News and the Feed

In a modern or sci-fi world, what your character does can travel three ways. Which one, how far and how it is told is decided when word spreads (the reputation tick), a few in-game days after a deed. Engine

• News. An outlet runs a story with a headline, told its own way: a tabloid runs the worst version, a law-and-order paper calls you a thug. A local paper or station feed reaches its region; national news, the system network and faction feeds reach everywhere.
• Posts and videos. Someone posts what they saw, or a phone video. These spread by how many people share them, not by distance: a post that goes viral is known across the world in a day, distorted on the way, with comments under it.
• Word of mouth. Small, local things stay among the people who were there, as in any world.

A story names you only when there is a reason: you were on camera and people already know your face, a witness knew you, the police named you, or you posted it yourself. Otherwise you are "a woman in a red jacket". Only stories that name you make you known.

Your phone (or comm) has a Feed beside your messages.

• Home: stories about you, posts from accounts you follow, from your party and from where you are, stories about other characters that reach you, and the world's own news (what is going on in the region, what people you know have been up to).
• Trending: the tags people use here and what is most seen.
• Inbox: messages with other players, from your own account or a burner (which stays anonymous). Open a player's profile to start one. Words, a photo, or both.
• Alerts: replies, mentions, reposts, likes, new followers, and stories that name you.
• Me: how known you are, what people call you (media nicknames, hashtags, official labels), your accounts and burners, and your camera roll.

Fame shows as followers and how many people would recognise you. Recognition fades over the weeks unless new stories keep it up, and the people in your scenes know about as much as the stories that reached them.

From the Feed you can: Engine

• Post from your own account, or from a burner.
• Leak something to the press anonymously: a story about someone else, with you only as the source.
• Tip off a reporter at one of the world's outlets. If it holds up, they run it.
• Reply and repost under any post or story. The people and strangers you reply to answer back.

Everything you put out is a deed, read with everything else you did the next time word spreads. A post can become a story of its own, bury or correct one about you, or make one worse. Small talk stays small talk.

A burner is an account nobody knows is yours (up to three). Stories about what it posts never name you.

Each time word spreads, a burner can be traced to you. The more its posts give away (details only you would know, posting right where something happened, writing like your own account) and the more heat is on the story, the likelier it is. Once unmasked, everyone knows, and that is a story too. Engine

When word spreads, what you put out can change things:

• start something in the region (a protest, a boycott, a crowd at someone's door, a hunt for someone), or make trouble that is already going on worse or calmer;
• reach the people it names: they remember it, think differently of you, and their own plans can be helped or set back;
• bring the police (or station security) in, to look into what it says or who posted it;
• turn a thread into a pile-on or a rally behind you, which is felt in your fame and in who comes looking for you.

The storyteller is told what is out there that people in a scene could have seen, and plays recognition as a beat: a double take, a phone raised, a reporter's question. Storyteller

In a scene, take a picture: "I pull out my phone and take a picture of the plate". The storyteller says what you frame, and the photo is painted from where you stand into your camera roll. Post it from the Feed; a photo is evidence, and people believe it. A photo costs what a scene picture costs.

• Selfies and group photos: say who is in it ("a selfie with Franziska", "get someone to take one of all three of us") and they are painted as themselves, from their portraits when they have them and from how they are described when they don't. Storyteller
• Send a photo: in a text to someone you know, in your party's group, or in a message to another player. The people you text see what is in it, answer it, and remember it.
• Photos back: ask someone for a picture, or they may send one when it says more than words: a selfie, where they are, what they found. It is painted when it comes and costs what a scene picture costs. With pictures turned off it waits until you open it.
• Save: open any photo, on the Feed, in a text or in a message, and save it to your camera roll. Then it is yours to post or send on.

Players in the same world see each other's posts when they follow each other, share a party, stand in the same region, are mentioned, or when a post goes viral. A builder can keep player posts private instead. More on shared play: Playing together.

You can mute or block any account (blocking hides you from each other) and report a post. The world's builder sees reports, including who really runs a burner, and can take posts down.