NATURAL_VOICE_DOCTRINE.md

systems/NATURAL_VOICE_DOCTRINE.md

The Natural Voice Doctrine (Josh ruling, 2026-07-26 — binds every player-facing word)

Josh's charge, verbatim intent: the names, quest tracking, quest dialogue, requirements, NPC

dialogue, and boss names "are not natural language… cryptic or like a computer wrote it."

Names must be culturally appropriate to where we are — including HOW people talk and present

themselves — while carrying proper MEANING in the player's language (some translations don't

carry over literally). Clues may be mysterious for puzzles but never unsolvable or unfun. And

puzzles too difficult or time-consuming must NEVER gate progression — they route to the

completionist tier / Layer-3 / no-kill / easter-egg achievement players.

1. The voice rule: every player-facing line sounds like a PERSON

• Quest text is what someone SAID or what the protagonist THINKS — never a system's summary.

Not "Reach the water. The guardians will not let you pass." but the words the world gave you:

*"Mama Klara said the falls give back what was taken — but the two serpents test everyone

who comes near. Go carefully."* The quest log is a memory of conversations and intentions,

not an oracle.

• Requirements/tracking speak plainly: not "encounter-bound — completes on resolution" but

*"I can't leave until this is settled."* The HUD's short lines stay short but stay HUMAN.

• The current spoiler-safe strings (CH_02-05 sidecars, the boss display names landed

2026-07-26h) are marked for THE NATURAL-VOICE REWRITE PASS: same spoiler discipline, human

voice. Spoiler-safety and natural speech are BOTH mandatory — the fix is voice, never leaks.

2. The cultural register: names and speech carry their people

• Character/place names follow the real naming conventions of the culture (Manggarai, Balinese,

Batak, Khmer…) — sourced from the region pages' own substrate, care-doctrine grounded.

• HOW a person speaks presents their culture: an elder's cadence, a healer's directness, a

broker's oil — drawn from the persona system (the 13-field personas) + T0_Voice_Registry.

Boss display names become what PEOPLE CALL the being in-world (the village's word for the

night-hunter, the healer's name for the bound serpent) — diegetic naming, per culture.

• Translation carries MEANING, not literalism: a Manggarai proverb renders into what it MEANS

in the player's language, with the region page noting the original where it matters. The

W10 loc floor + the future translation passes inherit this rule.

3. Clues: mysterious is allowed, unfun is not

• Puzzle clues may be mysteries — but every progression-path puzzle must be SOLVABLE by an

attentive player in reasonable time with in-world information (the clue chains OR together;

legibility never gates — the existing rule stands and gains this fun-bar).

• The QA loop tests solvability: a puzzle station that cannot be completed from its own clues

within a sane attempt budget is a defect.

4. The difficulty routing rule (RULED)

• Progression-gating content = the solvable-fun tier, always.
• Genuinely hard / time-consuming / obscure puzzles and challenges route to: the completionist

tier (the 8-10k-hour 100% layer), Layer-3 connection content, the strictly-no-kill path's

special rewards, and easter-egg achievements. They are PRIZES for the players who want them —

never walls. This extends the standing no-dead-end / multi-path / non-gating canon.

5. Execution (the next session's first canon-lane wave)

• THE NATURAL-VOICE REWRITE PASS: re-author the player strings ×4 chapters + boss display

names + clue player_texts in the natural register with cultural grounding (persona/voice/

region-page sourced), spoiler-discipline intact, reveal-critic-gated as always, plus a NEW

critic lens: "does a person say this?" and "does this carry the culture?"

• NPC dialogue authoring (the quest-giver conversations the quest log then remembers) enters

the factory's authored lanes per chapter.

• The voice doctrine joins the P5 factory's per-chapter checklist and the reveal-table test

gains a companion natural-voice review step (human-judgment, critic-run — not regexable).

Generated by harness/site/structure_site.py — the URL path is the repo path. review root