code_of_conquest_dnd/docs/superpowers/specs/2026-07-12-content-track-design.md

# Content track — design

**Date:** 2026-07-12
**Status:** approved (design); implementation = a docs restructure + one code/content item (currency)

Folds the authored content of the game — lore, economy, items, quests, the map —
into a tracked, bounded track alongside the systems roadmap, so the authoring
work is countable rather than open-ended.

---

## Problem

`docs/roadmap.md` sequences **systems** (M0–M9). Content appears in it only
implicitly — "item seed-data", "the quest model", "shop economy" — never as work
with a size. `content/lore/canon-roadmap.md` tracks **canon** but is thin: an
"Authored" list and a three-bullet "Pending".

So the content needed for a finished game — lore, an economy, every weapon,
armour piece, consumable and trinket, quests, the map — is untracked and
unbounded. It *looks* infinite, because nothing bounds it. That is the actual
problem to solve: not "write more content", but "make the content finite".

## Approach

**Demand-driven content, gated by the milestone that consumes it.** Content is
not authored to completeness; it is authored to the requirements of the next
system milestone. The cure for overwhelm is not a longer list — it is a list
with an end.

Two roadmaps, cross-linked, with clear ownership. Rejected alternatives:

- **One roadmap** (fold content into `docs/roadmap.md`) — the roadmap becomes
  huge, and content that serves no milestone (pure lore) has no home.
- **Content-first** (author the world broadly, then build systems against it) —
  authors content no system has yet demanded; the volume is the problem.
- **Content-type tracks** (separate lanes for lore / items / quests / map) —
  mirrors how the work *feels*, and is the structure most likely to read as four
  infinite parallel lists.

## The slice

The demand comes from a **vertical slice: one town + one dungeon.** The smallest
thing that is a *game*. Every system (creation, combat, dialogue, inventory,
shop, quest log, map) is exercised exactly once, against real content.

Breadth afterwards is **repetition of a proven shape**, not invention. Adding a
second town becomes a known quantity of work against a known template. That is
what ends the overwhelm permanently — not this slice, but what the slice teaches
about the cost of the next one.

Rejected: **one region** (3–4× the authoring, before the shape is proven) and
**systems-first with placeholder content** (tunes an economy with fake items,
tests dialogue with fake NPCs; every system pays a second pass when real content
lands).

---

## 1. Doc structure

| Doc | Owns |
|---|---|
| `docs/roadmap.md` | **Systems.** M0–M9, unchanged in shape. |
| `content/roadmap.md` | **Content.** Spine · Bill of Materials · Backlog. |

- `docs/roadmap.md` gains one line per milestone M4–M9: **"Content it consumes →"**,
  pointing into the content roadmap's BOM.
- `content/lore/canon-roadmap.md` **moves to `content/roadmap.md`**, leaving a
  pointer behind. The move is load-bearing: an items-and-prices table does not
  belong under `lore/`, and the file stops being only about canon.

The content roadmap has exactly three sections, and **only one of them is ever
the work**:

1. **Spine** — the slice's world. Authored once; gates everything downstream.
2. **Bill of Materials** — a countable checklist, per milestone, of what that
   milestone consumes. Numbers, not vibes.
3. **Backlog** — everything the slice does not need. Named so it is not lost;
   parked so it is not looming.

### The rule

> **Never author anything that is not in the Bill of Materials.**

An idea that arrives goes to the Backlog, and is then no longer carried. The
Backlog is not a debt. It is where ideas go to be safe.

---

## 2. The Spine

Greywater Docks and one dungeon — the cosmology (`content/lore/cosmology.md`)
touching ground for the first time.

- **The town** — **Greywater Docks.** A rot-black wharf where the river meets
  the sea trade; everyone owes someone. **~6 NPCs:** Fenn (promoted from M2 test
  fixture to real NPC), the harbourmaster, a fence, an innkeeper, a dock rough,
  one more.
- **The chain** — **"The Missing Ledger,"** extended from the existing hook.
  Town → road → dungeon → back. Four objectives.
- **The turn** — the debt Fenn cannot cover is a **blood** debt. The
  harbourmaster is named in the ledger because he is the one *collecting*. The
  dungeon is the harvest site.
- **The patron** — **Ghaul the Yoke.** He is already, by name, the king of debt
  and bondage; a ledger of what men owe is his liturgy. This makes the quest
  chain and the cosmology **the same object** rather than two things bolted
  together, and gives `rule.blood-price` its first concrete instance.
- **The dungeon** — the harvest site. One enemy family (the yoked) + a boss.

**Adopting Greywater, not replacing it.** Fenn is the NPC the aliveness question
was actually answered with (M2, live-proven): frightened, aggrieved, covering it
with irritation. The ledger hook already has teeth. The slice's job is to make
Greywater *deep*, not to make it *new*.

---

## 3. Bill of Materials

Countable. This is the anti-overwhelm device.

| Milestone | Content it consumes | Count |
|---|---|---|
| **M4** creation | Origins, calling blurbs, the Bloodsworn's patron choice | ~4 |
| **M5** combat | 1 enemy family (4 units) + boss; abilities for the 3 POC classes | ~14 |
| **M6** dialogue | 6 NPCs — persona + `knowledge[]` + gated topics (§6) | ~6 |
| **M7** inventory | 6 weapons, 4 armour, 3 consumables, **1 cursed item** (+STR / −LCK — §7 says day-one) | ~14 |
| **M8** world | 3 map locations + the road; shop stock + the **price table in copper**; the quest chain | ~8 |
| **M9** flavour | Authored fallback per AI surface (§13); shrine + Luck-drift events; humiliation seeds | ~10 |

**≈56 discrete authored pieces for a complete, playable game.** An estimate, and
likely optimistic — but an estimate with an end, which is the entire point.

Explicitly **not** in the slice: rings, amulets, trinkets. A second town. The
other six kings and their cults. All parked in the Backlog.

---

## 4. Economy — two systems (§18)

The economy is not one thing. Per charter §18 ("when adding a system, state which
side of §2 it falls on — if it is both, it is two systems"):

- **The loop is code** (§2: state) — purse, buy/sell, the ~40% fence rate,
  gritty disabled-CTA reasons. Already sequenced as M8's *Shop economy*.
- **The numbers are content** — what a shortsword costs, a night at the inn, an
  ale, the quest's purse. These live in the BOM as the **price table**.

### Currency model

```
1 gold   = 100 silver = 10,000 copper
1 silver =              100 copper
```

**Gold is scary.** At 10,000 copper to the gold, a peasant's whole life is
copper, a mercenary's fee is silver, and a gold coin is a plot point. The party
counting coppers for an inn bed is §3 grit, and Brannoc has an opinion about it.

**This is a change, not a new thing — and it has a client consumer.** It lands as
its own small item **before M7**, cheapest now while `content/world/items/`
contains exactly two files:

- A `Currency` value type — **store everything in copper**, format only at the
  display edge (`12g 40s 8c`).
- `coin.json` → real denominations; all prices re-denominated.
- The Main Window shell's command-bar purse updated (it currently shows a flat
  gold value).

*§2: state · depends on nothing · goal: money that means something.*

---

## 5. Process

- Each BOM line is authored through the **`/world-building` skill** — it
  reconciles against existing canon, writes the build tool's source format, and
  verifies the build stays green.
- **Adopting Greywater means authoring it upward.** The hand-written JSON under
  `content/world/{locations,quests,npcs,items}` becomes
  `content/lore/greywater.md`, and `python -m content_build` emits `world/` from
  it.
- **The build tool needs two new namespaces: `item` and `quest`.** Its legal
  namespaces today (`tools/content_build/model.py`) are `town`, `place`,
  `region`, `faction`, `person`, `rule`, `rumor`, `fact`, `secret`, `npc` — so
  **locations are already modeled** (`town`/`place`/`region`) and only items and
  quests fall outside it. Adding those two namespaces (model, emit, resolve) is a
  prerequisite of the M7 and M8 BOM lines, and is done against content that
  already has tests.
- **Moving or deleting generated content is a client change.** `content/world/**`
  has a client consumer: `client/scripts/content/content_db.gd` (via
  `client/scripts/harness/npc_harness.gd`) and its GUT tests in
  `client/tests/unit/test_content_db.gd`. The Duncarrow lesson, applied
  preemptively — check `client/` before any content move.

---

## Consequences

- Content becomes **countable and bounded**. "All the items" becomes fourteen.
- The cosmology stops being abstract — Ghaul, the blood-price, and possession all
  land in the slice's quest chain.
- The build tool gains `item` and `quest` namespaces, completing the content
  model (locations already exist as `town`/`place`/`region`).
- The currency change jumps the queue ahead of M4, because it is cheapest while
  the item set is nearly empty.
- The Backlog absorbs everything the slice does not need, so it can be forgotten
  without being lost.

## Out of scope

Authoring the slice's actual content — this spec builds the **container**. Each
BOM line is its own `/world-building` session. The Greywater canon session (town,
NPCs, the ledger chain's four objectives, Ghaul's harvest site) is the next
piece of work, not part of this one.