Goals

A goal is a short authored plan a person pursues on their own turns, written as goal <name>, <priority> … end goal. Priorities are critical, high, medium, and low, and they only decide which goal wins when more than one is live at once.

active when <condition> gates the goal. The condition reads character or story state — it is breaking (a conscience band), it is not calm (a mood), a story state such as second-day, or a compound joined with and. It does not read a fact's value: writing active when the ledger is forged fails with analysis.unknown-entity, because the ledger resolves as an entity there. Gate on state, and let a thinks line carry what the person believes.

The body is a short list of steps, one per turn. Four of them carry a plan: seek <person or room> walks toward something one room at a time, move to <room> walks to a place, acquire <thing> waits until the thing is in the room and then takes it, and give <thing> to <person> waits until the recipient is in the room and then hands it over (the person must already hold it). The rest act on the spot: drop <thing>, say <phrase> to <target> delivers an authored line, act <phrase> narrates one, and wait for <condition> holds the goal until something is true. Steps are authored behavior, not a planner — nothing is searched or invented, and a goal that cannot make its next step simply does not act this turn. A conversation in progress suspends pursuit, so a person will not walk out mid-sentence to run an errand.

A step can also be an action's own words, with the goal's owner as the one acting: open the door, go east, conjure the key into the Vault. The line is matched against the standard grammar and the story's own define action grammar exactly as an acting statement is, and it runs the real action through the same pipeline as a typed command — it can be refused by an on clause, witnessed by whoever is present, and reacted to with after. Such a step acts now: nothing waits for it, and a refusal is retried next turn, narrating each time the player is there to see it. The standard verbs keep their plan: take the key, pick up the key, or get the key are the same step as acquire the key, hand the key to the player is give, and discard the key is drop. There is no when on a step — a step that should not run yet waits, with wait for.

define action conjuring
  grammar
    conjure the item into the place
  the item must be reachable
  otherwise refuse conjure-what

define trait conjurable
  on the wizard conjuring
    move it to the Vault
  end on
end trait

create the key
  conjurable

  A key.

create the wizard
  a person
  in the Tower

  goal secure-the-key, high
    active when the player has the key
    seek the player
    take the key
    conjure the key into the Vault
    say wizard-gloats
  end goal

A person's own states: list is the ordinary World > States construct, driven with change <the person> to <state>, and is often what a goal is gated on.

create Jonas Reed
  a person, proper
  states: denying, confessed

  goal seek-the-vault, high
    active when Jonas Reed is breaking
    seek Marta Kell
    move to the Vault
  end goal