People remember

Every named person you meet keeps their own record of you: when you met, what you did in front of them, and a running journal of what they make of you. They also hold five feelings toward you: trust, respect, fear, attraction and hostility, plus any grudges. The storyteller moves those feelings when you give it cause Storyteller, and the engine keeps them between sessions, so a slight in one town is still there when you come back a month later. Engine

Powerful people are harder to move. A king, an archmage or a dragon feels the same deed far less than a farmhand does, so winning them over takes more. Engine

A person's page shows all of this: their dossier, where you stand on each ladder and what the next rung would take, their memories of you (filterable down to the searing ones), what they carry, and your history together.

People follow you for a reason: a job, a debt, a cause, a bond. The storyteller won't hand you a retinue of the world's mightiest, and powerful allies grow uneasy in each other's company. Storyteller Each world also sets a hard limit on how many can follow one hero. Engine

Do something notable (a killing, a rescue, a scene with someone important) and a timer starts. Word of it reaches the wider world some in-game days later: a day for the gravest deeds, two for major ones, four for the rest (in Khorvale). When it lands, you get a notification, and several things happen at once: Engine

• Rumours spread region by region: specific near where it happened, vaguer further off, fading with time.
• Titles may be granted, or taken away.
• A new chapter is added to your story so far.
• Consequences are set in motion: someone may come looking for you, to thank you, hire you, collect a debt or settle a score.

The news is written by the storyteller Storyteller; when it arrives and what it touches is the engine's. A marker shows on the map and your sheet when there's something new.

The things that come looking for you are encounters, and they're placed: at a site, in a town, anywhere in a region, or anywhere at all. Some wait until you walk in somewhere or set out on the road; an ambush on departure stops the march and drops you into a camp where it plays out. Engine

• Only one encounter is under way at a time, and there's a pause (in real minutes) before a new one can begin.
• A good turn of fortune resolves in a turn or two. A confrontation can run for several.
• Encounters that never find you expire after a while.

People offer quests in play; you accept or turn them down. You can have one quest at a time. How much a quest-giver can promise depends on who they are: a village elder offers local work and small rewards, a monarch can send you across a kingdom. Beginners get local work. Storyteller Experience is paid by the quest's danger, from trivial to deadly. Engine

After you play, the storyteller looks back over your recent scenes and lays down what could happen next: a thread with a few possible turns, each with its consequence decided in advance, including a way to walk away. When you do something that matches one, it plays out as planned rather than being made up on the spot. Threads that never catch fire are shelved. Storyteller

Your character's page has a book: the story so far, one chapter per stretch of notable deeds, written only from what actually happened. Older chapters fold into a prologue as it grows. The storyteller reads it too, so the people you meet can know your legend. Pictures from your adventures are kept in a gallery beside it.