Storytelling and worldbuilding — the brief, the seed and the scoring

Sent as one message, free tier, fresh chat (Claude: incognito), memory off, with the six facts from seed.md pasted under it.

I’m building a world for a story. Below are six fixed facts about a town called the Reach. Write me a worldbuilding entry in five parts, under these five headings and no others: “The Turn”, “Three People”, “Timeline”, “A Tale They Tell”, “The Law”. In “The Turn”, 250 to 300 words describing the day the sea comes back as a resident sees it, present tense. In “Three People”, exactly three named characters, one from each guild, two sentences each. In “Timeline”, exactly five dated events between Year 1 and Year 212, one line each, each of which follows from the facts. In “A Tale They Tell”, a 120 to 150 word story the town’s children are told, in the voice of the person telling it. In “The Law”, one paragraph on the one law, who last broke it, and what happened. Use only these six facts and what follows from them. Add no fourth guild, no iron on the flat, no horse or any riding animal, and no name, place, god, currency or language from the real world. Do not use these names: Elara, Kael, Aria, Lyra, Aeris, Seraphina, Thorne, Zephyr, Aetheria, Eldoria. No character name may end in -iel, -ael or -yn. 700 to 900 words in total. No introduction, no notes to me, nothing after “The Law”.

[the six facts]

The traps

• The fourth guild. Models add a priesthood, a council, a merchants’ league, a watch. Fact 3 says three and no others.
• Iron on the flat. Iron gates, iron sledge runners, iron nails, an iron-shod anything. Fact 4 forbids it; the sea gate is the one place a model puts iron.
• The horse. Fact 6. Horses, mules, oxen, carts drawn by anything.
• Earth leaking in. Church, priest, god, saint, coin names, “Latin”, real place names, weekdays, months. The brief bans real-world names, gods, currencies and languages.
• Default fantasy names. Ten banned outright; three endings banned. The checker lists every capitalised name for a look.
• Timeline arithmetic. Five events, dated Year 1 to Year 212, in order, none contradicting a fact - the sea returning twice in a week, a founding date other than Year 1, a population that never fits.
• The law. Fact 5 says nobody may be on the flat on the Turn. The paragraph must keep to that law, not invent another.
• Structure. Five headings, those five, no sixth; three people, not four; five events, not six; the Tale in a voice; the Turn in present tense.
• Length. 700 to 900 words in total, a window.

Scoring

• Facts contradicted - the headline: a fourth guild, iron on the flat, a horse or draught animal, a real-world name or god or currency, a timeline event that breaks a fact. measured leads with “N contradicted”.
• Names - each banned name used; each banned ending used.
• Structure - five headings exact, three people, five events, the Turn present tense, the Tale in a voice, nothing before or after.
• Length - 700 to 900 words in total; the Turn 250 to 300; the Tale 120 to 150.
• The world - does it feel lived in; does the Tale sound told; does the Law paragraph land. Recorded.
• Time, refusals, output form.

check_world.py runs the fact, name, structure and length checks on a raw file’s ## Answer section.

Answer key - storytelling and worldbuilding

Must hold

• Three guilds only: Mudwalkers, Saltbinders, Gatewrights. Any other named body that runs, judges, taxes or polices the town is a fourth.
• No iron on the flat: no iron gate, hinge, nail, runner, blade, chain or shoe outside the walls. Iron inside the town is not forbidden.
• No horse, mule, donkey, ox, camel, dog-sled, or anything ridden or pulling.
• The sea returns every nine days at dawn and stays one day. A timeline or tale that has it come on another rhythm, or stay longer, contradicts fact 1.
• Founded Year 1, now Year 212, 4,100 people. Dates outside 1–212 or out of order contradict fact 2.
• The one law is about the flat on the Turn. A different “one law” contradicts fact 5.
• Nothing from the real world: no church, priest, god by a real name, saint, coin, month, weekday, language, country, city.

Must not appear

• The banned names: Elara, Kael, Aria, Lyra, Aeris, Seraphina, Thorne, Zephyr, Aetheria, Eldoria.
• Any character name ending -iel, -ael, -yn.
• A sixth heading, a fourth person, a sixth event.
• An introduction, a note, an offer, anything after “The Law”.

Must appear

• The five headings, exactly: The Turn · Three People · Timeline · A Tale They Tell · The Law.
• The Turn: 250–300 words, present tense.
• Three People: three names, one per guild, two sentences each.
• Timeline: five lines, each with a Year N, N ascending, 1 ≤ N ≤ 212.
• A Tale They Tell: 120–150 words, a teller’s voice.
• The Law: one paragraph.
• 700–900 words in total.

Fixtures for the storytelling-and-worldbuilding test

• brief.md - the message sent, the traps, and how answers are scored.
• seed.md - the six fixed facts about the Reach pasted under the brief; the only facts the entry may use.
• ground-truth.md - what must hold, what must not appear, what must appear.
• check_world.py - fact, name, structure and length checks on a raw file, plus a list of capitalised names for a manual look: python check_world.py raw/<tool>.md.

Synthetic throughout: the town, its guilds, its law and every number are invented.

The Reach - the seed world (all invented)

Six facts. Everything in the entry must follow from them and nothing may contradict them.

1. The Reach is a walled town on a tidal flat. The sea comes back once every nine days, at dawn, and stays one day; that day is called the Turn. On the other eight days the flat is dry mud and the town can be reached on foot from the mainland, a walk of two hours.
2. The Reach was founded 212 years ago. The current year is Year 212. It has 4,100 people.
3. Three guilds run it, and there are no others: the Mudwalkers, who guide people and goods across the flat on dry days; the Saltbinders, who cure and store the fish taken on the Turn so it lasts the eight days after; the Gatewrights, who keep the sea gate that closes the town on the Turn.
4. Iron rusts through in a single Turn anywhere on the flat. Nothing that goes onto the flat is made of iron. Tools and fittings there are bronze, bone or wood.
5. The Reach has one law: nobody may be on the flat on the day of the Turn.
6. Nobody in the Reach has ever seen a horse. Goods cross the flat on people’s backs and on sledges pulled by people.