The Encounter System

Where the Story Engine Writes Your Collisions

Forget waiting for roleplay to happen. Everwinter’s Encounter System is an innovative tool designed to ensure you’re never far from meaningful interaction. It doesn’t rely on chance; it uses a sophisticated story engine to find compatible storytelling partners and forces narrative collisions into existence. This system ensures a dynamic world where stories are constantly unfolding.

How It Works: The Matching Cycle

The system runs on a continuous 8-hour cycle:

1. Scanning: The story engine scans active, opted-in players.
2. Calculating: It assesses compatibility based on 12+ factors (see below).
3. Matching & Hook Generation: Pairs are made, and custom scene hooks are written by the Narrator AI.
4. Notification: Players receive alerts via HUD, Discord, and the web dashboard.
5. Meeting Window: A 4-hour window begins for players to meet in-world and start the scene.
6. Deadline: If the scene hasn’t started, the encounter expires and negatively impacts completion rates.

You can have up to 3 active encounters simultaneously. Completing one may lead to another match within the same cycle.

The Matching Logic: Hunting for Narrative Tension

The story engine doesn’t match randomly; it hunts for useful friction and narrative tension by weighing factors like:

• Narrative Factors: Blight stage proximity, faction opposition, recent location overlap, content preferences (combat, social, etc.), character archetype clashes.
• Player Factors: Completion rate history (reliability), writing style compatibility (length, complexity), timezone overlap, previous partnership history, Scene Finder preferences, and availability status.

Every match notification includes a Match Reasoning breakdown, showing you why the system paired you, revealing the narrative potential it identified.

Scene Hooks: Your Opening Line

Each match includes a procedurally generated scene hook written by the Narrator AI—a 2-3 sentence prompt referencing recent activity, location overlaps, faction tensions, or other relevant factors for both characters. These hooks act as narrative accelerants, designed to bypass small talk and thrust you into immediate tension.

Example Hook: “You both emerged from the Chrome District clinic within the same hour. One of you is bleeding. The other is holding something that doesn’t belong to them.”

The Rules of Engagement: Time & Contribution

• The 4-Hour Window: This isn’t just a timer; it’s manufactured urgency simulating the fleeting nature of opportunity in the city. Meet your partner and start posting before it expires.
• The 3-Post Minimum: To complete an encounter, both players must post at least 3 times. This ensures genuine engagement and fair contribution. Completion triggers automatically and rewards Influence, Chapter progression, credits, and boosts your Completion Rate.

Your Preferences: Encounter Categories

You influence the type of encounters you receive by setting preferences in the Scene Finder:

• Combat, Social, Investigation, Survival, Corruption, Criminal, Faction, Intimate (requires mutual opt-in), Random. The story engine respects your choices but seeks maximum dramatic potential within them.

Your Reputation: Completion Rate

Your Completion Rate (%) tracks how many assigned encounters you finish. It’s visible on your Character Card and heavily influences future matching:

• 80%+ (Priority): Matched first, better partners, better hooks, eligible for Special Encounters.
• 60-79% (Standard): Normal matching pool.
• Below 60% (Low Priority/Blacklisted): Matched less often or temporarily suspended from matching. Chronic ghosting (ignoring matches) lowers your rate and signals to the system you aren’t actively participating.

The Escape Hatch: Disliking Encounters

If a match feels genuinely wrong (content mismatch, safety concern), you can Dislike it via the Comms.NET panel. This nullifies the encounter without penalty. However, you can only dislike 1 out of every 5 encounters; exceeding this ratio counts as a failed completion. Use this feature responsibly.

Special Encounters: Narratively Significant Events

Beyond standard preference-based matching, the Narrator AI occasionally generates special encounters — rare, narratively significant matches with unique conditions designed to drive specific types of story:

• FACTION CLASH: Pits leaders/members of rival gangs against each other during territorial disputes.
• AUTHORITY INTERVENTION: Matches Civil Authority characters with civilians flagged for recent illicit activity.
• MENTOR MATCH: Pairs veterans with new players to foster community integration.
• CORRUPTION CONVERGENCE: Connects high-stage Blight characters for scenes exploring transcendence or shared madness.
• NEMESIS PROTOCOL: Detects brewing rivalries and forces confrontations.
• WITNESS MATCH: Pairs a character involved in an incident with one investigating it.
• DARK ENCOUNTER: High-risk, mature content (requires specific opt-ins).

Special encounters often have an extended 6-hour window and bonus rewards. These are calculated interventions by the Narrator AI to inject specific drama into the living novel. When one triggers, the system is signaling: This one matters..

Integration: Encounters Feed Everything

Completed encounters ripple across your character’s progression:

• Contribute points to Chapter Progression.
• Influence Psyche Metrics (e.g., violence boosts Entropy).
• Can increase Blight Accumulation.
• Impact Faction Standing.
• Unlock Achievements/Designations.
• Are referenced by NPCs.

Encounters aren’t isolated scenes; they are the narrative infrastructure your character arc builds upon.

Final Thought: Engineered Storytelling

The Encounter System is Everwinter’s core philosophy made mechanical. It refuses passive roleplay, instead weaponizing connection to ensure the story is always moving, always colliding, always evolving. Answer the call, meet your match, and see what happens when the city’s narrative engine decides you matter to someone else’s story.