neon-sprawl/docs/game-design/overview.md

Game design overview

This folder holds vision-level design: what we want players to feel, do, and discover before we lock schemas, APIs, or content pipelines. Use it for brainstorming and alignment; when something is ready to drive implementation, it should gain a path in docs/decomposition/ or docs/plans/.

Summary

Neon Sprawl’s design work here starts from concrete visions of progression, places, risk, economy, social play, combat, and the items/abilities that express them. Documents below are added as we write them; each should stay opinionated and specific enough to argue with, without pretending to be a full GDD.

Artifact index

Document	Focus	Notes
(add rows as files land)

Planned topics (stubs)

Link new files here when they exist; remove or rewrite this subsection once the table is populated.

• Skills — the core classless progression: training, caps, synergies, failure modes, skill families in UI/content. Professions are optional only if they mean something skills do not (e.g. diegetic titles, faction job routing, starter focus)—otherwise fold “what you are” into the skill graph and reputation, not a separate system.
• Zones — tone, danger, faction or economic role of a place.
• Travel & connections — how places link (gates, costs, downtime, danger en route); complements zone identity.
• Mechanics — loops, constraints, what the server vs. client must honor.
• Items — categories, rarity philosophy, crafting vs. drops.
• Abilities — inputs, timing, combo with items and skills.
• Gathering & resources — nodes, competition, exhaustion, what “open world” contesting feels like.
• Crafting & recipes — depth vs. breadth, failure, specialization; pairs with items but is its own loop.
• Economy — currency velocity, sinks, trade vs. self-sufficiency, how wealth shows up in play.
• Factions & reputation — who remembers you, grudges, access gates, story pressure.
• Combat pillars — PvE vs. PvP stance, readability, time-to-kill, what “fair” means here.
• Death, loss & recovery — stakes on failure, recovery paths, anti-grief boundaries.
• Risk & security bands — safe pockets vs. wild space; where optional PvP and theft sit (aligns with security-tier thinking).
• Social play — squad scale, corps, trust, betrayal affordances, async cooperation.
• Encounters & enemy roles — archetypes, what a fight teaches, variety without noise.
• Onboarding — first session hook, clarity vs. mystery, how much systems the new player sees.
• Tone & narrative — how lore shows up (quests, environment, UI), voice of the world.

Related repo docs

Area	Location
Module / epic breakdown	docs/decomposition/
Implementation plans	docs/plans/
Architecture	docs/architecture/