One world, two bodies
Every material decision crosses the mode boundary through owned state. DELVE feels the workshop economy bodily; HOLD receives expedition outcomes as more than a success number.
Preparation is play
Choosing a contract, equipped gear, carried inventory, route, process, safeguard, or civic commitment should express judgement. Repeating solved menu labor should be automated or removed.
Consequence without erasure
Retreat, injury, loss, shortage, and political defeat create new conditions for play. They hurt without deleting the evening or demanding a universal reset.
A living target
Dungeons remember, adapt, communicate, and participate in a larger ecology. Foreign societies and institutions also act beyond player attention. The world is not a backdrop waiting for interaction.
Legible authority
Players can tell who authored a contract, owns an object, made a claim, ratified a mandate, or reported an event. Interfaces preserve provenance, uncertainty, consent, and refusal.
Local agency inside large systems
Players inhabit delvers and independent workshop managers. They influence civilization through work, relationships, association, and consequence rather than receiving a strategy-game throne.
Democracy reaches the shelves
Players inherit functional institutions and may preserve, reform, streamline, or dismantle their distribution policies. The world warns, records, and executes; it does not quietly restore the intended economy after a lawful bad decision.
Cozy does not mean consequence-free
Warmth, mastery, Hold life, and humane rhythms are the foreground of HOLD. They matter because the workshop is embedded in scarcity, ecology, politics, and mutual dependence.