sysadmin-chronicles/docs/PRESSURE_PROFILES.md

SYSADMIN CHRONICLES — PRESSURE PROFILES

Version 1.1

Pressure profiles define how an unresolved situation degrades over time. They are referenced by name from quest files and live in content/pressure_profiles/.

A pressure profile is NOT an incident. An incident is a discrete event with a trigger, escalation chain, and resolution. A pressure profile describes the passive degradation behavior of the environment while a quest is active and unresolved. Incidents may be spawned by pressure profiles, but are separate.

---

SCHEMA

{
  "id": "web_outage_escalation",
  "label": "Web Service Outage",
  "description": "Gentle escalation for Tier 1 web outage quests. Creates narrative urgency without punishing new players.",
  "intensity": 2,
  "escalation_steps": [
    {
      "trigger_after_seconds": 900,
      "notification": "Hermes is still showing errors. Is someone on this?",
      "notification_severity": "warning"
    },
    {
      "trigger_after_seconds": 1800,
      "notification": "Site has been down thirty minutes. Ticket priority is going up.",
      "notification_severity": "warning",
      "escalate_linked_ticket": "high"
    },
    {
      "trigger_after_seconds": 3600,
      "notification": "Hour down. Priya has been copied in.",
      "notification_severity": "error",
      "escalate_linked_ticket": "critical"
    }
  ]
}

---

FIELD REFERENCE

Field	Type	Description
id	string	Unique identifier. Must match the string used in the quest's pressure_profile field.
label	string	Short human-readable name for tooling and authoring.
description	string	Internal description for authors.
intensity	int	Relative urgency / pressure level.
escalation_steps	array	Ordered list of timed escalation notices or ticket priority changes.

Stage Fields

Field	Required	Description
trigger_after_seconds	Yes	Seconds after activation before the stage fires.
notification	Yes	Player-facing escalation message.
notification_severity	Yes	Severity label used by the UI and notifier.
escalate_linked_ticket	No	Optional linked-ticket priority escalation.

---

AUTHORING NOTES

• trigger_after_seconds is relative to quest activation time, not real wall time. In-game time compression applies.
• Stages must be ordered by trigger_after_seconds ascending. Authoring tools will warn on out-of-order stages.
• Pressure profiles should create urgency, not guaranteed punishment.
• If a pressure profile escalates a linked ticket, it should do so in a way that matches the authored ticket priority curve.