Villager¶

Villager


Kind	Person
Found in	Riverside Village, 50 of them
Needs	hunger, warmth, safety, rest, curiosity
Senses	sight and hearing, 2 places
Memory	about 200 things
Dies of	starvation, lethal heat
Since	Phase 1
Status	designed · Phase 1
Technical	PerceptionSystem · DecisionSystem · Option bus

A villager is one of the fifty people of Riverside Village. Villagers are not controlled by anyone. Each tick of the clock, every villager looks around, weighs what they need against what they can see and remember, and picks the single most pressing thing to do. Everything a village does — the night-time crowd at the campfire, the bucket race, the slow starvation when the berries fail — is fifty people making that choice at once.

Senses¶

A villager sees and hears what is in their own place and in places up to two steps away, fainter with each step. Walls get in the way: from inside the inn you hear the square well enough, but the far end of the storehouse row might as well be another village. A villager never knows something they have neither seen nor been told — there is no map in anyone's head that the game fills in for them. This is what makes the village honest: the person who runs for a bucket is the one who saw the fire.

What a villager senses is always a tick behind what is true. They notice, then they decide, then they act — three ticks, about a quarter of an hour of village time. That is why a fire's first moments are so quiet.

Needs¶

Five things pull on a villager; the strongest wins. See Needs for each.

Need	Rises when…	Satisfied by…
Hunger	time passes — from fed to starving in one day	eating; a meal restores a quarter of the scale
Warmth	their place is colder than 15 °C	moving to a warmer place; tending the fire
Safety	their place is hotter than 40 °C	moving away; or, for the brave, putting the fire out
Rest	energy runs down	resting
Curiosity	nothing else is pressing	wandering somewhere new

Memory¶

Villagers remember. Every place they see and every useful thing in it — a bush and how full it was, a bucket and whether it had water, how hot the inn felt — goes into their memory with the time they saw it. Memories fade: a bush's fullness is only half-trusted after a day, a place is remembered for a month, danger for two hours. A villager holds about 200 things at once and lets the stalest go.

Everyone also shares what the village knows: where the eight places are and where the berries, wood, water and buckets were at the start. That is why a hungry villager in the storehouse sets off for the forest edge rather than wandering at random — not because the game told them, but because their village knows. Whether the bush is still full when they arrive is another matter. See What villagers know.

Personality¶

Each villager is rolled with four traits: caution, curiosity, sociability, aggression. Caution is what splits a village when a building burns: the cautious run, the brave run toward it, bucket in hand. Curiosity decides who wanders off to the deep forest on a quiet afternoon. See Personality.

Movement¶

One step along a path per tick, about seven minutes. The storehouse to the forest edge is four steps; nobody teleports, and anyone on the way can be seen, met, or caught by spreading heat.

Deciding¶

A villager does not run a script. Every tick, each thing they could do — eat that bush, walk to the square, fetch that bucket, douse that fire, rest, wander — is offered with a score that says how much it serves a need right now. Personality tilts the scores. The highest wins. You can see this: click a villager and the card tells you what they are doing and why — the choice that won and the two it beat.

What you can do¶

Watch one: click a villager for their card — personality, needs, what they are doing and why, their recent story. See Watching.
Ask: Explain this on anything they did.
Tinker: spawn a new villager in any place with the traits you choose; edit a villager's hunger or caution and watch what changes. See Tinkering.

History¶

Phase	Change
1	Introduced. Senses two places; remembers what they saw and what the village knows; five needs; four traits; chooses by scored options and can say why.