's shelf is this theme. We would be entering a crowded market with a better rules page, and nothing else.
Test: Read the competitor pages every season; the shelf moves.
It is the theme the genre's players will choose, and the theme that will tell us the truth about the design's two hardest bets: the queue, and the removal of person-against-person conflict. If the engine can make a syndicate city feel worth playing without a fight, it can make any theme work.