Remember earlier moments

A first meeting should feel like a first meeting. A warning should leave time for the player to act. Story history gives you conditions for those choices.

The Director records a Rule when its response starts. It remembers play counts, the last selected Rule and category, and when each Rule or category was last chosen.

Make a moment happen once

Add Rule Has Not Played to the Rule's mandatory criteria. Choose This Rule as the reference.

After the Rule starts once, it will no longer pass that condition. Another Rule can provide the repeatable response.

Use This Rule when the Rule checks its own history. If you duplicate it later, the copy will still check itself instead of the original.

Respond after an earlier moment

Add Rule Has Played and select the earlier Rule. For example, a guard's returning-visitor greeting can require the first-meeting Rule to have played.

Use Rule Played Count when you want a response after a chosen number of selections. The annoyed greeting in Hello Rule demonstrates this.

Leave room between repeated lines

Add Rule Not Played Recently to mandatory criteria. Choose the Rule and the recency settings that fit your pacing.

The default measures recency in Director runs. Each request advances that count, including a request that finds no matching Rule. It does not mean a number of player visits unless your game makes one request per visit.

The seconds option uses wall-clock time. Time spent with the game closed also counts, and changes to the system clock can affect it. Use Director-run recency when you want pacing based on story activity.

Pace a whole group of responses

Story Category Not Played Recently can space out a group, such as all companion hints. In a Rule's history condition, This Rule's Category follows the category assigned to that Rule.

History records the selected Rule's category. If a request for Guard/Greeting selects a global Rule, the play belongs to the global category, not Guard/Greeting.

Inspect or reset history while testing

Open Window > Game Creator > Story Engine > Story Insights, then choose History. Review counts, reset the relevant Rule or category, or export the history for investigation.

Clearing Rule Trace does not reset history. Reloading a scene also preserves story history, which allows it to work across scenes. Game Creator's Reset Game resets Story Engine history for a fresh game.

Remembering the story and remembering the world

History knows that a Rule played. It does not automatically know that a quest was completed or an item was returned. Store those facts in your game's variables or other systems.

For saved games and characters created during play, read Saving and spawned characters.