Tinkering (Cosmic Tinkerer)

Tinkerer

Rung	2 of the mode ladder
Changes the world	yes — anything but the clock
Tools	light a fire, spawn, edit, toggle systems; later: rules, fork, veto
Since	Phase 1
Status	designed · Phase 1
Technical	Player actions · Tick pipeline and systems

Turn the dial to Tinkerer and the village becomes something you can reach into. Everything you do is a nudge to the world, applied at the next tick, resolved by the same rules that resolve what villagers do, and recorded — which is why Explain this can end a chain with …was set alight by you, on the morning of day 3.

What you can do in Phase 1

	Tool	What it does
	Light a fire	Pick a building. The game heats it past its kindling point and sets it burning. What the village does next is the village's business.
	Spawn	Drop a new villager — or a bush, a bucket, a wood pile — into any place. Choose their traits: a brave one by the river changes the fire story.
	Edit	Change any number on anything: a villager's hunger, the inn's temperature, a bucket's water. Within limits — a berry bush can't hold negative berries.
	Switch the rules	Every force in the world is a system you can turn off and on while it runs: hunger, heat, fire, regrowth, perception, death… Turn off regrowth and watch scarcity; turn off fire mid-blaze and it freezes until you turn it back on.

What you cannot do

Set the clock. Time is the one thing a Tinkerer does not touch: you can go faster or slower, and back through the last day, but you cannot tell the village what time it is.

Arriving later

Phase	Tool
3	Write a rule in plain words — when anyone eats a mushroom in the old forest, they fall asleep — and the game warns you if it overrides a villager's own choices. Fork: branch the world from any moment, change one thing, and compare where the two villages first part ways.
8	Veto an invention the villagers came up with — after the fact, never erasing it from history.

History

Phase	Change
1	Introduced: the Observer ↔ Tinkerer dial; light a fire, spawn, edit, switch systems; the clock is off-limits.

See also

Ways to play · Watching · Fire and heat · Technical: Player actions