Guide

Scenario starts

A scenario start is a ready-made situation a career begins from, with a goal to chase. The player picks one from New career → Play a scenario, then makes the player theirs (name, nickname, picture and the choices the scenario leaves open) and plays on. When the goal is met, the game shows a Scenario complete screen, the career carries on, and the scenario wears a gold star in the list from then on.

Scenarios are a content type like any other: a pack or a mod adds them in data/scenarios.json or in any file under data/scenarios/, one record each. A mod can also replace one of the game's scenarios by using its id. The game has three: core.scenario.wonderkid, core.scenario.last-chance and core.scenario.champions-slide.

{
  "id": "acme.scenario.comeback-kid",
  "name": "The Comeback Kid",
  "pitch": "Twenty-four, written off after a year out injured.",
  "story": "A paragraph for the scenario's own page.",
  "difficulty": "medium",
  "order": 50,
  "facts": [ { "label": "History", "value": "Junior world champion at 17" } ],
  "choices": { "gender": true, "nationality": true, "hand": true, "style": true },
  "player": {
    "age": 24,
    "level": 72,
    "potential": 88,
    "tier": 3,
    "tourCardSeasons": 0,
    "oomRank": 180,
    "cash": 2500,
    "followers": 12000,
    "reputation": 25,
    "difficulty": "normal"
  },
  "goal": {
    "kind": "tourCard",
    "title": "Win a Tour Card within two seasons",
    "text": "Judged until the end of next season's Q-School.",
    "seasons": 2,
    "graceMonths": 2
  }
}

The record#

Field	What it does
`id`	Namespaced id, your mod's id first. Required.
`name`	Up to 40 characters: the card's title and the success screen's. Required.
`pitch`	One line under the name, up to 140 characters. Required.
`story`	The page's paragraph, up to 900 characters.
`difficulty`	`easy`, `medium` (the default) or `hard`: the chip on the card. It says how hard the goal is; the career's own difficulty is `player.difficulty`.
`order`	The place in the list, lower first (default 100; ties by id).
`facts`	Up to two extra lines for the page's Your start table, after the lines the game writes from `player`. Keep them to flavour or history: the game's own lines say what the start actually gives.
`choices`	Which of the New Career form's choices stay open. Each is `true` (the default) or `false`. A closed `gender` or `nationality` takes `player.gender` or `player.nationality`; a closed `hand` or `style` keeps the form's default.
`player`	The start. Only `age` is required; anything left out is the normal start's.
`goal`	What to chase. Leave it out for a sandbox start with nothing to judge.

The identity is never the scenario's: the name, nickname and picture always come from the form.

The start (`player`)#

Field	Range	What it does
`age`	10 to 50	The player's age on the first day.
`gender`, `nationality`		Used only when `choices` closes them.
`level`	20 to 99	The overall level at the start. Every skill attribute moves by the same amount, so the player keeps the strengths their style gives them; eyesight is their own.
`potential`	20 to 100	The level the player can grow to. Never below the start's level.
`tier`	1 to 5	The tier the player starts in (1 is the top).
`tourCardSeasons`	0 to 5	A Tour Card held for this many seasons, this one included: `1` runs out at this season's end.
`oomRank`	1 to 1000	The place in the Order of Merit at the start. The player's seeded prize money is set between the players at that place and the one above; nobody else's money changes.
`cash`	0 to 50,000,000	Money in the bank at the start, in pounds.
`followers`, `reputation`		The fame the player starts with.
`difficulty`	`easy`, `normal`, `hard`	The career's difficulty. The form does not ask it for a scenario; left out, it is `normal`.

A scenario takes no random draw of its own while the world is made, so the rest of the world (the other players, their faces, the calendar) is exactly the one the seed makes without it.

The goal (`goal`)#

Field	What it does
`kind`	`tourCard`, `oomRank` or `winEvent`. Required.
`title`	The goal in one line, up to 80 characters: on the page, on Home and on the success screen. Required.
`text`	A line on how it is judged, up to 200 characters.
`seasons`	The seasons the goal has, this one first (1 to 30). Required.
`forSeason`	`tourCard`: the card must cover the season this many after the start's (0, the default: any card held at the time).
`graceMonths`	`tourCard` and `winEvent`: months into the season after the last one, so a card won at Q-School in January still counts.
`top`	`oomRank`: the place to reach in the Order of Merit (default 1).
`tier`	`winEvent`: a title on a tour of this tier or higher (default 5, any).
`major`	`winEvent`: `true` to ask for a major.

How each kind is judged:

**tourCard** is met at the end of any week in which the player holds a Tour Card that covers the season asked for and is valid now. It runs out on the first day of the month graceMonths into the season after the last one.
**oomRank** is judged on the final Order of Merit at the end of each season. It is met at a season's end in the top top, and it runs out at the end of the last season.
**winEvent** is met when the player wins an event of the tier asked for (or a major) and runs out as tourCard does.

A goal is decided once. The inbox says so either way, and the career always carries on. Met, the game shows Scenario complete the next time the player is on the hub or advances a week. The scenario then gets its gold star, which is kept with the player's settings, not the save. So a scenario completed in any career keeps its star.

A career keeps its own copy#

A career keeps the scenario's record as it was when the career began. A pack changed or removed later does not move a goal under way, and an old save without a scenario is untouched.

Checking a scenario#

The Mods screen counts a pack's scenarios, and the loader reports a broken record with its file and field. As for every content type, a mod with an error is not loaded until the error is fixed, and the game's own scenarios stay.
The season sim plays a scenario headless and prints the goal's state each season:

Run a few seeds. A goal the autoplay manager never meets is probably out of reach, and one it always meets in the first weeks has no tension.

Written for Darts Player Simulator 0.50.32. Built from the game's own schemas and its base pack.