Wizden Core Design Pillars Rewrite (#626)

Exactly as the title says.

Rewrote the core design pillars as step one of trying to make documents
for everything.
This doc intends to just be the absolute most basic doc of describing
Wizden, its goals, and the game itself.
I've floated the draft with several maints and have had no objections
and I don't really have anything else to add so it's being PRd and then
voted on.

---------

Co-authored-by: Princess Cheeseballs <66055347+Pronana@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: mq <113324899+mqole@users.noreply.github.com>

Author: Princess-Cheeseballs

src/en/space-station-14/core-design.md

@@ -1,29 +1,57 @@
 # Core Game Design
-These documents contains the Spacestation 14's Core Game Design Princples and should be used to inform the design of any new designs or large balance changes. 
+These documents contain the Space Station 14's Core Game Design Princples and should be used to inform the design of any new designs or large balance changes.
 
-Questions around Core Game Design should be directed towards the Design Group on the Official Spacestation 14 Discord (Prefered) or if you do not use Discord by making a thread on the Spacestation 14 Forums.
+Questions around Core Game Design should be directed towards the #design-discussion channel on the Official Space Station 14 Discord (preferred) or, if you do not use Discord, by making a thread on the Space Station 14 Forums.
 
-### Caveats
-- These documents are living documents and will change overtime as the design of Spacestation 14 evolves.
-- These documents are one interpretation of what Spacestation 14 should be and only reflects the direction of Wizden (upstream) LRP and MRP servers.
-- Forks and other communities may have different ideas and directions which they want to take the game, which is fine and something we want to encourage!
-- This is primarily intended to serve as a direction for upstream Spacestation 14 development, but forks can use these design documents as a base if they so choose.
+## Caveats
+- These documents are living documents and will change over time as the design of Space Station 14 evolves.
+- Forks and other communities may have different ideas and directions that they want to take the game, which is fine and something we want to encourage!
 
+# Wizard's Den
+Wizards Den intends to create a polished vanilla experience of Space Station 14. Primarily focusing on code quality and strong, well-designed systems over pure quantity.
 
-# What is Spacestation 14?
- Spacestation 14 is a game where disasters, enemies, and incompetence conspire to make each shift aboard the station a unique and hellish experience.
+## Core Pillars
 
-# Core Pillars
-These pillars serve as the guiding concepts for designing features for SS14. When creating features or changing balance you should be actively thinking about how these concepts relate to your design or change. 
-The pillars serve as guideposts for creating a cohesive design for SS14. Further detail about each can be found in: [Design Principles](core-design/design-principles.md).
+### Vanilla
+Wizard's Den aims to bring a vanilla Space Station 14 experience. This means a strict adherence to features and content that fit the design of Space Station 14. This is different from Wizden being a blank slate, and does not prevent the addition of content or balancing personalized for Wizden servers.
 
-## Chaotic
+### Stability
+Wizard's Den is the upstream for the majority of forks. As such, code and content should be stable and maintained. Automated tests should ensure systems remain functional, and outright broken, unplanned, or unmaintained content should be removed.
+
+### Mechanics Over Rules
+Wizard's Den prioritizes mechanical design over rules design whenever and wherever possible. Admins shouldn't be required for the game to work, and as much as possible, mechanics should prevent their involvement.
+
+# Space Station 14
+Space Station 14 is a game where disasters, enemies, and incompetence conspire to make each shift aboard the station a unique and hellish experience.
+
+## Core Pillars
+These pillars serve as the guiding concepts for designing SS14's features. When creating features or adjusting balance, you should be actively thinking about how these concepts relate to your design or change.
+
+- These pillars and definitions are specific to Wizard's Den's vision of Space Station 14.
+
+### Unpredictability and Chaos
 - No two rounds should play alike. The combination of antagonists, incompetence, and disasters should create situations where players have to deal with rapidly changing and escalating situations.
-## Seriously Silly
-- aka "The clown has put space lube all over the halls, armed the station nuke and is throwing cream-pies filled with acid at security officers", a situation like this on its face is completely ludicrous but should be taken seriously by players.
-## Dynamic Environment
-- The gameworld should be malleable, letting players build, deconstruct, or modify anything. It should be *possible* to build an entire separate station and continue the round there if players put in the effort.
-## Intuitive and Inter-Connected Simulation
-- Simulated systems should be complex enough to create engaging gameplay/decisions while still being intuitive enough to learn without wiki-diving. Systems should interact with each other as much as feasible to create new emergent gameplay opportunities.
-## Player Interaction/Agency
-- Players should be encouraged to interact with each other as much as possible to create opportunities for conflict or cooperation. Mechanics should reinforce the player's ability to make impactful decisions while mitigating those decisions' effects on the agency of other players.
+- There should rarely be guarantees. Problems should arise, and solutions may not always be immediately available. Players should be forced to adapt to rapid changes in their environment.
+- Chaos should also be unpredictable. Some rounds may be slow, some may be blazingly fast; the variety of round flow is what keeps the game interesting.
+
+### Darkly Comedic/Surrealist
+- The game's tone floats between a Surrealist Comedy and Dark Comedy, both defying expectations with absurd situations, such as the clown throwing acid pies at a mega-corporation's special forces team.
+- The game should be able to balance this tone, never becoming so absurd that it breaks immersion, but never being so serious or grim that it becomes depressing.
+- Mechanics should be designed with this tone in mind, silly mechanics shouldn't be so silly as to not be grounded, and grounded mechanics shouldn't be mundane, and all should play a part in a catastrophe.
+
+### Dynamic Environment
+- The gameworld should be malleable, allowing for the dynamics of a station to change throughout the round. Walls may get blown open by explosions, and areas of the station may be totally renovated by a dedicated passenger.
+- The station should avoid unique properties that cannot be replicated. Even abstract intangible player facing systems should still be tied to tangible objects whenever possible.
+
+### Intuitive and Inter-Connected Simulation
+- Simulated systems should be complex enough to create engaging gameplay decisions while still being intuitive enough to learn without wiki-diving. 
+- Simulated systems should be interactive and reactive, not only with players but with each other.
+- Systems should interact with each other as much as feasible to create new emergent gameplay opportunities.
+- Systems should clearly communicate all necessary information a player needs to make actionable judgments. No player should require knowledge outside the game to interact with a mechanic; black boxes are bad.
+- Players should be able to find optimal strategies and discover emergent interactions solely with what information is available to them in-game.
+
+### Player Interaction/Agency
+- Mechanics and design should encourage players to interact with other players naturally. Players should feel like they have agency in these interactions.
+- Interactions should not be an afterthought when designing mechanics. Player interactions should be part of the design rather than an extra step added arbitrarily.
+- Players should never feel forced into a specific interaction or action. Avoid situations where players default to a specific choice because it is consistently better than other options.
+- A player genuinely interacting with a mechanic should not end up completely isolated from the rest of the game. No mechanics should run parallel or tangential to the rest of the game.

src/en/space-station-14/core-design/design-principles.md

@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
-```admonish warning "Attention: WIP!"
-This doc is actively under development and is not fully complete. Things may change!
+```admonish warning "Attention: Outdated!"
+This doc has been deprecated by a general "Core Design" doc. This doc exists for archival purposes only!
 ```
 
 # Design Principles