storybook/docs/tutorial/09-locations-institutions.md

Locations and Institutions

So far you have created characters, given them behaviors, connected them with relationships, scheduled their days, and guided them through life arcs. But characters need places to be and organizations to belong to. That is what locations and institutions provide.

---

What Are Locations?

A location is a place in your world. It can be a building, a room, a park, a city -- any space where things happen. Locations hold fields that describe the place and optional prose blocks for narrative detail.

Your First Location

Let's create the bakery where Martha works:

location BakersBakery {
    type: bakery
    address: "14 Main Street"
    capacity: 30
}

That is all it takes. The location keyword, a name, and a block of fields. Every field is a key-value pair, and you choose whatever fields make sense for your world.

Adding Detail

A real location needs more than three fields. Let's flesh out the bakery:

location BakersBakery {
    type: bakery
    address: "14 Main Street"
    capacity: 30
    employees: 4
    specialty: "artisan sourdough"
    daily_output_loaves: 80..120
    open: true
    established: "2011"
}

Notice daily_output_loaves: 80..120 -- that is a range. Each simulation run can pick a different number of loaves, adding natural variation.

Prose Blocks

Bare fields are good for data, but locations also need narrative flavor. Use prose blocks:

location BakersBakery {
    type: bakery
    address: "14 Main Street"
    capacity: 30

    ---description
    A warm, inviting bakery on Main Street. The smell of fresh bread
    wafts out the door every morning at dawn. Martha has run the shop
    for fifteen years, and the locals consider it the heart of the
    neighborhood.
    ---
}

Prose blocks start with ---tag_name and end with ---. The tag name (description here) becomes the key. You can have as many prose blocks as you want:

location BakersBakery {
    type: bakery

    ---description
    The bakery on Main Street...
    ---

    ---history
    Originally a hardware store, Martha converted the space in 2011...
    ---

    ---atmosphere
    Flour dust catches the light from tall windows...
    ---
}

---

Building a World with Locations

Locations work best when they form a coherent world. Here is the Baker family's neighborhood:

location BakersBakery {
    type: bakery
    address: "14 Main Street"
    capacity: 30
    owner: Martha

    ---description
    Martha's artisan bakery. The stone oven was imported from France.
    ---
}

location BakerHome {
    type: residence
    address: "22 Elm Lane"
    bedrooms: 4
    has_garden: true

    ---description
    The Baker family home. Martha insisted on an oversized kitchen.
    ---
}

location BakersGuildHall {
    type: guild_hall
    address: "7 Guild Row"
    capacity: 100
    established: "1892"

    ---description
    The historic headquarters of the Bakers Guild.
    ---
}

location TownSquare {
    type: public_square
    capacity: 500
    has_fountain: true
    has_market_stalls: true

    ---description
    The central gathering place. On weekends, the farmers market
    fills the square with produce stalls.
    ---
}

Modeling Hierarchy

Storybook does not enforce a built-in parent-child relationship for locations. Instead, you use fields to express hierarchy:

location MainStreet {
    type: street
    district: TownCenter
    shops: 12
}

location BakersBakery {
    type: bakery
    street: MainStreet
    district: TownCenter
}

This convention-based approach keeps the language simple while letting you model whatever spatial relationships your world needs.

---

What Are Institutions?

An institution is an organization, group, or system. Think of it as a character that represents a collective: a guild, a government, a school, a business. Institutions have a key capability that locations lack -- they can use behaviors and schedules, just like characters.

Your First Institution

institution BakersGuild {
    type: trade_guild
    members: 50
    founded: "1892"
    reputation: 0.85
}

This looks just like a location so far. The difference comes when you add behaviors.

Institutions with Behaviors

Institutions can act. The uses behaviors clause links behavior trees to the institution:

institution BakersGuild {
    type: trade_guild
    members: 50
    reputation: 0.85

    uses behaviors: [
        { tree: ManageApprentices },
        { tree: NegotiateSuppliers },
        { tree: HostEvents }
    ]
}

Each entry in the list is a behavior link object with a tree field. This tells the simulation engine that the Bakers Guild can manage apprentices, negotiate with suppliers, and host events.

Behavior Priorities

Not all behaviors are equally important. Use the priority field:

institution BakersGuild {
    type: trade_guild

    uses behaviors: [
        { tree: ManageApprentices, priority: normal },
        { tree: NegotiateSuppliers, priority: high },
        { tree: HostEvents, priority: low }
    ]
}

Priority levels are low, normal, high, and critical. Higher-priority behaviors take precedence when the institution must choose between actions.

Conditional Behaviors

Some behaviors only activate under certain conditions:

institution BakersGuild {
    type: trade_guild
    reputation: 0.85

    uses behaviors: [
        { tree: ManageApprentices },
        { tree: NegotiateSuppliers, priority: high },
        { tree: EmergencyMeeting, when: reputation < 0.3, priority: critical }
    ]
}

The when clause uses an expression. Here, the emergency meeting behavior only activates when reputation drops below 0.3.

Institutions with Schedules

Institutions can also follow schedules:

institution BakersGuild {
    type: trade_guild
    uses schedule: GuildOperatingHours
}

For multiple schedules:

institution BakersGuild {
    type: trade_guild
    uses schedules: [WeekdaySchedule, WeekendSchedule]
}

Prose Blocks

Just like locations, institutions support prose blocks:

institution BakersGuild {
    type: trade_guild
    members: 50

    ---description
    The Bakers Guild has been the backbone of the town's bread trade
    since 1892. Members share recipes, arrange apprenticeships, and
    collectively negotiate flour prices.
    ---

    ---charter
    Article I: All members shall maintain the highest standards.
    Article II: Apprentices must complete a three-year program.
    ---
}

---

Connecting Characters to Institutions

Institutions do not have a built-in membership list. You model membership through character fields or relationships.

Through Character Fields

The simplest approach -- add fields to your characters:

character Martha {
    age: 45
    occupation: baker
    guild: BakersGuild
    guild_role: guild_master
    guild_member_since: "2005"
}

character Jane {
    age: 19
    occupation: apprentice_baker
    guild: BakersGuild
    guild_role: apprentice
    guild_member_since: "2024"
}

Through Relationships

For richer modeling, use relationships:

relationship GuildMembership {
    Martha as guild_master { years_active: 20 }
    BakersGuild as organization { }
    bond: 0.95
}

relationship Apprenticeship {
    Jane as apprentice { skills_learned: 12 }
    Martha as mentor { patience_remaining: 0.7 }
    BakersGuild as guild { }
    years_completed: 1
}

This approach captures richer information: roles, duration, and multi-party connections.

---

Locations vs. Institutions

When should you use each?

Question	Use...
Where does something happen?	Location
Who or what organizes things?	Institution
Does it need behaviors?	Institution
Does it need a schedule?	Institution
Is it purely a place?	Location
Is it a group or organization?	Institution

Sometimes the same concept needs both:

// The physical building
location BakersGuildHall {
    type: guild_hall
    address: "7 Guild Row"
    capacity: 100
}

// The organization that meets there
institution BakersGuild {
    type: trade_guild
    members: 50
    location: BakersGuildHall

    uses behaviors: [
        { tree: ManageApprentices },
        { tree: NegotiateSuppliers }
    ]

    uses schedule: GuildOperatingHours
}

The guild hall is a place. The guild is an organization. Keeping them separate lets you say "the guild meets at the guild hall" without conflating the building with the institution.

---

Putting It All Together

Here is a complete example showing how locations, institutions, and characters work together in the Baker family world:

// Enums for type safety
enum PlaceType {
    bakery, residence, guild_hall, public_square
}

enum GuildRole {
    guild_master, journeyman, apprentice
}

// Locations: where things happen
location BakersBakery {
    type: bakery
    address: "14 Main Street"
    capacity: 30
    owner: Martha

    ---description
    Martha's artisan bakery on Main Street.
    ---
}

location BakerHome {
    type: residence
    address: "22 Elm Lane"
    bedrooms: 4
    residents: ["Martha", "David", "Jane", "Tom"]
}

location BakersGuildHall {
    type: guild_hall
    address: "7 Guild Row"
    capacity: 100

    ---description
    The historic Bakers Guild headquarters, established 1892.
    ---
}

// Institution: the organization
institution BakersGuild {
    type: trade_guild
    members: 50
    founded: "1892"
    reputation: 0.85
    location: BakersGuildHall
    leader: Martha

    uses behaviors: [
        { tree: ManageApprentices, priority: normal },
        { tree: NegotiateSuppliers, priority: high },
        { tree: HostAnnualBakeOff, when: month is october }
    ]

    uses schedule: GuildOperatingHours

    ---description
    The Bakers Guild oversees apprenticeships, quality standards,
    and the annual Great Bake-Off competition.
    ---
}

// Institution: the business
institution BakersBakeryBusiness {
    type: business
    owner: Martha
    employees: 4
    location: BakersBakery

    uses behaviors: [
        { tree: DailyBakingOps, priority: high },
        { tree: InventoryManagement }
    ]

    uses schedule: BakeryOperatingHours
}

// Characters connected to all of the above
character Martha {
    age: 45
    occupation: baker
    workplace: BakersBakery
    home: BakerHome
    guild: BakersGuild
    guild_role: guild_master
}

character Jane {
    age: 19
    occupation: apprentice_baker
    workplace: BakersBakery
    home: BakerHome
    guild: BakersGuild
    guild_role: apprentice
}

// Relationships tying it all together
relationship GuildLeadership {
    Martha as guild_master { }
    BakersGuild as guild { }
    years_in_role: 8
}

relationship BakeryApprenticeship {
    Jane as apprentice { }
    Martha as mentor { }
    BakersGuild as certifying_body { }
    year: 1
    total_years: 3
}

---

Key Takeaways

1. Locations are simple: name, fields, prose blocks. They model places.
2. Institutions are richer: they add uses behaviors and uses schedule on top of fields and prose. They model organizations.
3. Membership is modeled through character fields or relationships, not built into institution syntax.
4. Separate place from organization: A guild hall (location) and the guild (institution) are different things.
5. Use enums for type-safe categorization of locations and institutions.

---

Next Steps

• Learn about expressions used in conditional behavior links
• Explore behavior trees to create the behaviors your institutions use
• See schedules to define operating hours for institutions
• Read the full Locations Reference and Institutions Reference