Open-World Narrative · Guides & deep dives

0005: Shared Cross-Continuum Bureau Roster

V5 needs a coherent cast across disparate cells and eras.

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Status: Accepted

Date: 2026-05-25

Context#

V5 needs a coherent cast across disparate cells and eras. A separate cast per cell would make Bureau XP, relationship state, and Mind Palace linkage harder to reason about.

Decision#

V5 uses one unified Cross-Continuum Bureau cast. Characters can appear in cell-specific roles, memories, or analogs, but identity, relationship state, and global unlock metadata are modeled through the shared roster.

Consequences#

  • Bureau XP and relationship systems have one actor identity source.
  • Dialogue and cinematic tooling reference shared roster IDs.
  • Cell-specific presentation can vary without fragmenting canonical character state.