Scoring

Scoring is opt-in. A story turns it on with a use scoring line in its header. After that, a score <name> worth N line declares a scoring identity, and award <name> grants it. Without use scoring, a score or award line anywhere in the story is a compile error. This is deliberate. A game with no score should say so rather than answer SCORE with a number.

score and award are legal under four owners: the story header, a create block, a define trait, and a define action. This section shows all four in one story, because where a score lives is a real design choice.

The story header owns scores that belong to the whole game:

story "Scoring" by "Sharpee Docs"
  id: chord-ref-scoring
  version: 0.0.1
  use scoring
  score green-thumb worth 5

A trait owns a score every entity composed with it can grant, without the trait knowing which entities those are:

define trait prunable
  score tidy-secateurs worth 5

  phrases en-US
    pruned:
      You snip away the dead wood.

  on pruning it
    award tidy-secateurs
    phrase pruned
  end on
end trait

A create block owns a score specific to that one entity, and here is the payoff of owner-scoping. The damask rose and the moss rose both declare score deadheaded worth 5, and those are two different scores, one per rose, because each is owned by its own entity:

create the damask rose
  aka damask
  prunable
  in the Rose Border
  score deadheaded worth 5

  A crimson damask, badly overgrown.

  after pruning it
    award deadheaded
    award green-thumb
  end after

The damask's after clause awards its own deadheaded, and also the story-wide green-thumb. award <name> resolves owner-first: it looks for a score of that name on the enclosing owner, then falls back to the story header. So the same word deadheaded under the damask means the damask's score, and under the moss rose means the moss rose's: no collision, no prefixing.

An action owns a score granted whenever the action succeeds:

define action composting
  grammar
    compost the stuff
  score turned-the-heap worth 10
  award turned-the-heap
  phrase composted
  phrases en-US
    composted:
      Straight onto the heap with it.

Two properties fall out of this model. First, the maximum score is the sum of every declared worth, computed at load time. Second, awards dedupe by identity (ADR-129): awarding the same score twice grants it once, so award is idempotent and the explicit , once modifier is never needed for correctness; it only documents intent. This is why the pattern is "declare the score on the owner, award it in an after clause" rather than guarding awards behind first-time checks.

Ranks

use scoring can take an indented body of ranks. A rank names a threshold in absolute points, and SCORE reports the rung the player has reached:

  use scoring, announce all
    rank "Curious Visitor" at 0
    rank "Attentive Guest" at 40 says settled-in
    rank "Master of the Folly" at 120

The threshold is absolute points, never a percentage of the maximum. A story that raises its ceiling mid-game would otherwise demote players who had earned nothing and lost nothing. says <key> names a phrase from your own phrases block, spoken on the turn the rung is crossed. A rung with no says speaks an overridable platform line, and announce silent turns announcements off.

The announce mode sets how a single award that crosses several rungs at once reads. all reports each crossing in order, collapsed reports only the top rung, combined speaks one line for the whole span, and silent says nothing while the crossing still happens.