Power became authorship
The person able to dominate a scene could also dominate the meaning of the world.
The real project behind the fiction
PROJECT-00 / PUBLIC ORIENTATION
A world no game master
can quietly steal.
The Temple began with a shared-campaign problem: how can a city remain coherent when powerful characters, competing facilitators, and generative machines can all try to rewrite it? The Living Law is the method built in answer.
- Origin
- West Marches
- Current work
- Site · alpha · charter
- Authority
- Declared and revisable
The original pressure test
A level-20 character
walks into a city.
In a West Marches game, an extremely powerful player could kill a civic figure, seize an institution, or declare a new order. Another game master could ignore earlier sessions and rewrite the result. Ordinary campaign notes could not protect continuity from whoever currently held the table.
Separate kinds of truth
Source, interpretation, narration, and campaign state receive different authority and visible provenance.
Actions meet resistance
A character can change a campaign without acquiring the right to rewrite the setting for every table.
The Living Law
A claim becomes real
where someone must act.
The method asks concrete questions: Who is authorised to decide? What source supports the claim? Which worker, route, form, service, witness, or protection makes the decision real? Who bears the cost? Who can appeal?
That method builds the fictional city, disciplines the AI runtime, and guides the real public project. It is not a doctrine that demands belief; it is a way to keep power inspectable.
Six public constraints
Authority must remain
answerable.
These are design commitments under active construction, not proof that a finished institution already exists.
Inspectable
Claims, classifications, and releases should be visible enough to challenge.
Appealable
A person must have a route to question a ruling, source claim, or public error.
Correctable
Corrections leave a trail rather than silently replacing the past.
Revisable
Methods may change when evidence and practice require it.
Forkable
No interpreter becomes the sovereign owner of the method.
Exportable
Campaign and public work should not be trapped inside one interface.
One project · Three public layers
The fiction, the game,
and the method are related.
They are not collapsed into one claim.
People, places, evidence, and danger
The public site shows the opening conditions. Characters meet what lies beyond them inside the authored fiction and their campaign.
Read the opening premise →A place where choices acquire consequences
The 5e campaign lets players act inside a fixed world. Source grounding and persistent state keep the AI from becoming the sole author of what is true.
See how play works →What exists now
Public work first.
Institutions later, if earned.
The website, public Explorer alpha, source release, working Charter, and project pages exist. Circles are the next proposed form. Retreats, an Institute, and a Foundation remain aspirations.
Operational boundary
What the system may decide.
And what it may not.
Game authority stops at the game
The runtime may resolve character actions and campaign state. It grants no real-world office, rank, membership, or authority.
Fiction is not compulsory belief
A source record can govern the setting without demanding that a player accept its claims outside the fiction.
State is not human worth
The system can record what a campaign encountered. It cannot turn that record into a judgment about the player.
Roadmap at a glance
Name the ambition.
Do not impersonate it.
- 01Current
Public work
A public site, frozen 256-record source release, live Explorer alpha, operational status, and working Charter. No public Paper is released yet.
- 02Next
Temple Circles
A proposed small-group format for reading, philosophical inquiry, practice, disagreement, and appeal. Not operating or enrolling yet.
- 03Later
Retreats
In-person formats only after the public method and Circle practice are proven.
- 04Aspirational
Institute
Teaching, research, preservation, and facilitator formation. Not a present institution.
- 05Aspirational
Foundation
Long-term public stewardship with transparent finances and no hidden authority.